In this episode, Emily shares the microinterviews she recorded at two higher education conferences this summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What do you wish you had known about money earlier in your career?” Listen through the episode for insights into the financial steps for which, should you take them now, your future self will thank you.

Links mentioned in the Episode

• Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution 
• Emily’s E-mail Address
• PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List 
• PF for PhDs Podcast Hub

Teaser

Lyndsi B (00:00): You don’t have to make one decision and have it be the right decision for the rest of your life. Like you can make changes at any point along the way and you are allowed to fail and like you can recover from failure.

Introduction

Emily (00:20): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:50): This is Season 18, Episode 5, and today I’m sharing the microinterviews I recorded at two higher education conferences this summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What do you wish you had known about money earlier in your career?” Listen through the episode for insights into the financial steps for which, should you take them now, your future self will thank you.

Emily (01:20): The two conferences I attended were the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting or GCC and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance Summit or HEFWA. GCC is primarily attended by university staff members working with PhD students and postdocs in career and professional development. HEFWA is attended by university staff members working in financial wellness across undergraduate and graduate populations. These two conferences were excellent networking opportunities for me on top of the built-in professional development. However, there are plenty of universities who were not represented at these conferences. Would you please consider recommending my financial education seminars and workshops at your university? My most popularly requested events for the upcoming academic year are Your Financial Orientation to Graduate School, How to Prevent a Large, Unexpected Tax Bill on Your Fellowship Income, Expert-Level Budgeting for Graduate Students and Postdocs, and Demystifying Taxes for Graduate Students. Please direct an appropriate potential host within your graduate school, postdoc office, grad student association, etc. to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ where they can learn more. Thank you in advance! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s18e5/. Without further ado, here are the microinterviews recorded at GCC and HEFWA.

What Do You Wish You Had Known About Money Earlier In Your Career?

Amy (03:03): Hi, I am Amy from Princeton and when I was in graduate school I wish I had learned more about investing and saving for retirement and sort of how all that works early in your career to benefit you later.

Sharon F (03:18): Hi, my name is Sharon Fleshman. I’m a senior associate director at Career Services at University of Pennsylvania. I think coming out of undergrad I basically took the salary, I was pitched <laugh> and that was it. So I wish I knew the implications of a starting salary across the years.

Evan W (03:34): My name is Evan Walsh. I’m a career advisor at Harvard Medical School. I really wish I knew that it only takes a little bit each week to put towards something. So every week I put money away into a travel fund. Each week I put money away towards retirement. Each money I put a little bit away towards just miscellaneous fees that I may incur and it’s all within my master budget that I now wish I would’ve known earlier that I like to do and that’s really helped me sort of save for trips and things for my future, things that I wanna prioritize, how I utilize my money. So I wish I knew earlier that your money is yours to spend the way that you want to.

Laura S (04:11): Hi, my name is Laura Stark and I work for Harvard University. I got my PhD many, many years ago and I wish that I had known that I should start saving for retirement even as a graduate student.

Briana M (04:26): I’m Briana Mohan, I am a program manager at MD Anderson Cancer Center. A lot of times we feel, I have felt that money is tied to worth and my value as a professional and there actually is no correlation at all so far as I can see. So I think that decoupling those two things so that then it’s a little bit more feasible to work with money and money questions and speak about them and grapple with them and not have it so tied to how much I’m valued or how much I am worth, I wish I would’ve known that earlier.

Alla M (05:03): So my name is Alla Mirzoyan and I’m from Florida International University and I wish I had known about credit in the United States and not to sign up for credit cards without really understanding the implications. I was an international student so I knew very little about how credit works, but I know better now.

Gina B (05:25): I’m Gina Bellavia from the University at Buffalo and what I wish I’d known about money earlier in my career is, well, particularly because I got a PhD but then I went a non-traditional route. I didn’t go into academia, so I guess it would’ve been good for me to know going that route that I might have to kind of go down in pay to, to then start a new trajectory and then work my way up again, which I guess it makes sense if you think about it, but I didn’t really think about it that way. So it’s taken a little longer to to build up I think by taking that less traditional route, but, but I’ve also had greater career satisfaction.

Manali G (06:03): I’m Manali Ghosh. I’m a senior academic recruiter at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I wish I had known sooner to invest in stocks like s and p 500 earlier in my career.

Ivonne V P (06:16): My name is Ivonne Vidal Pizarro. I’m at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I’m the research consultant in the graduate school supporting postdocs and I wish that I’d known that if I could save more money when I was younger, I’d have more in my 401k now.

David C-B (06:30): Hi, David Cota-Buckhout. I am the assistant director of Alumni Engagement and Career Support at the University of Rochester’s Graduate Education Postdoctoral affairs office. I wish I knew that I should have paid off my private student loans earlier so that way the compounded interest wouldn’t have backed me with so much debt. And just recently I was able to get rid of those student loans and then free up over $13,000 of interest that I can now put towards other things.

Katie H (07:07): I’m Katie Homar from University of Pittsburgh and what I wish I knew about money earlier in my career was the importance of researching salaries and negotiation.

Alex Y (07:18): Hi, this is Alex Yen, a second year postdoc at Boston University’s professional development and postdoctoral affairs office. The thing I wish I had known about money earlier in my career, and I think especially in graduate school, is that open a high yield savings account as soon as you can and put just a little bit of money, even if it’s 20 bucks, 30 bucks a month. Just having that and knowing that it can, it’s a long term sort of savings space that will continue to accrue interest, will make you feel less anxious and look forward to a time when you can save more

Dan O-B (07:56): Dan Olson-Bang, Syracuse University. If I had known this, I would’ve been grateful. Uh, don’t take out loans during your PhD.

Ryan U (08:05): My name is Ryan Udan. I’m director of the office for postdocs at UTM, the Anderson Cancer Center. As a long time trainee that did not make a lot of money, who navigated into a career path that I was ultimately happy in, it did take too long of a time to get to that career path that for me, I wish I knew about other career options that I would’ve been happy with earlier that paid better and earlier. So now I have a better understanding of all the other diverse career options that are available to people, not just for people with their PhDs, but for other types of professional degree programs that would’ve gotten me to a space where I was happy with my job and that I was making a lot of money more quickly. For example, I didn’t know about optometry field, I didn’t know about radiological careers and you know, the flexibility you have for, uh, uh, obtaining jobs more easily and, and many different places from small towns to big cities. And again, immediately after you get sometimes an associate’s degree, that stuff for me was a black box when I was training.

Giovanna G-M (09:14): Hi, my name is Giovanna Guerrero-Medina and I’m director of Diversity programs at the Yale School of Medicine and the Wu Tsai Institute. One thing I would’ve liked to know about money earlier in my career has to do with how much life costs and how there are gonna be times in your life when you will need to have extra cash because of health emergencies. Because you have to take care of family members who are sick. You have an emergency trip that you have to plan and so it’s important to have a, a fund or a a some money that is liquid that you can use in an emergency at some point in, in my life after my graduate school, my family had some emergencies and I also had some healthcare costs and it was really important for me to have that extra cash that I had saved and separated.

Bill M (10:15): Bill Mahoney. I’m the Associate Dean of graduate student postdoc affairs at the University of Washington. I’m also faculty in the School of medicine and I wish I understood a little bit better that making career decisions based on the next paycheck, the most money, it’s only part of the decision. You have to make it on what you love doing, the people you’re gonna support. And if you choose to stay in higher ed, you’re probably gonna not make as much money, but you’re gonna have a bigger impact on training the next generation of scientists and students to go on and do bigger and better things in uh, and improve the world.

Meredith O (10:44): Meredith Okenquist, Director of Career Management Villanova University. What I wish I knew more about was retirement planning at the very onset of my career and investing the full maximum percentage for my 401k.

Kirsten R (10:59): My name is Kirsten Ronald. I am the program manager of advanced degree career management at UT Austin. I wish I had known that you don’t need to go back to school to make a massive career change and I also wish someone had talked with me about the ROI of going back to school before I did it.

Colleen G (11:13): My name is Colleen Gleeson and I work at the University of Texas at Austin as an associate director for advanced degree employer integration. One thing I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is thinking about careers and jobs and salary packages and benefits in a way that like evaluates in the total compensation package and how invaluable it is to have employer paid health insurance and to have things like pay time off and something that forces you to invest in a retirement account or a pension to make you think about the future.

Marlene B (11:51): So my name is, uh, Marlene Brito, Dr. Marlene Brito and I’m the associate director of DEI at NYU Career Development Center. And what I wish I had known before I started a PhD was that you self-fund a lot of your activities as a doctorate student, especially if you’re a professional who’s going to school part-time, but sometimes even as a full-time student. So like save money for conferences, save money for research expenses because all of that cost thousands of dollars.

Melissa K (12:21): Melissa King, University of Mississippi, the best advice I ever received about money was when my husband and I married 13 years ago and my mother-in-law told us it doesn’t matter how much money you make if you spend all of it right? So knowing how to spend and how to save is by far the best piece of advice. It doesn’t matter if you make six figures if you’re, you’re spending all of it, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Lee T (12:46): Hi, my name is Lee Tacliad. I’m a manager of alumni and employer engagement at Scripps Research and what I wish I knew about money earlier was the magical effect of compound interest.

MaKenna C (13:00): Hi, I’m MaKenna Cealie. I am a graduate student at the University of Rochester. What do I wish I had known about money earlier in my career. So I had some great advice about learning to save and invest, but I think sometimes I took that too far. So I think it would also be important to kinda spend your money too as sometimes and enjoy your life. I read this great book Die With Zero and I think that was very helpful for me.

Dan E (13:26): Hi there. My name’s Dan Emmans. I am senior coordinator for student development and engagement at Harvard Medical School. Early on, get into the habit of putting 20% away and you’ll never go wrong.

Tamar G-C (13:36): Hi, I am Tamar Gaffin-Cahn. I’m the assistant director for graduate students at the Career Development Center at Emerson College. And one thing I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is put money away. Invest really early on, even if it’s just 20 bucks a month, invest early ’cause it will grow. I would also say to diversify where you’re investing and there are lots of opportunities of how to invest in uh, that’s connected to your values as well. So there are opportunities to invest in green energy, invest in programs that are good for the environment and good technology and things like that so it your money isn’t going to corporations that do harm to this world.

Bryan M (14:12): Hi, my name is Bryan McGrath. I do employer engagement over at Harvard Medical School. What do I wish? I had known about money earlier in my career that credit cards accrue interests and you should be paying more than the minimum each time.

Linda L (14:24): My name is Linda Louie. I work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and I wish that earlier in my career I had known that retirement was a thing you needed to plan for <laugh>.

Jessica R (14:35): My name’s Jessica Roman, I’m the Assistant director of Graduate career Services at Stony Brook University and something I wish I would’ve known about money earlier in my career is how private loans and their interest works because I thought it was like public loans where you have the same principal and then I graduated and I got the bill and it was very shocking and I’m still paying that off, so I wish I would’ve known how that works so I would’ve made payments while in college.

Breanna G (15:06): My name’s Breanna Gallagher and I am a career coordinator at Oklahoma State University and what I wish I would’ve known about money earlier in my career is literally just the lingo of all of the money talk, being able to understand my benefits, being able to understand 401ks and medical insurance and being able to just understand what I was reading and signing, especially in a really tight window when you’re required to do your benefits in like 24 hours.

Aimzhan I (15:39): My name is, Aimzhan Iztayeva. I work as a program associate at the graduate School of the University of Minnesota. What I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is how investment works and also how taxes work with regard to money that you gain through investment.

Natalie C (15:56): My name is Natalie Chernets, I’m director of postdoctoral affairs and professional development at Drexel University. What I wish I knew about money early on is that higher education doesn’t necessarily mean more money in your salary, especially if you are an immigrant coming from another country. There are other barriers you have to think through to earn that salary.

Rowena W (16:14): Hi, I’m Dr. Rowena Winkler. I work for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County or UMBC in their career center as the assistant director for graduate student career development. So what I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is, especially as a graduate student, I, I’m an immigrant child, so my parents came here from the Philippines and I didn’t really know good personal finance and money management practices. I wish I had taken out loans or looked for more scholarships because as a graduate student in particular, I went into a lot of credit card debt just trying to finance my way through school. And so I wish I had known more about personal finance resources or funding options as a graduate student.

Mearah Q-B (16:56): My name is Mearah Quinn-Brauner. I work at Northwestern University. I wish I had known that sometimes it’s a good idea to spend money in order to have more money later in your life. When I was in graduate school, my mom tried to convince me to buy a house and I thought that that was insane. It was a crazy idea given how much money I had at the time, but it would’ve been worth figuring out so that I would have a house in Philadelphia now.

Diane S (17:24): Hi, my name is Diane Safer. I’m the director of career and Professional Development at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where I work with PhDs and postdocs. I wish I would’ve taken the advice that I give to my students and postdocs right now and really negotiated for higher salaries and higher starting salaries right when I got the job because you can never really make it up once you’ve started a job and you’ve lost all your negotiating power once you’re in.

Mallory F-L (17:49): Hi, my name’s Mallory Fix-Lopez. I’m with Language ConnectED. I wish I would’ve known to charge for my work earlier in my career. I’ve done a lot of work for free <laugh>.

Emily S (17:59): So my name is Emily Sferra. I am the coordinator for career and Professional Development at the University of Michigan Medical School. If given the option to contribute to a retirement account you should contribute to a retirement account.

David B (18:19): Hi, I’m David Blancha. I’m a program manager at the OCPD at University of San Francisco. The thing that I wish I had known about money earlier, especially when I was a graduate student, is that when I was doing all of the math on my finances and what I might like need to live while I was in graduate school, all of those numbers would be wrong. Eight years later when I graduated I had no, I, no sense of adjusting for inflation or markets changing or anything like that. So I assumed the math I had done to live in a one bedroom apartment <laugh> in New York in 2015 is what I was going to need in 2022 and that’s absolutely not, not right. <laugh>.

Commercial

Emily (19:09): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2024-2025 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Orientations or very close to the start of the academic year would be a perfect time for tax education or general personal finance content. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

What Do You Wish You Had Known About Money Earlier In Your Career?

Alexis B (20:37): My name’s Alexis Boyer. I’m assistant director of Graduate student career services at MIT. And I wish I had known the difference between a 1099 and a W2 and I wish that I had known that the skills that I was developing were worthy of being paid.

RC S (20:54): RC Stabile, uh, Vanderbilt University, director of trainee engagement and wellbeing. I wish I knew about investing, putting money in target date index funds and I wish I knew about high yield savings accounts earlier.

John M (21:10): Hi, my name’s John Miles. I’m the Chief Executive officer of Inkpath, uh, the professional development platform. I wish earlier that I had known that by spending my time working on Shakespeare and taking a very academic direction that I wasn’t counting myself out of decent salaries later on that I should be confident that time will reward you and, uh, you can indulge those academic perspectives, uh, without feeling like you are narrowing down your options for the future.

Zarna P (21:42): Hi, I’m Zarna Pala. I am the assistant director of the Biological Sciences graduate program at the University of Maryland. And I wish I knew, uh, more about investment and investing money in the right direction or any sort of like small investments which I, which I could have started early on, uh, as a graduate student, as a postdoc fellow, that would’ve been really helpful.

Anne-Charlotte M (22:08): Hi, I’m Anne-Charlotte Mecklenburg. I am the postdoctoral associate for academic support at the University of Maryland College Park. And I think something that I wish that I knew about money earlier in my career was just all of the different ways of like saving money and organizing money that I would need later in my career as a graduate student it was kind of like, okay, I have a stipend and it covers all my living expenses and I can’t really do anything else with it, so I just spend it until I don’t have it anymore. And now that I’m sort of moving into more of a mid-career moment, it’s like, oh, I have a retirement account through my university and I don’t really know how that works. All that kind of stuff that I feel like in other careers people kind of learn that kind of stuff closer to right af out of college. It’s something that now feels like a little bit delayed for me and now I feel like I’m a little bit behind. So something I wish I was thinking about before I needed it so that I’d be ready when I did need it.

Amy A (23:00): I’m Amy Aines and I’m with Championing Science. What I would’ve loved to have known more about is how to invest. I think I was conservative and I was okay with a 401k with someone else thinking about it, but it would’ve been nice to know for myself what that was about and how I could take advantage of the opportunity.

Gina D (23:18): Gina Delgado, director of doctoral and post-doctoral life design and what I wish I’d known earlier about money in general is not just knowing about money but not being afraid of being broke because I’m not afraid of being broke.

Beka L (23:32): This is Beka Layton. I am the director of professional development at UNC Chapel Hill and thinking back to when I was a graduate student, I think benefits life insurance 401ks and kind of how to balance life expenses with long-term goals and budgeting. I think that whole like black box of like, I don’t know any of those things was mystifying to me. So things I learned by accident along the way and wish I knew then.

Aurora W (24:02): I’m Aurora Washington. I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. And something that I wish I knew about finance when I was a graduate student is how to budget a little bit better and to manage my expectations because I’m a postdoc, postdoc don’t get paid well and so I wish I knew a little bit more about benefits in negotiating in Texas.

Sam R (24:29): Hi, um, this is Sam Ramosevac, I’m director, um, at the office of Postdoctoral and Mentor trainee program at Emory University. Uh, I wish I actually negotiated my salary and I think it’s really important at least to attempt to negotiate and get more money for the level of experience you have and you know, just at least to try.

Ian K (24:57): I’m Ian Krout. I am a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University. For me, being a postdoc, I went on a training grant and realized that I was losing some benefits that I had gotten as being an employee at the university. And so I actually began to ask questions to both my PI and the postdoctoral office about if this needed to be the case and if there was any way to get benefits and advocating for myself was enough to get those benefits brought back through a workaround at the university, which was really positive for my experience and helped me to still be able to save for retirement and not pay into my health insurance myself.

Jessica T (25:35): My name is Jessica Taylor. I’m a research fellow at ACLS and I wish I had known when I was a graduate student that you’re supposed to tip in hotels.

Natalia (25:44): My name is Natalia, I work for the University of Pittsburgh as a career advisor. Yeah, and I wish I, I had known that money would be able to buy me freedom of choice.

Autumn A (25:55): Well, my name is Autumn Anthony. I manage the office for graduate student assistantships and fellowships at GW. I think it would’ve been really important for me to realize earlier that if you are looking to make more money, then you have to go to the organizations that actually have more money <laugh> and that when you are committed to the work that you’re doing and working hard and looking for opportunities to succeed in your work, just because of your commitment and just because of your hard work doesn’t mean you’re going to make more money. So you have to go where the money is.

Jessica V (26:33): My name is Jessica Vélez. I am the membership engagement and early career programs manager for the Genetic Society of America. And I definitely wish I had known that I do actually make more money than I think I do. And by creating a budget, that’s how I learned that I made more money than I thought I did and I signed up for a budgeting app at some point in my graduate career. Because of that, when I finished my PhD, I wasn’t able to immediately get a job, but I had enough money saved up from the budgeting I had done on a graduate school stipend to survive for two or three months without having to worry about unemployment because you can’t apply for unemployment as a graduate student <laugh>. So that was extremely beneficial and I’m glad that I finally learned that, but I wish I had learned that earlier for sure.

Melissa B (27:20): This is Melissa Bostrom. I’m assistant Dean for Graduate Student Professional Development at Duke University and I wish I would’ve known that investing for retirement didn’t have to be perfect. It didn’t have to be the best. I just had to get started with a small amount on a regular basis.

Chris S (27:35): Okay, my name is Chris Smith. I manage the Office of Postdoc Affairs at Virginia Tech. The importance of investing in special retirement vehicles, whether that be a Roth IRA or traditional IRA that have different benefits in terms of tax purposes, whether you pay them now or later. And it might be real benefit when you’re in your lower paying years to be in investing in or Roth where you’re paying the taxes now and then when you eventually retire, you don’t know taxes on that and all the compounding that happens over those 30 plus years of your career.

Jason H (28:06): I’m Jason Heustis, assistant Dean for Student Development Evaluation at Harvard Medical School. I’d say one of the things that would’ve been helpful to know in graduate school, similar decisions you’d make when you start getting a real paycheck, things like allocations for insurances, the different types of saving options, that type of thing would’ve been helpful for me to know earlier, right? Or to be prepared for those decisions so that I can do as much research at the time. That would’ve been helpful.

Anne X (28:30): Hi, my name is Anne Xiong. I’m from UC Berkeley Center for Financial Wellness. I wish I know that no matter how much money you have, you can start investing early.

Kelli W (28:41): I’m Kelli Wright from Wayne State University. I’m the financial wellness advisor there. I’ve been there since March of 2023. I’m an accounting background, so I’m really excited about this space and what I wish I would’ve known is the importance of saving, creating that healthy habit, of saving even $10 a month just where I would be at financially if I would’ve known that.

Charah C (29:07): Yes, my name is Charah Coleman. I work for University of California Merced, and I am the Financial Wellness Center program manager on that campus. I would say the time value of money. I don’t have any regrets with how I spent my money in my undergrad or even early grad school, but I wish I really would’ve invested earlier and given myself a leg up a lot earlier. Now I definitely have to invest a lot more aggressively and I have to cut a lot more expenses now than when I was starting off in my career. I, I definitely think having that awareness of the time value of money being aggressive at the front end, I think would’ve behoove me a lot better.

Beth H (29:49): Beth Hunsaker, MS. Uh, associate Director, financial Wellness Center, university of Utah. After my graduate work, I did take some time off to have kids and although that was a wonderful chapter of my life, I really wish I would’ve taken time to keep my network strong, to keep working on my skills because when it was time to come back for my career, which has to do with money, it was a little harder for that on ramping. And I think that there is a way to balance and do both, and I wish I would’ve focused a little more on that.

Roland K (30:27): Roland Keller Jr associate director of financial aid at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. One thing that I wish I would’ve known about a little sooner is the importance of credit. Credit is very important. It literally is life or death. So I would’ve wished I would’ve been more educated about credit

Darrel S (30:45): Darrel Stufflebeam, uh, a doctor in education from KU and I’m the new assistant director for Jayhawk Finances at ku. Uh, I wish I’d have known about the importance of starting early and compound interest and I did not have a financial background and my parents didn’t really have advice. So if I would’ve started a little earlier then I’d be much happier now, but I’m just spreading the word as part of my current job.

Khalilah L (31:12): My name is Dr. Khalilah Lauderdale. I am the Associate Athletic Director for student services at the University of Southern California. And earlier in my career, I wish I had known, um, concerning money more about how to buy a home. I was very green in our process and very reliant on my realtor resources, so that would’ve been helpful.

Nafisah G-B (31:35): My name is Nafisah Graham-Brown. I am a program administrator of a financial coaching program at SUNY WCC, that’s Westchester Community College. What I wish I had known about money earlier in my career was the value of retirement savings. Uh, unfortunately I was in a job where we were discouraged from taking part in the pension and retirement program mainly because the people that were talking to us also didn’t have much information or knowledge. So I guess the value of it wasn’t seen by most of us. And I guess the lesson is make sure you’re getting your information from someone who knows.

Aly B (32:13): My name is Aly Blakeney. I am an instructor of economics at Phillips Academy Andover. What I wish I had known about money earlier was honestly how important it is to talk with any significant other. If you have like a very serious prospect with them to talk with them and be like, Hey, where are we at in terms of money and debt? I think that will cause stress quicker than anything. And setting yourself up for future means also taking care of your financial wellness via your emotional intimacy wellness as well.

Tony F (32:45): My name is Tony Froelich. I am the financial literacy coordinator at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. What I wish I’d known earlier in my career about money is the power of investing in yourself. I always thought of saving as taking what was left after the month and that was my savings. So whether that was $10 or negative $50, pulling outta my savings account, but learning the lesson of taking that savings out of my paycheck first and putting that away and then spending the rest has been life changing.

Zach T (33:19): Yes, Zach Taylor, assistant professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, and what I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is saving it earlier in my career would facilitate a lot more time and that as I’ve gotten older, time is money and I’m now realizing how much more time money can buy you. And that has become so important as my parents have aged and as I have continued in my career where I feel like I have enough money now, but I don’t have the time, but if I had more money, I know I would have more time. So I think the relationship between time and money is what I wish I had known earlier in my career.

Lyndsi B (34:04): I am Lyndsi Burcham. I am the financial Wellness Program manager at the University of Pennsylvania. I think what I wish I had known about money earlier in my career isn’t even necessarily about money. It’s the fact that like you don’t have to make one decision and have it be the right decision for the rest of your life. Like you can make changes at any point along the way. And I think a lot of times when we’re having conversations about money with students, they’re so caught up in the fact that they have to do the right thing first. And oftentimes there is no right thing. And even if there is a right thing, it’s gonna change depending on your life circumstances. There’s a lot I could say about tactical information about like what is a credit score versus a credit report and, and knowing those kinds of things, but like the psychological component of it, which is you are allowed to fail and like you can recover from failure. I, I don’t think we talk about that enough and instead we instill fear in students that they have to do things the best way.

Peter B (34:59): Hi, I am Peter Bye. I am a doctor of music student at Indiana University and what I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is that sometimes it works out well and sometimes it doesn’t work out well and you kind of gotta roll with the punches and make adjustments constantly. It’s never something you figure out. You can’t solve it unless you’re like super rich, but you can make changes and slowly affect your, your situation hopefully in a positive way. Uh, so you kind of just have to roll with the punches until you hopefully get to the place you wanna get to.

Outtro

Emily (35:41): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.