Personal Finance for PhDs

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How to Establish and Improve Your Credit as a Graduate Student or PhD

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In this episode, Emily explores the topic of credit: what is it, why it matters, how to establish it, how to improve it, and when you can stop thinking about it so much. Near the end, she also reveal the biggest credit killer that she sees among the PhD community and how to overcome it. As ever, the content is tailored to the PhD experience of finances in the US, including that of international students, postdocs, and workers.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Intro

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 6, and I don’t have a guest today, but rather I’m exploring the topic of credit: what is it, why it matters, how to establish it, how to improve it, and when you can stop thinking about it so much. Near the end, I also reveal the biggest credit killer that I see among our community and how to overcome it. As ever, I have tailored the content in this episode to the PhD experience of finances in the US, including that of international students, postdocs, and workers.

I’m eager to devote time to this important topic because many PhDs, especially those who grew up outside the US or are from underprivileged backgrounds, don’t have credit or have poor credit or are concerned about their credit. If you have good credit, it’s not something you have to pay much attention to. But if you have poor credit or no credit, it can really hold you back financially and limit your life choices.

The credit bureaus start tracking our financial actions as soon as we start taking any. For many of us, that starts when we’re minors or college students, long before we may have the financial acuity to safeguard and foster our credit. Very sadly, some children and adults are victims of financial fraud, which can destroy your credit through absolutely no fault of your own, and it can be very difficult and painful to rectify.

I expect listeners of this episode to run the gamut, from PhDs and graduate students with great credit to those with poor credit to those with no credit. You will all find great information in this episode, including what steps you should take to establish or improve your credit, if necessary, and some reassurance as to when you can put your credit out of your mind.

What Is Credit?

Asking the question “What is credit?” seems like a basic place to start this episode, but I actually had to search a little harder for a good definition than I was expecting. In fact, the best definition I found was for the term creditworthiness rather than credit, and it’s from Investopedia.

“Creditworthiness is… how worthy you are to receive new credit. Your creditworthiness is what creditors look at before they approve any new credit to you. Creditworthiness is determined by several factors including your repayment history and credit score.”

Basically, credit is a tool that lenders use to evaluate how risky you are to lend to, which affects whether whether they will work with you at all and what interest rate you’ll be offered. This evaluation is based on your past use of credit.

All of your credit-related activity is tabulated in your credit report. Actually, you have multiple credit reports, each prepared by a different credit bureau. There are three main credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. In theory, they are all working off of the same information.

The information that is included in each of your credit reports is 1) personally identifiable information, such as your name, social security number, and address; 2) lines of credit and payment history, which is all of the loans and credit that have been extended to you and your repayment history with each, going back approximately seven years; 3) credit inquiries, which is a record of each time your credit is viewed by a potential lender; and 4) public record and collections, which is a record of bankruptcies or bills that have gone to collections because you neglected to pay them.

Your credit reports are used to calculate credit scores. You actually have many credit scores calculated in different ways by different bodies for different purposes. The most popular credit score for mortgages and similar loans is the FICO credit score. A close second is the VantageScore. We’ll return in a few minutes to how those scores are calculated and what they mean.

The main points I want you to take from this section are that your credit scores are based on your credit reports, which are records of all of your credit-related activity.

Why Credit Matters

Why should you or anyone else care about your credit or your credit score in particular? You can see that your credit is based on how you’ve treated your debt and some other financial obligations in the past, and it was developed to help lenders asses whether they should lend to you under the assumption that you will behave in the future as you have in the past. So clearly your credit matters if you are trying to take out a loan, like a mortgage or car loan, or a line of credit, like a credit card.

Rather strangely, your credit score is also often referenced when someone wants to quickly judge how financially responsible you are. Landlords, utility companies, and insurance companies often access credit scores, and some employers and even governments do as well. It is a big leap to assume that how you’ve treated debts in the past is predictive of general financial responsibility in the future, and I think it’s quite unfair.

People who have no credit are often quite financially responsible because they have managed to run their lives without the use of debt, but that’s not reflected in their nonexistent credit score. Also, credit you may have had in your home country does not translate to the US; you have to start over. And for anyone with poor credit, the actions and/or circumstances that created that low credit score are not ones that will necessarily be repeated in the future. You can change your financial behavior on a dime, but it takes a long time for your credit score to catch up.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 ostensibly prohibits discrimination based on race alongside other factors, but in practice there is a credit gap. A recent study by Credit Sesame found that 54% of Black Americans had no credit score or a poor or fair credit score, while only 41% of Hispanic Americans, 37% of white Americans, and 18% of Asian Americans had the same. The credit gap stems from the Black-white wealth gap, homeownership gap, employment gap, and income gap, and perpetuates the wealth gap and homeownership gap.

The credit gap is caused by systemic problems, and systemic solutions are warranted. However, in this episode, I’m going to focus on what you can do as an individual to impact your own credit score.

What is a good credit score and how is it calculated?

The FICO credit score and VantageScore range from 300 to 850. According to a lovely Nerdwallet graphic linked in the show notes, a score of 720 to 850 is considered excellent, 690 to 719 is good, 630 to 689 is fair, and 300 to 629 is poor. For another reference point, a FICO credit score of 760 and above will get you the best interest rates on a mortgage.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/what-is-a-good-credit-score

While the exact algorithm for calculating FICO credit scores is proprietary, we know that 35% of the FICO score is based on payment history, 30% on amounts owed, 10% on new credit inquiries, 15% on the length of your credit history, and 10% on the mix of credit. We’ll get into what actions you can take in each of these areas to improve your credit score momentarily.

How do I establish credit?

Before we get there, I want to speak to those of you who do not have any credit history in the US. I do think it’s worthwhile to establish credit history and a credit score if you are not yet financially independent. A good credit score is useful as a renter and a virtual necessary when taking out a mortgage.

As I explained earlier, credit is self-referential. To have credit, you must have had credit. So how do you get your foot in the door?

The simple and free way to do so is to take out a secured credit card. This is a special kind of credit card designed to help people establish credit. You turn over a deposit, which becomes your line of credit. You borrow against that line of credit and then pay it back. After about six months, you should have a credit score and be able to move on to more conventional debt products, if you want to. These credit cards are often marketed as student cards.

Alternatively, if you have a family member who is very responsible with credit, you could ask to be added as an authorized user on one of their credit cards. In this way, their good credit sort of rubs off on you. You don’t actually have to even have or use your authorized user card. Just make sure that the person you ask to do this pays off their credit card balance in full every statement period. As soon as your credit score is established and high enough, take out your own credit card to establish your independent credit history. As I learned from Sam Hogan, a mortgage originator with PrimeLending (Note: Sam now works at Movement Mortgage) and an advertiser with Personal Finance for PhDs, in one of the live Q&A calls we’ve held, your credit score may look good with only an authorized user card in your history, but you won’t qualify for a mortgage on that alone.

There are two other solid ways to establish credit, but they are not usually free, and therefore I suggest you only undertake one of them if it is very financially important to you to establish the highest possible credit score quickly. That’s not usually necessary, so these are sort of extreme steps.

Method #1 is to take out a loan with a bank, sometimes specifically called a credit builder loan. This is an installment loan, so it’s a good complement to the revolving line of credit you likely already have with a credit card. It’s not enough to take out the loan, but rather the point is to make the minimum payments consistently to demonstrate that you are capable of repaying debt responsibly. The cost here is the interest you’ll pay throughout the repayment period, so you should shop around for the best rate available to you. You could also consider doing this with a student loan if you are a student, but since the loan won’t go immediately into repayment, I’m not certain it will have as positive an effect on your score as a credit builder loan would. Plus, student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, if it came to that, so that’s a strike against them in comparison with a bank loan.

Method #2 is to pay a service to report the payments you are already consistently making to the credit bureaus. For example, the service might report your rent payment, which would not normally be included in your credit report. The cost here is the fee for the service, so again, shop around. You won’t have to keep the service up indefinitely, only long enough to qualify for another debt product.

This last tactic of reporting rent payments to credit bureaus and having them be calculated into credit scores is, from what I can tell, the top method being pursued to address the credit gap. A few landlords are starting to report rent payments to the credit bureaus on behalf of their tenants for free. The newest versions of the FICO and VantageScore algorithms do take rent payments into consideration, but most lenders still rely on older versions of the algorithms.

How do I improve my credit?

Now that we’ve covered establishing credit, let’s go deep into how to improve credit. Please take note from the outset here that improving your credit score is a long game. You must practice good credit behavior consistently for years. Since the length of your credit history is taken into account, you really can’t attain a top credit score until you’ve been using credit for at least a handful of years.

I’m going to give you at least one suggestion from each category that goes into the FICO credit score. Don’t be shocked when one or two of the suggestions contradict each other!

35% of the FICO score is based on payment history. This is the key category. Make your payments on time and in full every time. For years.

30% of the FICO score is based on amounts owed. Pay down your debt. Pay off your debt. For a specific hack, keep your credit card utilization rate low. Your utilization ratio is the balance you owe across all your credit cards divided by the sum of your credit limits. You should keep this ratio below 30% or ideally below 10%. Please note that your utilization ratio can be viewed at any point in your statement period. So even if you pay off your credit cards in full every period, as you should, having a high utilization ratio at some point earlier in the period will still ding your score. You can keep your utilization ratio low without changing your spending by 1) requesting credit limit increases across all of your cards, 2) applying for new credit cards to increase your overall credit limit, and 3) paying off your cards multiple times each statement period instead of just at the end.

10% of the FICO score is based on new credit inquiries. Don’t apply for any new loans or lines of credit. I warned you that some suggestions would be contradictory!

15% of the FICO score is based on the length of your credit history. Basically, you just need to let time pass. It helps to keep your oldest credit card open indefinitely and to close newer accounts if you want to close any. If you haven’t opened a credit card yet, choose one without an annual fee to be that first card.

10% of the FICO score is based on the mix of credit. Specifically, this means having both revolving lines of credit, like credit cards and home equity lines of credit, and installment loans, like a mortgage, car loan, student loan, etc. If it was really important to you to improve your credit score and you didn’t have any installment loans, you could take one out, like the credit builder loan I mentioned earlier, but it will cost you.

Another great, general step to take is to check your credit reports for accuracy once per year through annualcreditreport.com, which is the government-sponsored website where you can order one credit report per year from each credit bureau. During the pandemic, that limit was increased to once per week. Keeping tabs on your credit reports is part of your basic good credit behavior.

Credit killers

Now I’d like to explore the main credit killer that I see PhDs and particularly graduate students falling into. And it’s not student loans! Believe it or not, as long as you’re current on your payments and your balance isn’t inordinately high, student loans are kinda good for your credit score. No, the big credit killer, and killer of your finances overall, is credit card debt.

According to the Council of Graduate Schools’ recent report, Financial Education: Developing High Impact Programs for Graduate and Undergraduate Students, 85% of graduate students have a credit card. Forty-five percent of those carry a balance on their cards, with 9% only making the minimum payment.

Everyone listening to this podcast episode knows that finances in graduate school are challenging at best. We can all understand how readily an emergency or unexpected expense could result in a carried balance on a credit card. But, I implore you, instead of accepting that your credit card balance will be with you until and through graduation, get aggressive about ridding your balance sheet of this most toxic kind of debt.

Ideally, you would pay your balance off by increasing your income and/or decreasing your expenses and throwing all available cash—outside of a starter emergency fund—at the debt. Depending on how high that balance is, you may not have to make these sacrifices for long.

If it is absolutely impossible for you to increase your income or decrease your expenses before you finish graduate school, you could at least mitigate the negative effects of your credit card debt. If your credit card debt resulted from the hard reality that your stipend is insufficient to pay for basic living expenses, please consider taking out a student loan to pay off the past debt and supplement your income going forward so you stay out of credit card debt. While it’s not great to be in student loan debt either, at least you can defer the payments until after you graduate. If your credit card debt resulted from an unexpected expense that is unlikely to recur, you might consider paying off your credit card debt with a personal loan from a bank or with a balance transfer credit card. That way, you can at least get a break on the interest you would have paid while you’re paying down the balance.

If you’d like to learn more about increasing your cash flow and paying down debt, please join the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. Inside the Community, you will find the recordings of two workshops I gave in August, titled How to Up-Level Your Cash Flow as an Early-Career PhD and Whether and How to Pay Off Debt as an Early-Career PhD. After working through the materials, you will have a plan for how to handle your credit card balance in the short and long term.

When your credit doesn’t matter

The final credit topic I’ll address in this episode is when your credit doesn’t matter and when it does. Once you have attained a great credit score of approximately 740 or above and you keep up your good credit habits, you don’t need to pay much attention to your credit. Keep paying your bills on time and in full, use your credit cards as you would debit cards, chip away at your debt, and check your credit reports for accuracy once per year. You don’t have to actively work on increasing your credit at that point—with one exception. If you are planning to take out a loan in about the next year, it would behoove you to get a little more protective about your credit. I’m particularly speaking about taking out a mortgage, but this would also help you with a car loan or similar. For example, you might stop opening credit cards months or a year in advance of applying for your new loan so that you don’t have any recent hard credit inquiries. You might pay off a smaller debt in its entirety. You might pay special attention to your utilization ratio. Above all, when you start working with a mortgage loan officer, listen to that person’s advice about what to do regarding your credit. They might instruct you to make absolutely no changes. I know that Sam Hogan, the mortgage originator I mentioned earlier, advises his clients all the time about their credit in the lead-up to taking out a mortgage. If you are looking to take out a mortgage in the near future and you want to work with someone who understands PhD income, please reach out to Sam over text or a call at 540-478-5803.

Conclusion

I hope this episode was instructive for you and clarified what steps, if any, you should take regarding your credit as a graduate student, postdoc, or PhD with a “Real Job!”

Outro

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 a 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.

Entering a PhD Program with Significant Debt and Investments

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In this episode, Emily interviews Alexandra Savinkina, who is starting a PhD program at Yale University after completing a master’s degree and working for several years. She has spent the last few years pursuing Public Service Loan Forgiveness while contributing to retirement accounts and saving and is therefore entering her PhD with significant student loan debt and significant assets. Alexandra and Emily discuss Alexandra’s financial goals during her PhD, including how much to spend on rent, financing a car vs. purchasing it with cash, whether to defer student loans or stay in an income-driven repayment plan, and how to continue to invest for retirement while in grad school.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

PhD debt and investments

Teaser

00:00 Alexandra: Yeah, I think it will definitely be a lifestyle decrease. A lot of my spending, not in the last year, has gone to things like travel. And I also think that the longer that I’ve had a salary and have, you know, my social circle has been people with salaries.

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 five, and today my guest is Alexandra Savinkina, who is starting a PhD program at Yale University after completing a master’s degree and working for several years. Alexandra spent the last few years pursuing public service loan forgiveness while contributing to retirement accounts and saving, and is therefore entering her PhD with significant student loan debt and significant assets. We discuss Alexandra’s financial goals during her PhD, including how much is spent on rent, financing a car versus purchasing it with cash, whether to defer student loans or stay in an income-driven repayment plan, and how to continue to invest for retirement while in grad school. This episode will be instructive for anyone anticipating or in the midst of a career transition or financial crossroads.

00:34 Emily: At the start of a new academic year, I always like to bring up tax considerations, especially for new graduate students. If you haven’t yet, go back and listen to season 10 episode two of this podcast titled, “What to Do at the Start of the Academic Year to Make Next Tax Season Easier.” If you have already started or switched onto fellowship funding for your stipend or salary, please take note of the upcoming quarterly estimated tax deadline of September 15th, 2021. To determine whether you are required to pay estimated tax, fill out the estimated tax worksheet on page eight of form 1040ES. If you need any help with the worksheet, consider joining my workshop at PFforPhDs.com/QETax. The live Q&A call for this quarter is this coming Sunday, September 12th. This is the best time to join this workshop to definitively answer whether you are required to pay estimated tax and how much income tax you can expect to pay in 2021. Again, if you’d like my help with figuring this out, the best place to go is P F F O R P H D s.com/Q for quarterly, E for estimated, T A X. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Alexandra Savinkina.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:46 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Alexandra Savinkina. Our topic today is starting a PhD at a slightly older age. So Alexandra is 30 and she’s starting her PhD this upcoming fall in epidemiology. So I’m really excited to have her on. And Alexandra, would you please introduce yourself a little bit further to the audience?

03:04 Alexandra: Sure! Hi, I’m Alexandra. As you know, I’ll be starting my PhD this fall. I’m really excited about it. I got my bachelor’s degree back in 2013 in biology, and then during that time was working in an HIV virology lab and thinking about graduate school, but knew I wanted to go into the sciences. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to do bench work forever, and so instead of making that decision right away, I did a year abroad teaching in the South Pacific. And experiences there as well as past experiences kind of brought me to public health. So I did my Masters in Public Health at Emory University, right after getting back from the south Pacific. And then I worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for three years. And at that point started thinking more seriously about a PhD, but instead pivoted a little bit, moved to Boston, and have been working in academia for the last couple of years before really making that decision to pursue that PhD program now.

Why is Now the Right Time for the PhD?

04:14 Emily: I love that you’ve been out of undergrad, out of your masters for several years now. You have a really solid start to a career, actually. So why is it that you decided that this was the right time for the PhD?

04:25 Alexandra: Yeah, so I actually did apply to PhD programs to be totally transparent. Two years ago, I got into some programs, I didn’t get into other programs. And when I was weighing my options at that point, there wasn’t really any program that was a perfect fit in terms of both something that financially I was comfortable with in terms of stipend and really excited about the program itself. At the same time, my partner matched into a medical residency program in Boston. And when I was kind of weighing my options in that way, I hadn’t been accepted to any programs on the east coast, but I realized all of the programs I was really excited about were in the Northeast. So I started looking at jobs and ended up just accidentally finding something that when I read the job description was like exactly what I wanted to do.

05:22 Alexandra: But while working in this job and being like very solidly in academia, I think I’ve been able to realize that every single piece of the job that I really like is a piece that if I want to continue that as a career, I’m going to need a higher degree for. And so I think that’s really what’s led me to be like, okay, I definitely want to do this. And the upside is that during the last two years, I’ve really been able to grow my network, grow my skillset, and I was able to get into my first choice PhD program both from two years ago and from applying this around.

05:59 Emily: Amazing! What restraint you have, I feel like, for that application cycle from two years ago to get into some places, but then just to say, no, ultimately. Like, I just feel like you feel you’re so committed to that point, right? To the idea of going to graduate school, that I really commend you for holding out for what you really wanted in and you got it and that’s amazing. Congratulations!

06:21 Alexandra: Thank you. Yeah, it was very scary. It was a scary decision to make. So on this side of it, I’m pretty happy, but when I was kind of waiting to hear back from programs this time around, I think there was kind of that anxiety hanging over me of like, what if I don’t get in anywhere? And I did get in places two years ago, so I’m glad it worked out the way it did.

Tell Us About Your Balance Sheet: Assets and Liabilities

06:43 Emily: Yeah. I really can’t imagine that anybody would be a weaker candidate having, you know, another two years of work experience. Plus, you know, I think we could hear the clarity in what you were just saying about, you know, your career plans at this point. Maybe you didn’t have that or had that to a lesser degree, you know, two years before, but that’s amazing. Again, congratulations. So let’s talk about your money. You have money, and not money, at this point in your life. Your balance sheet is a little bit more complex than maybe when you’re coming right out of undergrad. So yeah. Tell us about, just give us a quick overview of your balance sheet, your assets, your liabilities, then we’ll talk a little bit more about each of them.

07:20 Alexandra: Yeah, so right now my one big liability are my graduate school loans from my master’s program. Yeah. That’s kind of the one big thing hanging over my head. I don’t really have any other debt right now. And then on the asset side, my assets are split mostly between my retirement savings, both from the 403(b) that I have from my current position. And then I’ve maxed out my Roth IRA every year that I’ve been able to. So for the last three years. And then the other half is sort of in standard savings as well as a long-term investment account and a little bit in short-term, like swing investment, which is just kind of fun money at the moment. But I’m living in Boston right now. I’m moving to New Haven. So my one new big liability is going to be a car that I’m going to need to purchase.

08:17 Emily: Gotcha. Okay, well, let’s start on the liability side. So it makes sense to me that you have student loan debt from a master’s in public health degree. And that is that just from the graduate degree or also from undergrad?

08:32 Alexandra: I had a tiny bit of loans from undergrad, but I’ve paid all of those off. So at this point, it’s just the graduate degree.

Paying Off Student Loan Debt

08:41 Emily: So let’s take this out of the context of you’re heading into graduate school just for a second and talk about, okay. You’ve been in the workforce for several years post-master’s degree. Have you been aggressively trying to pay down that student loan debt, or are you using public service loan forgiveness? Or what has been your plan for that debt?

08:59 Alexandra: Yeah, not aggressively paying it off. The first couple of years, I wish that I’d put a little bit more thought into it. I didn’t, I think at that point, my thinking was I’ll pay it off, but without any kind of really exact plan. For the last few years, I’ve really focused that more. And I am going for public service loan forgiveness. My job at the CDC did not qualify because it was a fellowship position, but my current job does. And so I’m about two years in, and I’ve gone through the paperwork. I’ve kind of stayed vigilant with that. And so I’m really hoping, I’m almost certain that any job I’ll take post-PhD will qualify. So I’m really trying to go down that path.

09:46 Emily: Yeah. This makes sense to me with your career plans for, ideally, it sounds like staying in academia, or if not, it seems like there’ll be plenty of nonprofit type work for you after that point. Sorry, did you say you were going to stay in academia? Or planning to?

10:01 Alexandra: Great question. I think right now that’s the plan. I want to kind of use this time in PhD to see if that’s really the course I want to be on. But I do love kind of the freedom that academia offers. I need to see if I’m any good at writing grants.

10:18 Emily: Gotcha. Okay. So plan A, academia, otherwise, probably a PSLF qualifying employer. And did you say approximately what that student loan balance was?

10:29 Alexandra: No, it’s right around $80,000.

10:32 Emily: Yeah. Okay. So I did an episode a season or two ago with Meagan Landress who’s a certified student loan professional. And so she shared with us her rule of thumb that she does with her consulting, which is around one and a half times your full income. So post-PhD income, your expected income. If your student loan debt balances one and a half times or higher, then that, again, it’s a rule of thumb, not super precise, but makes you a good candidate for income-driven repayment programs with forgiveness. Even down to about one times your income would be, if you had an opportunity to use PSLF, that could also be a great option versus paying them off aggressively. And since of course, you know, your ultimate career several years away, you probably don’t have necessarily a good handle on what that salary is going to be. And certainly in the intervening time, your salary is not going to be high during the PhD. So that decision makes sense. And obviously PSLF has a really popular program with academics.

Retirement Contributions, Investing, and Savings

11:30 Emily: Okay. So we have the student loan debt balance, but instead of paying that down aggressively, you’ve instead, it sounds like, been focusing on building up the assets side of the balance sheet. So you mentioned, you know, some retirement with your employer, Roth IRA contributions, and also taxable investments and cash savings, which sounds like a great sort of mix to have at this point. Is there anything that you want to share with us about how you’ve built that up or why you focused on that in the meantime?

11:57 Alexandra: Yeah, I think honestly coming straight out of my master’s program, it wasn’t especially difficult because, while I wasn’t making like a huge salary, it was hugely more than I’ve ever made before in my entire life. And so I think I’d been so used to living really frugally that it was easy to kind of save some money. And once I started and I started learning a little bit more about investment and about the value of money, I think I just made it a priority. So one thing I do is I just automatically have money transfer from my checking account to my savings account every single time I’ve a paycheck. And then I have money transferred directly from my savings account to an investment account as well. So it’s not even something that I think about. Like, it just happens automatically. I know that it’s going to happen. It happens when I know I have money in the account, so I don’t have to worry about like overdrafting. And so I think that’s been one of the best ways for me to do it is just kind of consistency.

Financial Predictions for Graduate School

13:05 Emily: Yeah. I love that strategy, obviously, automating as much as you can with your finances. So let’s shift now to talking about graduate school again, what I guess financial predictions have you made? So we’re recording this in June, 2021. So you’re still, it sounds like probably a couple months away from moving and starting your program. Can you share with us like what your stipend is going to be, and have you put together any of those big rock expenses? Like, do you have your housing set already? You mentioned a car that you’re going to purchase. Yeah. Can you give us kind of a picture there?

13:38 Alexandra: Yeah. So my stipend is $38,000. So my housing I do have set. My rent will be $800, and I’ll be living with a couple of other PhD students. I made the decision to live with people to save a little bit of money and also on the personal end, my boyfriend’s still in Boston. So I do plan on kind of going back and forth. So it didn’t make financial sense to necessarily put more money into living by myself. And then the other big thing will be the car. I’m planning on buying a used car, but I want something that will last me a little bit of time, and I’m a little bit anxious on the car side. I haven’t really owned a car in a long time. Haven’t really had to take care of one. So I want something that’s not too old and too unreliable. So I’m looking at about 10 to $15,000 on that. And I’m still sort of going back and forth between just paying it out right from my savings or financing to just have that monthly payment, which should be affordable.

14:41 Emily: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like with the stipend as relatively high, that’s among the higher stipends that I hear right now. Which is awesome. Congratulations. And then yeah, the rent being pretty reasonable for that level of income. Yeah. It sounds like you could afford the debt payment if you wanted to. But it also sounds like you have the option of paying in cash. So yeah. What are your thoughts there? So, in general, I kind of don’t love the idea of graduate students holding debt that they don’t need to. That is to say, debt that like, they need to actually be making payments on like a car payment. But, you know, you could do it. The other thing about that car purchase is I think it’s a lot more painful to part with cash than it is to finance something. And so you might end up with a lower-priced purchase if you told yourself it has to be in cash. So I don’t know. Where do you think you’re going to come down on that?

15:35 Alexandra: I’m really torn on it. I think part of it is almost mental. I think I know that if I have a car payment I need to pay, that money will go towards that car payment. I think I’m a little bit less certain that if I don’t have that car payment, that same amount of money will go into savings. And so I think that’s the one place where, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a good financial decision. But I think mentally that’s one of the reasons why I’m considering financing. But I agree with you. I am a little bit nervous about taking on more debt. And so I’m still sort of on the fence about it. I have been slowly putting away money. So I will have the cash kind of handy outside of investments if I do choose to do it out in cash.

16:27 Emily: And if you end up financing the car, will you keep that money in cash or will you invest it?

16:33 Alexandra: That’s the other thing. I would most likely transfer that into investments. And so there is some question about kind of where that money would be making the best value.

16:42 Emily: Yeah. So it’s more about like maybe leveraging debt, not just yeah, having cash, but also paying debt at the same time.

Commercial

16:52 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch onto non-W2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or post-bacc and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item number one: Fill out the estimated tax worksheet in form 1040ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2021 and tell you whether you’re required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is September 15th, 2021. Action item number two: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate named savings account for your future tax payments, calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax, and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives. If you need some help with the estimated tax worksheet, or want to ask me a question, please join my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for fellowship recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. Go to PFforPhDs.com/QETax to learn more about and join the workshop. Now, back to our interview.

Expected Expenses and Lifestyle Changes

18:31 Emily: Do you have any idea about the rest of your expenses? It sounds like maybe you’re sort of a more naturally frugal person. So have you made any predictions on that front about like, you know, general spending money or like groceries? Or I guess what I’m asking is, do you think you will be able to keep a similar lifestyle to what you’ve been living the last few years, or will you actually have to take a lifestyle decrease and be a little bit more frugal on the lower salary?

18:57 Alexandra: Yeah, I think it will definitely be a lifestyle decrease. A lot of my spending, not in the last year, has gone to things like travel. And I also think that the longer that I’ve had a salary and, you know, my social circle has been people with salaries, eating out has become more expensive, trips have become more expensive. And that’s one of the things I think I’m going to need to be more careful of because, you know, most of my social circle aren’t grad students, but I will be, which is different than the last time I was a grad student where my entire social circle also made no money. So I think it’ll definitely be a little bit of cutting back on some of, kind of more of the luxury items I’ve gotten more used to. I’ve always been pretty frugal in terms of big expenses. Things like rent, bigger kind of monthly payments. But I have kind of splurged on some things which I’ll need to be a little bit more careful on, I think.

20:03 Emily: So, when you move, you’ll have a whole new cohort of peers. So, they will be making probably exactly the same amount of money as you, right? The people in your program, or more or less. So, you’re really talking about your partner and your friends in Boston and maybe other places around the country. Is that right?

20:19 Alexandra: Yeah. Yeah.

20:20 Emily: Yeah. So I’m thinking that it may be fairly easy for you to keep those day-to-day or month-to-month expenses on the lower side, since that will be, you know, the people you’re interacting with there in New Haven. But yeah, you may have to be pretty intentional about budgeting for travel, for example, or whatever are things you might be doing with these like older friends.

20:40 Alexandra: Yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, I really don’t want to be dipping into my savings for any kind of normal life expenses. So, I think I will just need to be a little bit more strict and careful about that. I do think it’s very doable. It is a very decent stipend comparatively, so that’s really nice.

21:05 Emily: Yeah. In the grad student world, it’s a great stipend. In the working world, it’s a low salary.

21:11 Alexandra: Yeah.

Travel Hacking and Asset Building

21:12 Emily: Yeah. Well, have you gotten into travel hacking at all? Is that something you practiced earlier on?

21:18 Alexandra: I’m not sure what that is.

21:19 Emily: Oh, okay. Yeah, so travel hacking is basically just sort of structuring credit card rewards to figure out how to pay for travel, either get it for free or super inexpensively. So like, it sounds like you haven’t gotten into that game yet.

21:35 Alexandra: I actually do have one really great travel credit card, and it is the card that I use for almost all of my purchases and it does purchase a good amount of my plane tickets, which is nice. So yeah, I guess I just didn’t know there was a term for it, so a little bit. Yeah. And that helps.

21:55 Emily: Yeah. I’m thinking that, as a graduate student, it might be a way to enhance that travel aspect of your life without necessarily spending much more money. Although it is difficult to turn credit cards as a graduate student because your spending is going to be on the lower side. So like meeting signup bonuses. Anyway, if you’re interested, we’ll link in the show notes, I’ve done a couple of different interviews with people who have travel hacked as graduate students through credit card reward accumulation. So anyway, only a strategy good for someone who is really strict about their credit card usage, but very on top of things. So it sounds like you are that way anyway. Okay. So what financial goals do you think you’ll pursue during your PhD? You already stated one which is not dip into savings, so live off of the stipend on an ongoing basis. Yeah. Anything else that you think you might want to do either in terms of building assets or the step that you’ll have maybe during grad school?

22:49 Alexandra: Yeah. So in terms of assets, yeah, my biggest one is not to dip into my savings. I think beyond that, if possible, I would really like to keep funding a Roth. I don’t know if I’ll be able to, I’m not sure what the mechanism of my stipend will be yet. I know I’ll be able to find one for 2021. But if I’m able to, after that, I would like to do that.

Non-W2 Income Eligible for IRA

23:13 Emily: Actually, let me pause there for a second. So, are you referring to having W2 income versus fellowship income?

23:22 Alexandra: Yeah.

23:22 Emily: So the good news, and this may be different from the last time you were in grad school, is that fellowship income, non-W2 income, is eligible to be contributed to an IRA as of 2020. So that’s a new like law change. So we’ll link in the show notes the podcast episode where I discuss that. But yeah it changed with the SECURE Act, which was passed at the end of 2019. So, going forward, whatever type of stipend you in grad school, you would be eligible for the IRA all the way through.

23:49 Alexandra: Oh, that’s excellent. Okay. So I think that would be one of my goals. But it sort of ties to the second part of, I am trying to decide what to do with my loans a little bit. Right now, I’m in income-based repayment, and I could stay in income-based repayment and make very low payments monthly, or I could pause my payments completely during graduate school. And I haven’t made the decision of sort of what’s the right move.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Eligibility

24:20 Emily: Yeah. So, I’ve looked into this before. So, I want to ask you, I thought that you had to work full-time, or let’s just say like 30 hours a week or more, to be eligible for a PSLF. Is that not the case?

24:34 Alexandra: Yeah, it is. So I would not be eligible for PSLF during that time, unfortunately. I would, I think, if I stay in income-based repayment, be eligible for like the 20-year forgiveness. So it keeps me on track for that, I guess.

24:52 Emily: But I think, what we’re talking about then is you making, however long your PhD is, five years or whatever it is, five years of payments, that you wouldn’t need to make if PSLF ends up working out. Is that right?

25:06 Alexandra: Yeah. I think the only reason I’m sort of considering it is it does make me nervous that, you know, the balance is going to go up and up and up while I’m in grad school. At the same time, you’re right. It doesn’t make a lot of sense because I’m just paying in money that I don’t need to. So most likely, my thinking was, especially now that I know I can fund a Roth IRA, would be to put my money there.

25:33 Emily: Yeah. I mean, unless your payment was zero, which, I mean, I guess that’s possible. I don’t know exactly how that would work on precisely what your stipend is, but if it was a zero payment, it’s like, oh, well, why not? You know, keep it going. But if it’s anything above zero, yeah, because, well, it’s a gamble, right? Because either PSLF is going to end up working out and you’ll make ultimately, whatever it was, eight more years of payments after your PhD, or it’s not and it would have been a good idea, I guess, to make those payments during your low-earning graduate school years. So yeah, it sounds like you would either be doubling down on PSLF being the route for you, or deciding that that’s too risky and that you want some other backup options.

26:20 Alexandra: Exactly, exactly. So that’s kind of where my thinking is, as well. That said, I think the amount of payment I would be able to make or would need to make in income-based repayment wouldn’t be that high enough to make a huge difference, I don’t think.

Keep Within the Rules of the Game

26:36 Emily: So, it sounds like you’d be sort of like purchasing an insurance policy. Like I’m going to make whatever this low payment is, which is manageable for me on my grad student stipend, as a backup plan to have five more years or whatever it is of payments if PSLF doesn’t work out. Yeah, I guess it depends on how risk-averse you are, right? And how much you believe in the program. Yeah, I haven’t heard anyone propose that strategy to me. So, you may be more risk-averse than other people I’ve spoken to about PSLF, potentially. But I encourage you to go and listen to that interview with Meagan Landress, because it may make you feel a little bit more comfortable with that ballooning payoff balance. Because the way that she talks about it, and the way that people who work in this area and are, you know, strategic about it, it’s just, it’s like playing a game.

27:31 Emily: Like you just have to keep within the rules of the game. And you know, as you said, you’ve been really on top of like getting your income, you know, your employment certified and all of that, so like, it sounds like you have the practice of like complying with PSLF already, so that probably wouldn’t end up being an issue. But yeah, it’s just about like playing the game and manipulating the numbers. And like we talked about with the debt, you know, whether to take out a car loan or whether it be cash and maybe you could invest, it’s a little bit of a leverage situation. You know, keep this student loan debt that ideally would be in part forgiven later on so that you can fund the IRA and do all these things on the asset-building side. So yeah, that episode might make you feel a little bit more comfortable with this, I’m just going to compartmentalize this debt, it is what it is, you know, that kind of approach.

28:19 Alexandra: Yeah, definitely. I do always do better when I don’t really look at it. So yeah, I think I will listen to that episode for sure. And I think even this conversation kind of makes me feel a little bit better about just letting that go for now.

Consider Projected Asset Growth

28:35 Emily: Yeah. And you know, we’re, again, I’m recording this in June, 2021. So you’ve had over a year now of having payments paused. So you’ve had over a year of credit toward your PSLF time and you haven’t been making payments, right? Yeah. So good. You’ve been building up the asset side of the balance sheet, which is exactly, you know, the intention of the program to give people some relief there. So when you volunteered for this episode, you said that you were, you know, a bit nervous about this income decrease, and then also correspondingly not being able to invest as much. So you want to keep the IRA going some level or perhaps even maxing it out if you’re able to, but have you looked at all into how much your existing assets are projected to grow over that five-year period?

29:23 Alexandra: No, I’ve not looked at the five-year. I use Wealthfront for my long-term investment, so I can see like projected growth to retirement, but I haven’t really looked into it over five years at all.

29:38 Emily: Yeah. I think that is another just element add into this, as you’re thinking about whether to invest the money you would spend on a car versus, you know, paying for it in cash versus financing, that kind of decision. And also, as you’re thinking through, you know, your ballooning student loan balance, you thought about those liabilities growing, but yeah. I encourage you to look at how much your assets are expected to grow, because yes, it is a disadvantage in some capacity to be having this, you know, salary decrease to be going to the PhD program, but you already have assets in your corner. You already have what I say is sort of a tailwind at your back in terms of your net worth growing throughout graduate school. So, the income for you is not as important because you know, of course we’re assuming that like the stock market, for example, will go up over five years. Maybe it won’t, it’s a short period of time. But you at least have that possibility of that happening, the likelihood of that happening over a five-year period. So it may make you feel a little bit better about the student loans to see how much the assets are potentially going to grow.

30:40 Alexandra: Yeah. That’s a really, really great point.

Have You Thought About Purchasing a Home?

30:42 Emily: So, I’ll just ask you one more question. Have you thought about purchasing a house, or rather to say, a home?

30:49 Alexandra: No, I am also a little bit commitment-phobic and purchasing a house sounds very frightening to me. That said, my partner just purchased a house in Boston.

31:03 Emily: So you are familiar with the process. Well then, I have one other podcast episode to recommend to you which is way back in season two, I think. So I did an interview with Jonathan Sun who was going into his second-year PhD at Yale, and he purchased a house. And so we talk about the process of doing that and some of the difficulties that he ran into with his fellowship income, which has since we’ve done a lot more work in that area. And it’s a little bit less of an issue now, but anyway, I just mentioned it because having a very decent stipend and New Haven real estate being like maybe approachable. We’ll see, I know everything’s been in a big, like run-up recently, so maybe not, but it’s the kind of market where like, sometimes it’s possible for a grad student to buy. Now that may be not be a good fit for you personally, for whatever reason, but in terms of like, you know, upleveling your finances during graduate school, purchasing a home, and then having as you already plan to, roommates in that house would be a very strong financial move, but not the right fit for everyone.

32:06 Alexandra: Yeah. I think I would be thinking about all of this a little bit differently were I not in a relationship. I think right now my plan is actually to move to New Haven for about a year. And then, the way that the PhD program works is you take courses for the first year and then you’re pretty much working on your dissertation. So I’m hoping to be able to pop back over to Boston for kind of the next few years and just commute into Yale when I need to be there. The pros of which is I probably will save on living expenses after that first year.

32:42 Emily: Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. If it’s a one-year stint in New Haven, then absolutely. I mean, you wouldn’t even be able to like purchase because it takes months and months to set that sort of thing up. Yeah, that makes sense if you’re not actually planning on living there. Yeah, very good. Well, I’m really glad to hear this, like, long-term plan from you.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

33:01 Emily: Well Alexandra, I end my interviews by asking my guests, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve touched on in the interview or it could be something completely new.

33:12 Alexandra: Yeah. So I think one thing is that I already kind of touched on, I think it really helps me to have all of my savings and investment money automatically taken out of my account. So that it’s just something that happens that I don’t have to think about. I think another thing that has always helped me, especially when moving from one position to another or from one place to another, is I do a line budget for like a month or a couple months where I’ll write down every single thing that I buy and where that falls into my budget. And that has really, I think, helped me stay within my budget as salaries have shifted or locations have shifted. And I plan to do the same again when I start my PhD to make sure that I’m living within my means and able to make those savings payments.

34:03 Emily: Yeah. That’s an awesome, awesome tip. Well, it was a delight to have you on Alexandra. Thank you so much for sharing like your thoughts about this upcoming period. I think it’s going to be really relatable to other people who have been in the workforce for several years, and definitely other people who have had, you know, debt from previous degrees and heading back into graduate school. So thank you so much for being so open about this and best of luck to you this fall.

34:25 Alexandra: No problem. Thank you so much. This was really great and really helpful.

Outtro

34:35 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 episode 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 four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email listserv, or as a link from your website. Three, 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 prerecorded workshops on taxes. Four, 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.

How This Non-Budgeting PhD Accomplishes Major Financial Goals

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Alana Rister, a PhD in chemistry and the founder of the Science Grad School Coach. Alana and Emily discuss two major aspects of Alana’s finances from grad school and her postdoc: student loans and a condo purchase. Alana’s main financial goal during grad school was paying down her variable interest rate private student loans, and the strategies she used will be very accessible to grad students who, like her, don’t budget. Alana and her partner took a gamble in purchasing a condo when they moved for her postdoc, and then sold it less than a year later when she left that position. Listen through to the end of the interview to learn the connection between that condo purchase and the Science Grad School Coach!

Links Mentioned in this Episode

accomplish major financial goals

Teaser

00:00 Alana: Let’s preface this with I am not a budgeter. I’m really, it very much stresses me out because I’ve never been at a point where I’m really financially secure. So I’ve never been at a point where I’ve made a reasonable budget and there’s been a positive at the end.

Introduction

00:24 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 four, and today my guest is Dr. Alana Rister, a PhD in chemistry and the founder of the Science Grad School Coach. We discuss two major aspects of Elena’s finances from grad school and her postdoc: student loans and a condo purchase. Alana’s main financial goal during grad school was paying down her variable interest rate private student loans, and the strategies she used will be very accessible to grad students who, like her, don’t budget. Alana and her partner took a gamble in purchasing a condo when they moved for her postdoc, and then sold it less than a year later when she left that position. Listen through to the end of the interview to learn the connection between that condo purchase and the Science Grad School Coach.

01:19 Emily: I have my first two speaking engagements of the 2021-2022 academic year coming up this week. Speaking live to and with graduate students and PhDs is my absolute favorite activity within my business, even in a remote format. I’ve built out a slate of offerings this year that I’m incredibly proud of. My flagship seminar is the graduate student and postdoc’s guide to personal finance. And it’s typically what I recommend to first-time hosts, as it covers a broad array of personal finance topics, which of course I discuss through the lens of the PhD experience. I also have four deep-dive seminars on financial goals, investing, debt repayment, and cashflow. I offer these in three formats, which is new for me this year. I can deliver this material as a one-hour live lecture and Q&A, a two-hour live workshop, or a flipped classroom model in which I give access to the workshop videos and individual exercises in advance, and then hold a live call exclusively for discussion and Q&A. I’m really pleased to be able to work with grad students and PhD is to create actionable steps to improve their finances in each of these areas.

02:31 Emily: These four deep-dive seminars work very well as a series, but can also be booked individually. If any of those seminars sound interesting to you, please recommend me as a speaker to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, postdoc office, or department. It’s super easy and relatively inexpensive to arrange a remote event with me. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhds.com/speaking, or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really, really appreciate these recommendations. They go very far to support Personal Finance for PhDs so I can continue to provide great content, like this podcast, for free. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Alana Rister.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:23 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Alana Rister of Science Grad School Coach. And it’s really exciting that she volunteered to be on the podcast. We are going to talk about some of her financial decisions from the past, a decision from grad school, a decision up from her postdoc, and I hope we are all going to learn a lot from her stories. So Alana, thank you so much for joining me. And will you introduce yourself a little bit further to the audience?

03:45 Alana: Yeah. So thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here. As you said, I’m Dr. Alana Rister. I am the founder of the Science Grad School Coach. And I got my PhD in chemistry in 2019 from the University of Nebraska. And since then, went on to a postdoc at East Carolina University, and have since taken a few months off to you found the Science Grad School Coach. And that’s kind of where I am today.

04:16 Emily: Yeah. And, by the time this airs, you will be in a new position. Do you want to tell us more about that?

04:21 Alana: I will. So I’m actually going back to where I got my PhD from, and I’m going to be a metabolomics and proteomics research specialist. So I’m getting to go back into research. I’m basically doing a lot of working on doing metabolomics and proteomics for other professors. So I’m going to be a predominantly lab position getting to do fun research.

04:45 Emily: That sounds awesome. I always thought when I was going through my PhD process that I would love to be, I would call it a staff scientist. Is that a fair term? Yeah, I would like to be a staff scientist somewhere. Of course my career went in a different direction, but I find that kind of position to be really attractive. So congratulations!

05:02 Alana: Thank you!

Student Loan Situation at the Start of Grad School

05:03 Emily: Alright. So the first subject we’re talking about today is student loans. Everyone’s favorite. We’re actually going to focus on your private student loans, and we’ll get into why in a moment, but give us the full kind of picture of what your student loan situation was coming into grad school.

05:20 Alana: Yeah, so I actually went to a private undergraduate university. And I did that because it was actually the same for me to go there as my in-state public university, because I got a bunch of scholarships to the private and no scholarships to the public. So I went there, but I still had to rack up a lot in student loans, unfortunately. So when I entered graduate school, I have the numbers here. So I had $15,539 in subsidized loans, $35,418 in unsubsidized loans, and then a $13,000 private loan. So my freshman year was the only year I took out private loans in undergrad. And that was that $13,000 private loan. So altogether, if I did my math right, it comes out to $63,957 that I had in student loans going into graduate school.

06:22 Emily: Yeah. And how did you feel about that at the time?

06:27 Alana: So I was not great. I was really worried because I knew that I had all this kind of loan built up. And when you get to graduate school, you might not be thinking about your loans because they’re generally deferred. And so it’s something, oh, I don’t need to make this payment. I don’t need to worry about it, but I knew that that bill was going to come due and I knew when it was going to come due, I wasn’t going to really have the financial security to pay it off. So I was constantly looking for ways to figure out, you know, how can I pay these things off quicker? One, just because of trying to not pay as much interest, but then two, so that when I did get out of graduate school, I didn’t have, because I think if I would’ve left graduate school with all of that money, it would have been almost $800 a month that I would have had to pay back using like the government’s extended repayment. It would have been over a thousand if I like tried to pay it all back in 10 years. And I was like, looking at what postdocs got paid and what other things got paid. I was like, there’s no way I’m going to be able to afford this. So I was really worried in graduate school about how I was going to navigate after graduate school, even though it wasn’t a payment I needed to make at that time.

Which Loan Did You Target First?

07:48 Emily: That is so interesting that you were more concerned about your future self when the deferment was over, than you were about maybe how were you going to do it in the meantime, right? I mean, I think it’s really forward thinking, but I think it’s unusual, right? Because many of us, I think within our finances have a very like optimistic view. Like, my income is going to be so much higher later, and that we hope of course that’s true. But also don’t necessarily, when we’re younger, think about, well, yeah, my income might be higher, but also I might have some expenses that are higher when I’m older also. So, so interesting, but you, you noted, there were three different buckets of student loans for you, federal subsidized, federal unsubsidized, and private. And so was there like one of those that you were going to target first or that bothered you the most?

08:39 Alana: Yes. So my private loan definitely bothered me the most. And that is because it had the highest interest rate, is the first reason it bothered me. The second reason is, so COVID-19 has apparently happened. And through that time we’ve had a forbearance on student loans. That doesn’t apply to private student loans. And so I knew that private student loans generally aren’t as nice as well when it comes to, you know, forbearances or deferments for your situation. And so when I got my student loan, my interest rate was at 7%. And by the time I paid off that student loan, because I had a variable interest rate, because someone told me that was smart to do back then. It was at 11% interest rate. Yeah. It was literally going up every month in the interest that I was paying.

09:35 Emily: Wow. What a great note of warning for the listener regarding variable student loans. First of all, to have it at 7%, 7%, it’s like, okay. Yeah, it’s kind of a going rate, like, but to get up to 11? Wow. In an overall low interest rate environment. I actually also had a variable interest rate student loan, a federal one, actually. It might’ve even, yeah, it was subsidized, and then became this variable rate student loan once I came out of deferment. But because of the time period, and I think because it was federal and not private like yours, the interest rate, I think it was like at two-something percent, three-something percent. When it got up to four, I was like, you got to go, and we just paid it off. So I’m just like really balking at 11. So it was really, really good foresight again for you to say, to target that as like, oh, wow, this is variable. I don’t know which direction this is going. Like let’s work on this first. So was that like your main financial goal during graduate school is working on paying down that private student loan?

10:35 Alana: Yeah, so that was definitely the main thing I wanted to do was pay that off and then have that off my chest. Because I mean, I still had, you know, several tens of thousands more student loans that I needed to work on. So that became kind of my main goal and what I was putting money towards. I still did like other things as well. I planned for trips and stuff like that that I could go do. But that was definitely, my goal was I wanted to pay off all $13,000 by the end of my PhD. I didn’t get to that. I did $10,000, mainly because I graduated a year and a half early in my PhD, so I graduated in three and a half years. So I ended up paying it off by what would have been the end of my fourth year.

Strategies to Pay Off the Private Loan

11:23 Emily: Oh, wow. Well, that’s a great financial decision all on its own. Just get out of grad school faster. That’s awesome. I love that you identified paying off the loan in its entirety as like an ambitious goal. It’s the kind of thing that like, you know that phrase like, shoot for the moon, and even if you miss you’ll end up among the stars? Like paying off $10K, like you’re among the stars, like that’s amazing in three and a half years. That’s amazing. So let’s hear more about how you mechanically did that. Like what strategies were you using?

11:50 Alana: So I think there were probably like three, okay, let’s preface this with I am not a budgeter. I’m really, it very much stresses me out because I’ve never been at a point where I’m really financially secure. So I’ve never been at a point where I’ve made a reasonable budget and there’s been a positive at the end. So it like always stresses me out to just make a budget. So I’m just like in general, very conscious of spending money, and every time I’m spending money, I’m kind of like, is this really worth spending or not? So that’s kind of, I don’t know if that’s really a strategy, but that’s just kind of how I am.

12:27 Emily: Yeah. It’s like a predisposition, kind of.

12:30 Alana: Yeah. So probably the biggest thing that helped me to be able to do it was that I went to a graduate program in Lincoln, Nebraska. So location is a big thing when you’re choosing a graduate school, and I really wanted to go to a big city. Fortunately, I think, I didn’t get into programs in big cities. And so I came here and you can get, so my first apartment, I shared it with two other people. It was, you know, fairly new apartments, very modern. It was a $400 rent. So it’s just so much cheaper to live in a place like Lincoln. So I think my monthly stipend was $1,700 after taxes. And so that goes a lot further when your rent is only $400 of that 1700. So I think that’s a major factor is the fact that I was living in a much lower cost-of-living area.

13:29 Alana: And then what I would do is, so whenever my like bank account gets below $1,500, I like start freaking out. So I plan to every month to try and put $500 towards my student loan. So we get paid once a month at the end of the month. So right before my paycheck would hit, I would look at my bank account and I would say, okay, there’s this much. And if, you know, I had $2,000 left, I would pay $500 if I had below that I would pay until I hit that $1,500 mark. And so that was kind of my strategy in paying that loan off.

14:09 Emily: Yeah. I really like the way you articulated that and think it is probably really relatable for people who, as you said, are not budgeters or are not into that, but like you are kind of have a predisposition of, okay, I’m really going to kind of carefully weigh my spending and you have this target of $500 per month in mind. Yeah. Maybe you don’t hit that every month, but you’re going to be, when you’re drawing close to that and you’re starting to eat into that balance, you’re aware of it. So yeah, I think that strategy can be really relatable.

Take Advantage of Research Award Opportunities

14:36 Alana: The third one I did is I actually worked on getting a bunch of research awards. So I got a research fellowship that I think was right around $3,000 that was paid out over two years. And I put all of that money towards that private loan. I got multiple research poster awards. There was actually one poster session that was done every year that I literally just went to it to try and get the award so that I could put it towards my student loans. And I think I won like first or second place every year, which was like a 200 to 250 or $300 award. So it’s a nice, you know, amount of cash coming in. So I would do things like that, looking for fellowships, research awards, poster sessions, talk sessions and trying to do things like that, to be able to get some extra income and probably about $3,000 to $5,000 of what I paid towards my student loans probably came from the research awards and fellowships that I got.

15:42 Emily: That’s incredible. And what a boost for your CV, too, like so nice to have that double benefit if, you know, whatever your motivation is for going, you know, going after these things, going after awards, the outcome is great if you actually get it. And even if you don’t, it’s still worthwhile. So yeah, that’s great to hear. And so those awards, when you mentioned your stipend earlier, that’s all on top of that stipend. So you just kind of had a plan of like any windfall money, like that would go straight towards the student loans.

16:09 Alana: Yep.

16:10 Emily: Alright. Yeah. Anything else you want to share with us about how you made that work?

16:15 Alana: I don’t think so. I mean, those were kind of my biggest things. It wasn’t a very planned thing, but it was a thing that was like always on the front of my mind. Anytime I would look at my finances, I kept thinking, is there a way I can put more money to get this, you know, student loan paid down?

Current Status of Loans

16:31 Emily: Yeah. Well, let’s hear current updates. So you said you finished in 2019, we’re now in 2021. We’re recording this in April, 2021. So yeah. Where are your private student loans now? Where do they stand?

16:45 Alana: Yeah, so I paid off, so it was just one private student loan. I paid off all $13,000 March of last year. So three months after I graduated, I had the last $3,000 paid off on that one.

17:01 Emily: Incredible, congratulations!

17:04 Alana: Thank you!

17:05 Emily: Then, regarding the federal loans, we know what happened, just starting in March, 2020, administrative forbearance. What are your kind of plans around your payoff for that? Like, are you going to stick with an income-driven payment plan? Are you going to do it more aggressively?

17:19 Alana: So right now I’m on the standard, but the extended standard. So, because I had, I think it’s $25,000. Because I had over the 25,000, there’s an extended where they give you 25 years to pay it off instead of 10 years. So I’m on that right now. And my plan is that, once I start my new job and I have, you know, a little bit more money coming in, I paid some off as I’ve had, you know, extra cash in, but as I start this one, I’m going to start more heavily putting it on to those student loans. So I’m not going to change the actual plan I’m on because there’s no penalty for paying things off early. I’m just going to, you know, put extra income that I get towards my student loans to be able to pay those off more quickly, if that makes sense.

18:11 Emily: Yeah, it totally does. So you’re keeping that minimum payment low just for flexibility, but you still have that as kind of a primary goal. And you’ll still be doing aggressively and just because we are in April, 2021, what do you think about the possibility of student loan cancellation to any degree? Are you factoring that into your plan?

18:32 Alana: So I am not, I am a plan for the worst, hope for the best kind of person. So I’m not, I would be very thankful and appreciative if there was any form of cancellation because, you know, I have a partner who also comes with their student loans, but I’m not banking on it. I think that’s been in talks for a very long time with not really much coming of it. So the forbearance that happened in 2020 was actually a huge benefit to me and has allowed me to make a lot of decisions that I wouldn’t have been able to make had I not had the COVID forbearance. So I’m thankful for that, but I’m not going to, you know, make a plan that, you know, student loans will get canceled or partially forgiven.

19:23 Emily: Yeah. Well, this is a really exciting time. I’m so glad that we caught you right here at the cusp of your new job in that new phase. But again, congratulations on killing the private student loans, having them be completely gone.

19:34 Alana: Thank you.

Commercial

19:36 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch on to non-W2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item number one: fill out the estimated tax worksheet in form 1040ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2021 and tell you whether you’re required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is September 15th, 2021. Action item number two: whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate named savings count for your future tax payments, calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax, and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account into your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives. If you need some help with the estimated tax worksheet, or want to ask me a question, please join my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. Go to PFforPhds.com/QETax to learn more about and join the workshop. Now, back to our interview.

Real Estate Purchase During Postdoc

21:15 Emily: Okay, let’s talk about the next topic you wanted to bring up, which is about your real estate purchase during your postdoc. So let’s hear the whole story around that.

21:23 Alana: So I met my partner in graduate school, actually, the day before I started graduate school, I met my partner. And so he had a house. He had bought a house years before we met, and when we moved, he sold the house. So we had some money come in from that. And when I took a postdoc, I took a postdoc in Greenville, North Carolina. And it is kind of interesting because when I was looking for housing options, I had the option of paying around a thousand dollars a month for a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment, or I could buy a condo that I could pay $650 a month for a two-bed, two-bath condo.

22:12 Emily: Those numbers are very surprising.

22:14 Alana: Yeah. So real estate was really, really cheap there. And to get into a decent apartment that, you know, wasn’t bug-infested and had other problems, it was very expensive to do there. So we decided to invest and we bought a $85,000 condo, two-bed, two-bath condo. And you know, my partner comes from a family that has constantly flipped homes. So this condo looked very bad. It kind of looked like it had been run down from the seventies, but was built in the nineties. So it was kind of interesting, it had been a rental for years and we kind of transformed it. I think one of my friends said it looked like a modern New York City apartment by the time we were done with it. So it was kind of interesting because we worked a lot on the condo and made it look a lot nicer, but our main driving factor for buying it was primarily because it was so much cheaper. And it was going save us so much money in the long-run. Both because we were investing in something, and then also just because the monthly payment was so much lower when we bought something versus renting a place.

23:36 Emily: How did you fit such major renovation projects around your research schedule?

Renovations and Research

23:44 Alana: I think there’s like a couple things. So one, I didn’t do most of the work. I’m going to be honest. So my partner, Greenville’s a really small town, so my partner actually had difficulty finding jobs there. So he was unemployed for about half the time we were in Greenville, and he spent a lot of his time working on it. I was more the design person. So I was like, this is what we’re going to do. And then I did some of the renovations and it kind of became like our hobby. So I took a week off at the end of my PhD, went down to Greenville, and we did the initial renovation. So we redid the floors, painted the walls, made it at least livable. And that was kind of the bulk. And then we did one more bulk right before we sold the place.

24:30 Alana: That kind of put us over the edge on getting a higher price back. But I think kind of knowing what you’re doing helped because like some things we really didn’t know what we were doing and Googling a lot of things. But I think having someone that, you know, my partner knew a lot more what they were doing when coming to a construction project and then, you know, it kind of ends up being fun after a while. And so that kind of became where we put our free time when we worked on it together around my research schedule.

25:05 Emily: Yeah. That’s really good to hear. I always kind of wonder about how like sort of logistically that works. Anyway, so my husband and I just closed on our first house. It’s very turnkey, but there are like a few things we wanted to change. So we’re kind of in the midst of like this, how much do we outsource? How much do we DIY? What kind of capacity do we have to actually work on this house? Or, you know, those kinds of questions are kind of circling in my mind right now. So I’m just really glad to hear how you did it. So I have been consuming more real estate investing content recently, a little bit from BiggerPockets, and I know Mindy Jensen, who’s the co-host of the BiggerPockets money podcast calls, what you described, a live-in flip. So that’s what she does, like serially, she does live-in flips, one after the other. But that’s great. So you had that initial experience. Now, I think you said that your postdoc was pretty short term, is that right?

25:58 Alana: Yeah, so it wasn’t supposed to be. So I started January 3rd, I think 2020, and I ended it October 31st, 2020. So it was about a 10-month long postdoc. The initial contract was until March of 2021, and then I was supposed to extend it for like another year, but I ended up kind of cutting it short and actually moving back to Lincoln, Nebraska.

Is a Real Estate Purchase Worthwhile?

26:28 Emily: Yeah. And so I think this is something that’s really on the minds of people when they move for grad school, move for a postdoc, move for a first job is, how long am I actually going to be here, and is a real estate purchase worthwhile? So can you tell us your thoughts on that? Like, did you have that thought you first moved there? I mean, obviously the numbers made a lot of sense, but over what time period did the numbers make sense?

26:49 Alana: Yeah, so I definitely had that thought, especially because when you’re looking at buying or selling, there are a couple of things you have to, so I said, you know, it was $650 per month, you know, versus a thousand. So that’s like what, a $350 difference that I probably would have been paying. But then you look at your down payment. So my down payment on the condo was just under $5,000, which was a lot cheaper than a lot of real estate down payments. But if you spread that out through time, you would realize that that’s a lot more than the thousand dollars a month. And so there were a lot of questions that we had on whether this was going to be a smart purchase or not. We were expecting me to stay for about two years. And generally you want, you know, for, I think the advice usually given is five years to make a real estate purchase. You want to be there for about five years. But I think the biggest thing was just our comfort level. And especially with the lack of really good landlords in Greenville, we felt like we were more suited, we knew the real estate market. We knew how to sell houses. We knew how to do that stuff. So we kind of took a gamble. And we went that direction instead. And we were like, we might come out at a loss in the end, but we think our experience there is going be a lot better. And so it might be worth that loss in the end.

28:21 Emily: Yeah. I was going to ask how did it end up turning out?

28:25 Alana: Yes. So actually it was really good. One, we did flip it, so we bought it for $85,000. We sold it for $99,500. So a pretty nice, we actually got an offer for like $104K, but it didn’t appraise for that. So it was a pretty big, you know, good chunk of change, I think after all the sales commissions and everything, we came out, because we also sold all the furniture with the house. So we came out with about $15,000 in the end. But the biggest thing was, that we didn’t think about, is because we had bought real estate, we weren’t hooked into a lease. So we sold our place, we went under contract in September, which means we could leave, where if we had started a lease in January, by the time, you know, October came around, which is when we left, we left October 1st. So by the time that came around, we would have had three months left on our lease. So we have had to end up paying a lot more to get nothing just to break our lease. So ultimately it was kind of a good decision in that we were able to, you know, leave without having to worry about paying, you know, penalty fees.

29:36 Emily: Yeah. I’m really glad that, you know, you’re here to tell this story because I think, for me anyway, my mind more naturally goes to like the downsides of taking, you know, risky decisions. And I think everyone should of course be aware of the potential downsides, but just know that there are upsides also that you might experience that are just as, or maybe even more likely, than the downside. So like, yeah, clearly it was a risk, it was a risk at two years, it was more of a risk at 10 months or nine months or whatever. But it did work out, and the thing is, you didn’t have to sell. If that was not going to work out financially for you, you were not required to sell, you could have moved and rented it out. You had other options. Right. It’s just that, oh, selling did make sense. And so you went through with it.

30:21 Alana: Yeah. So we actually considered that. We were looking at actually either doing Airbnbs for it or doing a long-term rental. And we actually looked into it, and like right as that was happening, there was kind of a real estate bubble. Because of COVID, nobody was selling real estate. So there was a scarcity on the market, and suddenly condos that were usually priced at the 60 to 80,000 range were starting to go near a hundred thousand. And like, so we were like, okay, this seems like it’s a good decision. And we could have always denied a contract if we were like, okay, we’re not going to get enough out of it. And we kind of just wanted the peace of mind. We didn’t really ever want to go back to Greenville. So we didn’t want to have a place that we knew we would have to take care of, but it was definitely something we looked into. And if we stayed closer to the area, we probably would have done it for short-term rental or something.

Real Estate Flip Funded Science Grad School Coach 

31:16 Emily: Yeah. Well this is so interesting. I’m really glad to like kind of learn that it did work out positively in your case. And so when you volunteered for this, you said you wanted to tell how that real estate flip funded your Science Grad School Coach endeavor. So tell us about that.

31:34 Alana: So that $15,000 that we got from the sale of the condo, which knowing for like me and my partner, if it hadn’t been in the condo, because we, you know, put $5,000 down, it probably wouldn’t have been around by the time we got, because again, we’re not budgeters. So the fact that it was there and we had that money, it allowed me to kind of make the decision. My partner finally got like his dream job back in Lincoln. So we made the decision for me to go unemployed and work on building this business and for him to come here, and his job was not fully going to support us here. So the money that we got from the sale of our house actually made up for at least a year. We would have been fine for at least a year between the savings and then also, you know, his income.

32:30 Alana: And so that kind of started me having the freedom to really pursue starting the Science Grad School Coach and work on it. And then on the side, I kind of looked at applying to jobs and things like that. Because I was kind of sad to leave research. I still wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do. And now kind of right as things are starting to come into play with the Science Grad School Coach, I’m also starting a new job. So like in the end, it was a risky decision. And the only reason we could have taken that decision was because we bought a house and sold it and had that extra money leftover to then come here and have that time. And now I am employed, starting Monday, I will be employed. And so that’s going to give me the opportunity to kind of do both. Both the Science Grad School Coach, and then also go back into research.

33:24 Emily: Yeah, this just, you know, is another example of what I like to say is money gives you options, right? The option to pursue fun employment. The option to wait for a great job opportunity to come and not try to force yourself into one that’s not a great fit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I also had, I guess, somewhat of a similar story when I started Personal Finance for PhDs, which just in the sense that my husband and I focused a lot of our energy and our finances on retirement investing when we were in graduate school. And so by the time we finished, and I talk about this in season one episode one, by the time we finished, we had quite a good nest egg, and that made us feel comfortable to take risks with our careers. So he took a job at a startup, which we were very concerned about.

Where to Learn More About Science Grad School Coach

34:09 Emily: It happens to be that he’s still at that same position six years later, but we did not know at the time that it would be around for six years. So he took a job at a startup and I started my business, which, you know, low revenue, you know, initially. So yeah, it was risky, but we felt confident, not because we had a bolus of cash savings as you did, but just because generally we were doing pretty well on the retirement front and we, you know, felt like it was okay to take a risk. So just so interesting, like I’d just love to hear another example of how your finances, like, we all know that our careers can affect our finances, right? By what job we choose and so forth, but how your finances affect your career as well. And for you, your ability to start your side business. So yeah, I’m just, I’m really glad to hear that. If people are intrigued by Science Grad School Coach, where can they find you and you know, what are you doing there?

34:59 Alana: Yeah. So the Science Grad School Coach is kind of the business I developed to help people with pursuing research. So like I said, one of the ways I was able to pay off, you know, a lot of my student loans was because of getting research awards and research posters. And something I realized is I’m actually good at doing research. But I didn’t start out that way. When I started in graduate school, I was really frustrated because I felt like everyone expected me to know things, but nobody ever taught me those things. So I had to kind of, over time figure all these different things out from how do I create a research idea, to how do I write a paper, to how do I put a poster together? And so what I’ve done is basically I want to share that knowledge with other people.

35:50 Alana: And that’s what the Science Grad School Coach is. So if you’re interested, I do have a YouTube channel which is the Science Grad School Coach. And there’s where I share a lot of, kind of shorter videos on different topics around research and how to get better at research and do things like that. You can also find me on Twitter at @scigradcoach. And then I also have a full resource pages if you’re interested that I have several different resources on there from how to create ideas, how to write a paper, how to do your dissertation. And you can find that at sciencegradschoolcoach.com/resources. And so those are kind of three different places where you can connect with me and hopefully get to learn some of the things that I’m trying to share. And hopefully it’s helpful.

36:43 Emily: Yeah. I love that impulse and I wish that I had run across a few of those resources back when I was in graduate school. Maybe the information was there. I don’t know. I didn’t, I was not plugged into it if it was.

36:54 Alana: Yeah, I definitely wasn’t either. And I think people don’t realize that research can be easy, and then it’s just because we’re not taught how to do it and we’re just expected to, and then we have to deal with the frustration of being like, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I feel like I’m supposed to know. So I did something wrong. And it’s not that you ever did anything wrong. It’s just how the system is set up is not set up for researchers to do well, I guess. It’s set up to make you struggle when you don’t need to. Because like I ended up writing or publishing seven papers in my three years as a graduate student, but it didn’t start out that way, right? Because I like really struggled. And then I started learning where I can write a research paper. Once I have the data, I can write it, you know, in a day or two. And that’s just because now I know how to do it. And so that’s what I’m trying to share with other people.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

37:47 Emily: Yeah. Excellent. Very worthwhile endeavor. Love it. Okay. I’ll ask you the question that I end all my interviews with, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD?

37:59 Alana: So this is probably not the best advice, but I think my best advice is to think a lot about the location you’re going to. That’s one of the reasons why I came to the university I came to was because I started looking up rent prices and saw how cheap it was. But something that you may not know is before, so I came back to Lincoln after my postdoc. But I actually got two different job offers before I came back to Lincoln. I got an industry job that was going to pay me $85,000 that was in a middle, kind of a higher than Lincoln, cost-of-living, but it was just not the right job for me. But then I got my dream job, which was a postdoc. It was doing the dream research I wanted to do in Seattle. And I looked at the living cost, and I said, I’m going to have to take on debt to go work a job.

38:56 Alana: And I refuse to do that. And so I actually went for unemployment because it was cheaper for me to come to Lincoln and be unemployed than it was for me to go to Seattle and work a job. And so that was a really hard decision for me to make, because I really wanted to do that research. But I think it’s important to think about the fact that even as an early PhD, like you are worth something, and if you’re not going to be netting positive while working a job, you really may want to reconsider taking those jobs because that really shouldn’t be a thing, especially after you have a PhD.

39:40 Emily: What an indictment, you know, of the salaries that we pay, both graduate students and postdocs. Absolutely. And it’s so unfortunate. I mean, it’s the academic loss, the research engine’s loss that you did that calculus and came on the side of, I can’t take this job because you simply don’t pay me enough. You made a rational decision in the face of that, you know, situation, but it’s just so unfortunate that things are set up that way. In any case, you have another wonderful job coming up now in Lincoln. And yeah, I totally agree with you. You have to be very careful about examining the cost-of-living versus salaries. You know, the salary numbers, if you’re coming from a lower or a middle, you know, cost-of-living city, moving to a high-cost living city, like maybe that initial postdoc salary looked to you like, Hmm, not bad, but then you had to actually look into it and say, oh no, Seattle, quite expensive. It’s not going to work. So I totally agree with you do that at every single, you know, any job you’re trying to take going forward. Is there anything else you wanted to add on that?

40:40 Alana: I think that’s the main thing. Yeah, and like Seattle, like that was my dream city too. Like that is where like I want to go retire. So it was like so tempting to take it. And then just to realize that you’re literally not paying me enough to even afford rent, really. And so this new job I’m taking is just slightly over that same salary, but it’s so much more livable because Lincoln is literally less than half the cost-of-living of Seattle. So making that kind of decision, I think it’s so tempting to think that if I take this dream job, it’s going to propel me to the next dream thing. And kind of after different situations in my life, I realized that that’s not always true, and it’s not worth either going through a toxic situation or a situation where you’re not making enough money to live for a hope of the next thing, because if you don’t get that next thing, you’ve screwed yourself.

41:41 Emily: Yes. Such an important message. I mean, we all know the abysmal hiring rates for of course faculty positions, but even as I said earlier, like we tend to be really optimistic about the whole salary situation in research. And Hey, we all hope it comes about, but you’ve got to look at the downsides, too. So it’s interesting that you’ve sort of illustrated in your story, a couple different gambles that we’ve been talking about and how you’ve made different decisions, you know, in the face of these. So yeah, I love that, you know, you illustrated those points. Thank you so much for joining me today. It was a pleasure to have you and to get to know you.

42:14 Alana: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And I hope that my story can be helpful to other people especially about, you know, thinking about student loans while you’re in grad school. Because the other thing is, unless you have subsidized loans, your interest is still building while you’re doing that. So just, you know, thinking about that and then kind of making smart decisions when it comes to, you know, gambles. So I’m actually, I’m not a risk taker. I realize that this sounds like I’m a risk taker. I’m really not. Like I weigh through the pros and cons of everything I do. And you know, there are some risks you have to take in life, but I try to limit those to those that are just absolutely necessary. So I hope that this can help people that sometimes it works well. And sometimes not taking an opportunity also works well in the end.

43:07 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing these stories and for joining me.

43:09 Alana: Yeah. Thank you!

Outtro

43:11 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 episode show notes, which includes 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 four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email listserv, or as a link from your website. Three, 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 prerecorded workshops on taxes. Four, 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 Start-Up Centers Graduate Students and Pays Them Handsomely

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In this episode, Emily interviews Jin Chow, a graduate student at Stanford, and Stephen Weber, a graduate student at the University of Georgia. Jin is the co-founder of Polygence, a start-up that facilitates graduate students and PhDs remotely mentoring high school students one-on-one through well-defined research projects. Stephen has mentored five students and speaks to the advantages of Polygence as a flexible and lucrative side hustle. We discuss whether and how to tell your PhD advisor about a side hustle, and who is or is not a good fit for becoming a mentor with Polygence. Jin also briefly shares the story of how she co-founded Polygence as a graduate student on an F-1 visa. If you’re looking for a side hustle that’s convenient to balance with your graduate work, check out Polygence: they are hiring mentors now!

Links Mentioned in the Episode

grad student side hustle

Teaser

00:00 Stephen: You know, it’s kind of funny to say, but I’m getting paid to learn more about things that I would already be interested in learning about.

Introduction

00:12 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 3, and today my guests are Jin Chow, a graduate student at Stanford, and Stephen Weber, a graduate student at the University of Georgia. Jin is the co-founder of Polygence, a start-up that facilitates graduate students and PhDs remotely mentoring high school students one-on-one through well-defined research projects. Stephen has mentored five students and speaks to the advantages of Polygence as a flexible and lucrative side hustle. We discuss whether and how to tell your PhD advisor about a side hustle, and who is or is not a good fit for becoming a mentor for Polygence. Jin also briefly shares the story of how she co-founded Polygence as a graduate student on an F-1 visa. If you’re looking for a side hustle that’s convenient to balance with your graduate work and want to help cultivate the next generation of researchers, check out Polygence: they are hiring mentors now!

01:19 Emily: If you have a pretty well-established side hustle, whether as a contractor with a company like Polygence or your own sole proprietorship, you may be wondering how best to manage that stream of income. This is especially true if you incur any expenses with respect to your side hustle. I have a course titled Best Financial Practices for Your Self-Employment Side Hustle that speaks to two chief areas of interest for people with this type of side hustle. 1: How to financially manage variable business income and expenses so that your personal finances aren’t negatively affected. This half of the course teaches some basic business and personal finance principles to keep everything orderly. 2: What type of self-employment retirement account option to use. If you are a super-saver who maxes out your IRA yearly and doesn’t have access to a workplace-based retirement account, you can actually use your self-employment income to open and fund an additional tax-advantaged retirement account. My course explains which of the several options is the best fit for a solopreneur side hustler. If you’d like to learn more about and purchase this course, please go to PFforPhDs.com/sesh/. That’s P F f o r P h D s dot com slash s for self e for employment s for side h for hustle. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Jin Chow and Stephen Weber.

Will You Please Introduce Yourselves Further?

02:54 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Jin Chow and Stephen Weber. They are representing Polygence. So I first heard about Polygence a few weeks back when I was at a conference, I had the pleasure of speaking with another employee and learned what they do, which is providing mentorship opportunities to high school students and hooking them up with graduate students and PhDs. And the reason that we’re bringing this episode to you is of course, to tell you a little bit about the company, but also to let you know that this is a potential side hustle opportunity. We’re going to get into more of that momentarily. So Jin and Stephen, will you please take a moment to introduce yourselves a little bit further to the audience?

03:31 Jin: Awesome. Hi everyone. My name is Jin, really grateful to Emily for having us on today. A little background about myself, I’m originally from Hong Kong, came to the U.S. for college, studied Comparative Literature at Princeton for my undergrad, and I’m currently a PhD Candidate at Stanford, also in Comparative Literature. And in terms of research background, I’ve just been working mostly on French and Arabic literature. And then right now I’m putting my PhD on hold to work full-Time on Polygence. I’m one of the founders.

04:00 Emily: Yeah, super interesting. We’ll get back to that at the end of the interview. Stephen, go ahead and introduce yourself.

04:05 Stephen: Well, thanks for having me. My name’s Stephen. I’m actually a third-year PhD student at the University of Georgia. My research is focused on Parkinson’s Disease and the association of the immune system and potentially perpetuating that. And then before that I was actually a research professional at Stanford University. I worked with the stem cell Institute, teaching and training anywhere from undergraduates, to postdocs, to professors on application of a specific methodology. And yeah, that’s a little bit about me.

04:40 Emily: And what’s your role with Polygence now?

04:42 Stephen: Yeah, so now at Polygence I’m a mentor and I have been for about a year and a half and recently have moved into being a mentor affairs coordinator. And that’s where I’m at now.

How to Get Involved with Polygence

04:53 Emily: Yeah. So we’re going to hear more about what is this mentor role. But to back up a little bit, Jin, as founder, co-founder let us know more about Polygence, what it’s about, and how can graduate students and PhDs get involved with the company?

05:08 Jin: Totally. So Emily, I think you gave a really great overview of what it is. So we’re an online project-based learning platform where we connect PhD candidates, masters candidates, postdocs, and also people who already have their advanced degrees with really motivated and intellectually curious high schoolers to work on personalized research projects. And our mission on the mentor side really is to democratize access to the knowledge that’s in so many PhD candidates heads and also to give PhD candidates, graduate students in general, a chance to earn some side money because we know how not well universities pay PhD students and graduate students in general. And so on the mentor side, that really is our mission. And we want to make sure that students high schoolers from all around the world who are passionate about different kinds of academic disciplines can get a chance to connect with experts like yourselves, our listeners today. And to do something beyond the school curriculum and to learn something new, create something fun and cool. And so for, in terms of how mentors can get involved, we have an open rolling application season for any mentor to express interest on our website. We’ll put in the link in the show notes later. And also once you sign up, we have rolling interviews, you’ll meet with one of our team members and then we’ll onboard you.

06:29 Emily: It’s so unusual. I really don’t think I’ve spoken to anyone else who has centered the graduate student experience in the broader mission of a startup or a company. And of course it’s very like laudable that we want to help mentor and educate these up-and-coming researchers who are currently in high school and so forth. That’s all wonderful. But to hear that, okay, this was founded by a graduate student. You can, I guess maybe you want to introduce your co-founder in a moment as well, but founded by a graduate student and really again, centers that graduate student experience and the financial concerns of graduate students. So unusual. And I’m really excited to talk to you about that.

07:06 Jin: Yeah. Maybe I’ll just take three seconds to say a little bit more about my co-founder too. So I think the reason why we’re so centered on the graduate experience is because when we founded it, I was in the middle of it. I was in my second year of the PhD program and my co-founder, Janos, had just finished his PhD in physics. And so we both just knew so well how difficult it is financially as a graduate student. And also we both just love teaching so much, but didn’t get enough of that in our own respective programs. And so those two things coming together just made the graduate experience like front and center for us.

Stephen’s Role as a Mentor

07:36 Emily: Fantastic. Fantastic. So Stephen, not speaking as the founder, but speaking as someone who has been a mentor with Polygence and now has moved into an even bigger role. What has been your experience as a mentor?

07:50 Stephen: Yeah, I mean, I think that that’s one of the biggest questions. So I actually am a part of doing the interviews for potentially onboarding mentors. And so, you know, that’s a question that I get asked a lot is so why are you still here? You know, because I think for a lot of graduate students, their experience is TA ships, right? Wherein they are paid poorly for their time. And they’re expected to do a lot. And they often have that as an interference to their day to day. You know, especially someone who’s coming from the hard sciences where there’s a lot of really long days spent in the lab, for instance, it can be hard to juggle the responsibilities of that plus being a TA. And so despite having a really huge love for teaching, it can be really difficult to make that work.

08:37 Stephen: And it also is not quite as flexible as the schedule at Polygence, right? So at Polygence, you’re committing to hour-long sessions with students, roughly once a week, and you can make those times whenever is good for you. So I think that that’s part of why I’m still with it, obviously, but it also adds value to the fact that I get to still enjoy it each time. You know, it’s not just a, “I have to be here doing this.” This is something that I want to do. I feel like my time is compensated well. And I feel like I get to talk about things that I really want to talk about. Whereas as a graduate student, you’re often TAing for courses that may not be within your wheelhouse or may not be of specific interest. They might just be departmental courses that you’re just kind of asked to TA for. So I think that that’s another huge point of why I’m still here is that I feel like I get to not only talk about what I like, but also get to explore it in ways that are new and novel for incoming students.

Intangible Benefits of Mentorship

09:32 Emily: We’re going to talk more about sort of the financial side of this in just a moment, but I wanted to hear some more about like maybe the intangible benefits, the intangible experience, the warm fuzzies that you get from working with these students. Like you’ve done multiple cycles of this, I understand. So, you know, what is your enjoyment of the process?

09:52 Stephen: Yeah, so I’ve, what is it, five students now at this point and I’ve had three of them publish their work in high school-tier journals. And so, you know, for me, what I think is kind of like a part of it that you can’t really capture with, like the financial element is that you’re getting to be a part of the developmental process for people that have a passion similar to yours. And I mean, maybe I’m like the outlier, but when I was in high school, I can definitely say that I didn’t have this kind of opportunity. And so it was a really novel experience to be a part of the early foundation-laying of students who really want to pursue this. And not only do they get to learn more about a subject, but they also get to learn more about the ins and outs of the career itself.

10:37 Stephen: And I think for me that would have been hugely valuable to know here are skills that I could start working on now in high school to get ready for, you know, a long-term academic career. And I think that those are parts of the intangible that just feel like, you know, it’s paying it forward in a way of like, okay, so I struggled through and learned these things. Let me try to provide some insight for you that you can now take forward and maybe try to share with people around you as you go through the academic process.

Why this Side Hustle is a Great Fit for Grad Students

11:04 Emily: Wonderful. I also am reflecting on kind of my experience in high school. And I was fortunate that I did have research opportunities because I attended a particular school that offered that, but they weren’t like one-on-one, it was group. And I think that given my personality, I think a one-on-one setting would have been fantastic for me at that age. We talked about how the commitment when you’re mentoring a student through Polygence is approximately one hour about once a week, and that it’s flexible to be, you know, conforming to the mentor’s schedule. And I love this because one of the key key elements I think of a successful side hustle in graduate school is being able to schedule something that’s not going to interfere with, as you said, Stephen, your long days in lab. Like that really does need to be your priority. And so being able to do something around that is absolutely perfect. Is there any other reason that you can think of that this particular side hustle is a great fit for graduate students?

11:56 Stephen: There’s a whole host of reasons really, I guess, but you know, there’s some of the core ones are in addition to the flexibility of it all, it’s also an opportunity to maybe explore parts of research that your boss doesn’t really find interesting. You know, because for me, my area of research is very niche. And so as a result, I don’t get to explore some of the outside things. It’s not that I don’t have an interest, but now I’m getting, you know, it’s kind of funny to say, but I’m getting paid to learn more about things that I would already be interested in learning about. And, you know, those were opportunities really because, you know, some of the conversations that I’ve had with my students have actually turned around and been things that I was able to employ in my own research. And so, you know, those are things that just through the conversation, through the ever-evolving amount of information you’re getting from these students. And from that process of learning more about your own subject, I think it kind of pays itself back to you in addition to, you know, being compensated for that time.

12:53 Jin: I’ve heard from some mentors too, that like, especially for those who are thinking about building a career in teaching, whether in high school teaching or later in academia, obviously getting more teaching experience and connecting with young people is something that is really beneficial for their own sort of pedagogical development as a teacher and an educator. And obviously getting paid to get that experience. Our hourly rate is usually around $75 and above. And so that’s usually sort of both the financial and also the paying it forward and as well as the teaching experience piece is what I hear most from mentors.

13:29 Emily: Yeah. I was just thinking that like, you know, one of the things that you’re supposed to be doing in graduate school is being exposed to new ideas by networking and talking with new people and going to conferences and going to seminars and so forth. And this is just another way to have that happen, to have to be exposed to another like creative mind who’s not as encultured maybe yet to the way that we think in academia that can help you spark your own ideas. As you said, Stephen, to go back into your research to feed back into that. And so I just think this is again, another way of doing that kind of networking and exploration, but getting paid for it at the same time which is fantastic.

Financial Benefits of Polygence Side Hustle

14:06 Emily: So Jin, you just mentioned the pay rate, usually $75 per hour and above. Fantastic for a side hustle for a graduate student. Stephen, you said you’ve done five cycles of this mentorship program. And so what have you been doing with this side hustle money? How has this money impacted your financial life?

14:26 Stephen: Yeah, I mean, it, in a sense it provides a certain semblance of security, right? So, you know, as a graduate student, you don’t really make a whole lot, really, especially when you consider taxes and just having to pay student fees and all of this stuff. So basically that money basically affords the ability to have hobbies again, whereas before it could be difficult to do that. So I’ve done martial arts my whole life. So being able to pay for training at gyms, that’s sometimes a sacrifice that has to be made of, you know, if I don’t have any additional income, it may be hard to kind of balance that out. So that’s, you know, one place, it also just adds a little bit of actual savings to your life, which is, you know, an amazing thing to be able to have as graduate student is that you can kind of accrue that semblance of like, oh, I’m not living paycheck-to-paycheck anymore. So I think that those are two key ways that it’s been, you know, a nice opportunity for sure.

15:20 Emily: Yeah. I’m just thinking I’m doing tiny bit of arithmetic here. Okay. So $75 an hour once per week, we’re talking 300 a month if you’re doing this for a whole month. And I know, because this is cyclical, people might not be like continuously involved with mentorship, but let’s say you do it for six months out of the year. That’s $1,800 coming in for the year that you didn’t have before. And that goes a pretty nice far ways to contributing to an IRA, for example, where the max is $6,000 per year. If you wanted to invest it there are plenty of other good things you can do. Like Stephen, you just said improving your physical and mental health and you’re making time for hobbies and so forth. Lots of good things you can do with money, but that’s a pretty nice chunk of change, especially as we mentioned for the hourly commitment.

Commercial

16:06 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. We have a special event coming up on Friday, August 27th, 2021. It’s the fourth installment of my Wealthy PhD workshop series. The subject is debt repayment. This workshop is for you if you’re in debt of any kind and want to learn the best strategies for getting out of debt. These strategies are tailored to the PhD experience, particularly that of graduate students. We will cover student loans, of course, which are such a complex topic, as well as mortgages, credit card debt, auto debt, medical debt, et cetera. I’ll give you a spreadsheet that will help you work through in which order to tackle your debts, taking into account the type of debt, the interest rate, and the pay-off balance. We’ll also discuss how to sustain your motivation through a long debt repayment process. This is going to be a value-packed session. So please join us on August 27th. You can register at pfforphds.com slash wphddebt. That’s PFforPhDs.com/W for wealthy P H D D E B T. Now back to our interview.

How to Inform Your Mentor About a Side Hustle

17:22 Emily: So Stephen, we talked earlier about how flexible and low time commitment this is. Did you choose to tell your mentor that you were involved with this? Did you choose to keep it on the down low? Like yeah. How did the sort of time management work with you and your mentor?

17:39 Stephen: Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, I get that question from mentors all the time actually is how do you kind of balance this with other obligations? And I mean, I would 100% advocate for informing your mentor, right? Because I think without doing that, it’s not really going to be something that is going to feel comfortable for you, but this isn’t something that needs to be hidden, right? This is a teaching opportunity that your mentor is probably going to be very enthused about you doing, you know, especially if they’re not in need of you to be on a TAship. This is just further development professionally. It also affords you the opportunity to make a little bit of extra income, which as mentors will often tell you, it’s nice to not have students feeling like they’re starving. You know what I mean? And so I think that those are pieces that are important.

18:21 Stephen: And so I certainly told my mentor, and basically I just laid it out as this is not going to impact any of my day-to-day work. Because as I was saying before, you know, the flexibility of the scheduling affords you to be able to set this up well after anything that would be needed in your day-to-day. It can be done on weekends wherein you may not have as many obligations to your full-time position, whatever that might be. And so I think that that’s really how it should be approached, is that this is just a additional professional development opportunity. And I would wager that most mentors and most programs are going to completely support and advocate for that.

18:58 Emily: Yeah. I think that unless there’s an explicit prohibition on any kind of outside work for money, this is probably one of the first things that’s going to go over pretty well with a mentor because of the time commitment because of flexibility. Jin, have you seen other mentors take the same approach as Stephen or different ones? Do you have anything to add about how to approach your advisor with, “Hey, I’m going to take this opportunity”?

19:24 Jin: Yeah, I think definitely a lot of the other mentors that I’ve talked to have just made it very clear with their PIs, that this is not going to affect, or maybe this will even enhance, their own work. And especially those who are thinking about, again, a career in teaching, this usually just goes over really well with PIs. The only sort of difference is I think there are some mentors, if they have certain funding from certain foundations and sources that explicitly prohibit, let’s say outside work, then there have been some conversations where the mentor realized that they can’t actually get paid for the work. And they’re going to just volunteer and work with some of our scholarship students in the scholarship program. But in general, for most of our mentors, it’s gone over actually really well with their PIs. And most of our mentors will want to tell their PIs just in the name of transparency.

Anyone Who Might Not Be a Good Fit at the Moment?

20:12 Emily: To kind of expand on that question a little bit more, Jin. So you just mentioned, okay, there might be some limited circumstances where, contractually, graduate students are not permitted to be paid for outside work. Are there any other people who might be excited by this episode and thinking that they might want to work with Polygence, but that you know already would not be a good fit at least at the moment?

20:35 Jin: Yeah, so unfortunately we are not able to employ graduate students who are on student visas, just because with payment issues, we need everyone to have U.S. work authorization. So mentors who are on F-1 student visas or I think J-1 student visas as well. Sadly, the only way to get involved is through volunteering, which some of our mentors still do, but obviously we know that the financial reward is something that’s very important. And so that’s one thing that’s unfortunate. But for international mentors who are on OPT, CPT, or H1B visas or obviously on a green card, they are absolutely welcome to the paid side of the program. But again, just because of legal issues, we can’t with international students on student visas. Yeah. And I would also say in general, in terms of like what makes a good mentor, is someone who’s really excited about teaching, someone who likes connecting with young kids, and who has a little bit of extra time and energy to devote to this.

21:38 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. And if any international students or students on F-1 or J-1 visas are listening, I released an episode a few months back on what kind of side work is allowed for students on those visas. And it’s a very illuminating episode. So we’ll link it from the show notes, but yes, very clearly this would be considered self-employment income. And that is not a type of income that F-1 students can pursue except on OPT or CPT. So yeah, just want make that clear, but Jin, you’re kind of speaking from personal experience here. You know, you mentioned that you were an international student, at least when you first came to the States. So can you talk more about your experience founding this startup as an international student and someone pursuing their PhD? That’s a lot of things.

22:18 Jin: Totally. It was, I think emotionally, just so, dealing with American immigration is just, I think emotionally exhausting, and I’m still in the middle of it because now I’m actually in the middle of dealing with the green card process, which is a whole separate headache. But yeah, so I was on F-1 from undergrad until the beginning of my PhD. And then when I first established Polygence with my co-founder, I was still an F-1 and I just wasn’t getting paid. It was just sort of like a unpaid thing for the exact same reasons that we were talking about. And then when I decided I wanted to take time off and be paid by the company and do work on Polygence full-time, I then applied for part-time CPT because I wasn’t ABD yet. Like I wasn’t all but dissertation yet, so I couldn’t exactly just do OPT.

23:06 Jin: And so I was on part-time CPT for the first year of my full-time work with Polygence. And then I got married and then started the green card process after which I got the temporary EAD from work authorization thing. But all that to say, I think, yeah, navigating immigration and having an extra source of income as an international student, like I know full well to all of our listeners who are going through the same thing, like how much of an emotional drain it is. But there are ways to work around it. And sort of going back to our previous topic of how the department or how my own, you know, academic bosses dealt with it. They were actually really, really supportive of me actually taking time off even, partly because the job market is so dismal in the humanities that they’re like, if it’s one PhD candidate to fight for one job in comparative literature on a yearly basis, that’s, you know, a win for us. And so they were actually really supportive of me taking a break and helping me throughout the whole visa debacle.

Jin: What is Your Work-Life Balance and PhD Status?

24:14 Emily: So I definitely understand the pressures and the circumstances that led to you saying, okay, this is a solution. I need to take a pause in my program, do CPT for a bit. Are you back into pursuing the PhD actively now? Like what is your work-life balance going on right now?

24:32 Jin: Yeah, it’s still a little bit complicated right now. I’ve finally gotten to ABD. I was actually working somewhat on my perspectives and on my research during the first year of me being on CPT. But now that I’m all but dissertation, I can just take my time. I’m not being funded by Stanford at all. But I’m still sort of on paper enrolled so that I can still stay in housing and get health insurance, that kind of thing. But I am full-time working on the company.

24:59 Emily: Oh, that’s so interesting. Yeah. I didn’t realize you had that set up right now. So everybody hates this question. How long do you think it will take you to finish the PhD? Like when you have a full-time position and you’re doing this on the side, I know this is something that so many people get into when they are ABD, especially in fields like yours, where you don’t have to be in the lab and you’re not being funded by a grant and blah, blah, blah. So like just let us know a little bit more about how you’re managing both aspects of this work.

25:25 Jin: Yeah. It’s definitely a little hairy and tricky because I actually still have, I think one or two more courses that I’m supposed to teach at Stanford. But other than that I’m essentially just writing. And it depends on how quickly I write and how much time I can spare outside of working on the company. Right now, it’s not a lot of time that I can spare, just because I think the company just takes up all of my bandwidth and mind space. That being said, I definitely do want to finish it, because the research I’ve been doing and the novels that I’m working with are things that I care deeply about and derive a lot of intellectual satisfaction from. But I think it really is still a bit of a black box in terms of when I can devote myself to the extent that I would want to. And to the extent that the work deserves my attention while working on the company. So that is still a little bit unclear. I was thinking that maybe I could slowly chip away at the dissertation while working on the company, but that’s clearly not really happening. So I’m going to have to sort of kick the can a little bit further down the road.

Next Steps for Getting Involved with Polygence

26:30 Emily: Okay. Well, that was fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing. Let’s circle back to how people can get involved with Polygence if they want to. What is the next step, if they’re like, oh yeah, I’m really, really interested in becoming a mentor. I want to learn more.

26:42 Jin: Yeah. So the next step would to go to the link in the show notes. It’s our short mentor interest form. It takes three seconds to fill out. And once you fill that out, we basically ask you what discipline you’re in, where in your program. Yeah. What stage in your program you are, name, email, whether you have work authorization, very important. And then after that, we will ask you to schedule a 15-minute preliminary call with one of our mentor interviewers. And it’s where you can learn a little more about the program, ask questions about what students are like, what kinds of projects they do. And then after that interview, we will set you up on the platform with your own profile account. And then after that, we will start sending you students once we’ve done a background check on you as well. And then we have a lot of really cool mentor programming and scaffolding to help you get more comfortable with this kind of one-on-one Socratic project-based teaching model, where we offer sort of teaching demo preparation sessions, where we ask you to prepare a mock assignment. And we put you in groups with other new mentors, and maybe Stephen can talk a little more about those because he’s the leading a lot of them.

27:47 Stephen: Yeah. So the teaching demos, they’re the opportunity for incoming mentors who have been matched with a student to be able to kind of review some general tips and tricks essentially of, you know, how to kind of engage with the student initially, because we have a lot of mentors who come in with previous teaching experience, obviously, but with a particular format that we are trying to support. Sometimes it’s a little bit different, right? Because you mentioned earlier, Emily, about how like most of these teaching opportunities are typically in groups, which kind of affords a certain social flexibility. But when it’s, one-on-one, it’s a slightly different architecture, which requires, you know, a little bit more of a, like how do you motivate maybe a shy student or how do you engage with a student who’s very enthusiastic and maybe needs to kind of regain some semblance of focus? You know, those are just little things that can come up, but we, as, you know, mentor support team members, we want to make sure that mentors feel like they have access to the information that they’ll need to be as successful as possible with students, because their success very directly affects the success of the students. Right? So we want to make sure that we’re providing that kind of support.

Best Advice for an Early-Career PhD

28:55 Emily: I’m so glad to hear that you’re not just being thrown into like, as happens so often in academia, you’re just being thrown into a situation and expect that you already know what to do, and there’s no like clear way to go for help. Okay. That’s really good to hear. Awesome. So people know where they can go next and we will just wrap up by, I’ll ask you the same question that I ask of everyone that I interview on the podcast, which is what is your best financial advice for an early-career PhD? And Jin, why don’t you go first?

29:22 Jin: That is a million-dollar question. I would say be on top of your savings and make sure that you are saving at least a little bit every month. I know a lot of people, you know, also have student loans to deal with and other things. But I think what was really helpful for me is like really learning how to budget and make sure that on a weekly basis or even on a daily basis, I know how much is coming in and out of my accounts. And also if you’re able to, you know, have a little bit of fun as well, be kind to yourself because I think being a PhD student or any graduate student is really hard mentally and intellectually. And if you have, you know, a little bit of extra funds, whether it’s through Polygence or some other side hustle, treat yourself to something from time to time and just be kind to yourself because this is a marathon, not a sprint.

30:11 Stephen: Yeah. Well, for me, it works out best to use an Excel sheet honestly, right? For the budgeting. And I think that it’s good to kind of orchestrate what is good for you. For some people, they want to spend more money on food. Some people want to spend more money on free time, hobbies, whatever it might be. But I think kind of looking at what you have available to yourself, setting aside, obviously, a column for savings just for who knows what, but, you know, as Jin was saying, being able to kind of establish something to give yourself a break every once in a while and provide yourself some semblance of excitement, I think is really key. Because once you have that, you won’t feel the need to maybe overspend unnecessarily in certain segments of your life. And so I think that that can really be a great way to get the most out of what you have available as a grad student. For sure.

31:00 Emily: You both articulated that so well. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode and I hope that you have a great season of recruiting mentors. Hopefully, a few from this podcast.

31:10 Jin: Thank you, thanks for having us.

Outtro

31:10 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 episode 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 four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email listserv, or as a link from your website. Three, 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 prerecorded workshops on taxes. Four, 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.

What to Do at the Start of the Academic Year to Make Next Tax Season Easier

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In this episode, Emily teaches what various types of PhD trainees can do at the start of the academic year to make next tax season go more smoothly. She covers tracking qualified education expenses, quarterly estimated tax, the Kiddie Tax, and state residency. Please consider sharing this episode on social media or with an email list-serv so your peers have access to this information as well!

Links Mentioned in the Episode

easier tax season

Introduction

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 2, and I don’t have a guest today, but rather I will tell you what various types of PhD trainees can do at the start of the academic year to make next tax season go more smoothly. We will discuss tracking qualified education expenses, quarterly estimated tax, the Kiddie Tax, and state residency. Please consider sharing this episode on social media or with an email list-serv so your peers have access to this information as well!

We are at or near the start of a new academic year, which means it’s time to take a moment to think about taxes. A few minutes of consideration at this time of year can save you a big headache and wallet-ache during tax season, so it’s worth it.

This episode has four sections, and I’m going to clearly identify at the beginning of each section who the information is for, because it will switch around. Overall, this episode is for US citizens, permanent residents, and residents for tax purposes living in the US. The various intended audiences for the sections are full-time graduate students; postbacs, grad students, and postdocs receiving non-W-2 stipends or salaries; full-time graduate students age 23 and younger; and grad students who either moved states in 2021 or whose income is coming from a new state. Our overarching topic is what you can do now to make next tax season easier.

Please note that I am not a Certified Public Accountant or Certified Financial Planner. This content is educational in nature only and should not be considered tax, financial, or legal advice for any individual. You are entirely responsible for your own financial decisions.

Tracking Education Expenses

Section A is for full-time graduate students.

In early 2022, once you get into preparing your annual tax return, you are going to need to use your so-called “qualified education expenses.” You can use these expenses to reduce your tax liability. Depending on which higher education tax benefit you employ, your qualified education expenses will either be used as a deduction or a credit. I’m not getting into all the details now because you will figure that out during tax season, but if you want to read more, go to PFforPhDs.com/prepare-grad-student-tax-return/ for my article updated for 2020.

The action step for you at this point in the year is to keep track of any education expenses that you suspect might be qualified education expenses. Now, the education expenses that are paid through your student account are already tracked for you, and you should be able to access your 2021 statement during tax season to look at all of the transactions for items like tuition and fees. What I’m suggesting that you manually track is any education expense that you transact outside of that student account, such as textbooks, course-related expenses, and computing purchases.
What I mean by tracking is to save two types of documents: 1) The receipt of the purchase showing the price paid. 2) The document stating that the purchase was required by your course instructor, your department, your school, or your university. The document could be a course syllabus, an email, or a screenshot from a webpage. You can choose how you want to save these records, but I suggest a digital copy maintained in cloud storage.

Now, not every education expense that you track may turn out to be a “qualified education expense” as that will depend on which higher education tax benefit or benefits you choose to use for your tax return. I suggest you leave the task of figuring out what is qualified and what is not to Future You. Present You only has the responsibility to track the expenses, and Future You will thank you for that.

Awarded Income and Estimated Tax

Section B is for postbacs, grad students, and postdocs receiving non-W-2 stipends or salaries.

Right up front, I need to define what I mean by a non-W-2 stipend or salary. I use a framework wherein there are two basic classifications for a stipend or salary that a PhD trainee might receive: employee income and awarded income. These are my own terms, so you won’t find ‘awarded income’ in IRS documentation or used by universities.

Employee income comes from the work than an employee performs for their employer. At the graduate student level, employee positions are often but not exclusively called assistantships, e.g., research assistantship, teaching assistantship, or graduate assistantship. If you have employee income and are a US citizen, permanent resident, or resident for tax purposes, this income will be reported on a Form W-2 at tax time.
The other type of income, awarded income, is more difficult to define. It is given as an award rather than for work performed. At the postbac, grad student, and postdoc levels, awarded income is often but not exclusively called fellowship income. If you are a US citizen, permanent resident, or resident for tax purposes, this income could be reported on a Form 1098-T, a Form 1099-MISC, a Form 1099-NEC, or a courtesy letter. However, there is actually no IRS reporting requirement for this type of income, so many PhD trainees receive absolutely no documentation whatsoever.

If you want to understand this framework more fully, I suggest listening to Season 8 Episode 1 of this podcast, which is titled “What Your University Isn’t Telling You About Your Income Tax.”

Now, the important things to know about awarded income, which I also call non-W-2 stipends or salaries, at this time of year are that 1) this is taxable income and 2) your university is likely not withholding income tax from your paychecks.

There are endemic rumors running around universities that this non-W-2 type of income is not taxable. While it is very tempting—and self-serving—please do not believe these rumors. Listen to Season 2 Bonus Episode 1 of this podcast, titled “Do I Owe Income Tax on My Fellowship?”, in which I clearly delineate which portion of your awarded income is taxable and which is tax-free.

One of the reasons these rumors sound believable is that, with rare exceptions, universities and institutes do not withhold income tax on behalf of their non-employees.

If your stipend or salary recently switched to an awarded income source or this is the first time you’re learning about this income tax issue, you have a few action items:

1) Figure out if income tax is being withheld from your paychecks. If it is, you’re done until tax season.

If income tax is not being withheld:

2) Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on p. 8 of Form 1040-ES. Essentially, you will do a high-level draft of your 2021 tax return, and the worksheet will tell you whether you are required to pay estimated tax and if so in what amount. The principle behind estimated tax is that the IRS expects to receive income tax payments from each taxpayer throughout the year as they receive their paychecks. If your employer does not withhold income tax on your behalf, this becomes your responsibility. However, there are some situations in which estimated tax is not required, and the Estimated Tax Worksheet will tell you if you fall into one of the exception categories. If you are required to pay estimated tax, please be aware that the next due date is September 15, 2021. The due dates typically fall in mid-April, mid-June, mid-September, and mid-January of each year. If you are required to pay estimated tax and fail to, you may be fined by the IRS.

3) Whether you are ultimately required to pay estimated tax or not, the Estimated Tax Worksheet will tell you how much you can expect to pay in tax above your withholding for the year. I strongly encourage you to start saving up for your eventual tax payment or payments. Divide your additional tax liability in Line 14b by the number of remaining paychecks you’ll receive in 2021 and start saving that amount of money from each paycheck. Personally, I have a dedicated savings account named Taxes into which I transfer money from each paycheck. Then, when my quarterly bills are due, I have the money ready to go, and the payment doesn’t strain my cash flow at all.

Please keep in mind that if you have a state tax liability in 2021, you may be required to pay estimated tax to your state as well.

If you want some help with filling out your Estimated Tax Worksheet, please check out my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients at PFforPhDs.com/QEtax/. The workshop explains how to fill out every line of the Estimated Tax Worksheet plus how to handle common scenarios that PhD trainees encounter, such as switching onto or off of fellowship mid-year and being married to someone who has income tax withholding. The workshop comprises numerous pre-recorded videos, a spreadsheet, and an invitation to the next live Q&A call, which will take place on September 12, 2021. To join the workshop, go to PFforPhDs.com/QEtax/. That’s q for quarterly, e for estimated, t a x.

By the way, I give a discount for bulk purchases of this workshop, and it’s not too late to ask your department, graduate school, graduate student association, postdoc office, etc. to buy it on behalf of a group of graduate students, postdocs, or postbacs. Simply email me at emily at PFforPhDs dot com to get the ball rolling on that purchase.

Commercial

Emily here for a brief interlude!

We have a special event coming up on Friday, August 27, 2021! It’s the fourth installment of my Wealthy PhD Workshop series. The subject is debt repayment.

This workshop is for you if you are in debt of any kind and want to learn the best strategies for getting out of debt. These strategies are tailored to the PhD experience, particularly that of graduate students. We will cover student loans, of course, which are such a complex topic, as well as mortgages, credit card debt, auto debt, medical debt, etc. I’ll give you a spreadsheet that will help you work through in which order to tackle your debts, taking into account the type of debt, the interest rate, and the payoff balance. We’ll also discuss how to sustain your motivation through a long debt repayment process.

This is going to be a value-packed session, so please join us on August 27th. You can register at PFforPhDs.com/WPhDDebt/. That’s PF for PhDs dot com slash W for Wealthy P h D D e b t.

Now back to our interview.

The Kiddie Tax

Section C is for full-time graduate students age 23 and younger.

I want to give you a heads up that a higher tax rate might apply to you if you meet the following criteria:

  1. You are age 23 or younger on 12/31/2021.
  2. You are a full-time student.
  3. You receive a non-W-2 stipend or salary for at least part of 2021.

If you checked all of those boxes, you might be subject to the Kiddie Tax, which means that part of your income may be taxed at your parents’ marginal tax rate instead of your own. The Kiddie Tax can apply even if you aren’t being claimed as a dependent.

I can’t say for sure that you will or will not be subject to the Kiddie Tax as there are more calculations that have to be performed, but I suggest that you look into this before the end of the calendar year and possibly take some mitigation measures if your parents’ marginal tax rate is higher than yours. You may need to engage a professional tax preparer to help you and your parents with tax planning and preparation for 2021. You may need to save more from each paycheck for your eventual tax bill than I laid out in Section B.

I have an article about how the Kiddie Tax affects funded PhD students at PFforPhDs.com/kiddietax/. That P F f o r P h D s dot com slash k i d d i e t a x.

State Residency

Section D is for graduate students who moved states in 2021 or are receiving income from a new state.

I find that people get rather mixed up about state residency and taxes, especially when they are in graduate school. For a traditional college student who is a dependent of their parents, it is common to maintain your residency in the state your parents live in even while you attend college in another state. However, I rarely come across a compelling reason that a graduate student should do the same.

The pandemic has also thrown a wrench into the question of state residency due to how common remote work is now. So even if you lived in only one state in 2021, if your income comes from a different state, that’s something to contend with.

What I think you should do at this time of year to make tax season easier is to figure out and/or decide in which state or states you will be a resident, part-year resident, or non-resident in 2021. This will require you to read about how your new state and your old state define residency and how they tax residents, non-residents, and part-year residents.

My totally generic, blanket recommendation if you have moved states to start grad school is to consider yourself a resident of your new state, even if technically your former state allows you to still be considered a resident due to your student status. You’re a full-fledged adult with a more-or-less proper income now. Why would you want to keep close ties to your parents’ address? In almost all cases, there is no financial advantage to doing so plus you’ll likely have to file two state income tax returns, one as a non-resident in the state you live and work in and one as a resident in the state you don’t live or work in. For how long do you want to keep that up?

If you agree that you don’t want to keep filing two returns indefinitely if there’s nothing in it for you, take a few steps this fall to firmly establish your ties to your new state. Reference how your new state defines a resident for the definitive word on how to do so, but for some starting ideas you should get a new driver’s license, register to vote, change your address with your car insurance, and update your mailing address with all your financial institutions.

Now, if you really do have a compelling reason for maintaining your residency in your old state while you’re a student, by all means try to do so. You still have to read all the material I mentioned before, but this time with the goal to maintain your residency in your old state and avoid being considered a resident in your new one. By the way, in all my conversations with grad students about taxes, I’ve only ever heard one reason that I considered compelling: A resident of Alaska who was attending graduate school in another state wanted to maintain their Alaska residency so they could continue to receive universal basic income. Please remember that even if you do have a great reason to want to maintain residency in your old state, you have to cross all your ts and dot all your is to make sure you meet the requirements.

Conclusion

That it for this episode! I hope you’ll check in with me during next tax season for more tax education and support for PhD trainees. I offer a workshop titled How to Complete Your Grad Student Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!) during each tax season, which can be purchased by individuals or groups at a discounted rate. I’m making plans for how I can help PhD trainees with their tax returns in brand-new ways in the upcoming tax season. Join my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe/ to stay in the loop! You can expect to receive 2-3 emails per week from me on various personal finance topics.

Before you go, would you please share this episode with your peers, especially new graduate students? Join me in helping to make next tax season go smoothly for all PhD trainees!

How This Grad Student Plans to Contribute to His Roth IRA Using 529 Money

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In this episode, Emily interviews Ben Wills, who is starting a master’s of science at Georgia Tech at age 29. They discuss the interesting jobs and experiences that Ben had in his 20s and why he is now pursuing a graduate degree. Ben’s main financial goals for graduate school are to not accumulate any debt and to max out his Roth IRA each year, and he shares how those goals align with his values. Ben and Emily discuss how to remove money from Ben’s 529 account without penalty to supplement his stipend and keep him on track to reach his financial goals while living in Atlanta.

Links Mentioned In This Episode

529 Roth IRA grad school

Teaser

00:00 Ben: Have a little kind of metacognitive experience and, you know, watch your feelings, watch the stories that are in your head and just have, you know, a sense of curiosity like, oh, where did this come from? And how is this helping?

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 10, Episode 1, and today my guest is Ben Wills, who is starting a master’s of science at Georgia Tech at age 29. Ben relays the interesting jobs and experiences that he had in his 20s and why he is now pursuing a graduate degree. Ben’s main financial goals for graduate school are to not accumulate any debt and to max out his Roth IRA each year, and he shares how those goals align with his values. We discuss how to remove money from his 529 account without penalty to supplement his stipend and keep him on track to reach his financial goals while living in Atlanta.

01:05 Emily: I’m excited to announce that with Season 10, we’re resuming a once-per-week publication schedule! Lots of great interviews are coming your way… which means I have to record lots of great interviews. If you are interested in being a guest on this podcast, you can do exactly what Ben did, which is to go to PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/ and submit your info there. I highly encourage you to volunteer now as I will batch record interviews over the next few months that will be published through April 2022.

01:37 Emily: If you’ve listened to at least a couple of interviews you know that they are pretty low-key and casual. Many of my guests have told me that this was their first podcast interview ever and that the had a great time! Don’t worry if you’re not super sure of the topic of your interview. A lot of volunteers type a few ideas into the form and then we settle on one over email. Again, now is the time to volunteer! Go to PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/. I can’t wait to speak with you! Without further ado, here’s my interview with Ben Wills.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:13 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Ben Wills. He is entering graduate school in fall 2021. He’s going to be a master student, and is not quite a traditional student. He’s actually 29. And so we are going to be talking about his career-to-date, why he’s pursuing graduate school, and what his financial goals are going to be as a person with a little bit more financial experience than someone coming into graduate school right out of college. So, Ben, thank you so much for volunteering to be on the podcast. And will you please introduce yourself a little bit further?

02:42 Ben: Sure thing, thanks for having me. Ben Wills, again, I use he/him pronouns as you got right. I am 29. I studied cognitive science as an undergrad way back when, at this point, and basically since undergrad, I’ve done kind of a potpourri of fun, like life-building, resume-building sorts of experiences as I’ve kind of approached it. So I spent an AmeriCorps year in Juneau, Alaska working with men who committed domestic violence and betters intervention programs. Then I worked at a law firm doing disability law for a couple of years, and I got funding from my Alma mater to do some research in Australia with a research mentor. And then I got my current job, which is, I’m a project manager and research assistant at a bioethics think tank in New York. And I’ve been here for almost three years and coming to the end of my tenure.

03:34 Emily: Wow. Let’s discuss that further in a minute. That was exciting. What is the program that you’re going into and where will you be?

03:40 Ben: Yeah, I am going to be starting a master’s in science in the history and sociology of technology and science at Georgia tech.

Work Experiences Prior to Master’s

03:49 Emily: All right. Congrats. And that is a mouthful. My graduate degree has many syllables as well and many words that sort of trip people up who aren’t in the field. So that’s fun. Well, yeah. Tell us more about these work experiences and like maybe was there a direction you were going in or you were just kind of looking for that like interesting, fun, next thing? Like how did that go?

04:09 Ben: Yeah, I basically knew that I will probably end up in a career where it’s kind of my career. You know, right now I’m looking at kind of going into a law or public policy sort of space after this degree. And if I get really sucked into, maybe academia. I kind of saw opportunities and did what felt right at the time. So for the AmeriCorps program, I was in college, I was working on a senior thesis, and I was just so focused on me and my work that I really felt like I needed to kind of turn my attention outwards. And so doing a year where it’s called a service year and the particular program I was in we were living in an intentional community, all like working in social service organizations, and we had a very kind of structured experience. And it was really perfect for me.

05:00 Ben: After focusing on magnetic resonance imaging of people and researching what the self is with a neuro imaging scanner, such a thing can be done, to focusing on, you know, humans and what people’s needs are and kind of like social context. So that was really important and generative for me. And then after that, I moved back home to my folks and I’ve been interested in law for a while, and I was fortunate enough to be connected to someone who was looking for a legal assistant. And so I started working at a law firm downtown. And then yeah, my Alma mater has this kind of pocket of money that you can apply to called the Maguire Fellowship. And you can basically use it to, it’s a competitive fellowship, but you can use it to fund study or independent research abroad.

05:51 Ben: And I had read a book called Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine in college that was really cool to me because she was one of the first people that I had read who within science talked about, kind of like, the social construct of science. And, you know, if you have scientists with, you know, gendered expectations of what, you know, men and women and other people’s kind of reality is, then those expectations will be born out in their research methods and their results. And that kind of blew my mind and I wanted to work with her. And so, you know, I just emailed her and said, Hey, if I get some money, can I come work with you? And she said, sure. So I applied for it and got it. So I was in Melbourne, Australia for a year.

06:29 Ben: Then, yeah, I was kind of testing what does law look like? What does academia look like? What is the intersection of the two kind of in a public policy sort of facing academic sort of situation? That’s where I am now, which is a place called the Hastings Center. And I’d actually taken a class with one of the scholars at my school, Vassar. He had adjuncted there, and his name is Erik Parens, and I took a class with him on the post-human future which is all about, you know, gene editing humans and all this sort of wild cool stuff. And I thought it was great. And I kept that kind of organization in the back of my mind when I was in Australia, applied to a project manager research assistant position there and got it. So I flew back to Oregon, bought a car, and 10 days later, I was in New York, starting up a new job.

Decision to Pursue Master’s in Science

07:20 Emily: Wow. This is so exciting. And what brought you specifically to the decision to pursue the master’s in science over maybe a law degree or some other kind of further education that you might do?

07:31 Ben: Yeah, so I think, you know, at this point I’m really interested in kind of doing more of an applied kind of work. So, you know, compared to the kind of academic environment that I’m interested in, which is, you know, a little bit more social science, humanities, I’m interested, you know, in terms of topic areas that I’m interested in. I was interested in doing more of an applied thing and, you know, when you’re going to law school, when you’re doing a terminal master’s in public policy, for example, those are kind of like, you know, they’re vocational schools basically. You’re getting a degree and you’re learning skills, and you’re learning a way of thinking. And I still had questions that I want to answer and kind of ways of thinking and topics of exploring. I’m particularly interested in direct consumer telemedicine like Hims and Hers and Roman.

08:15 Ben: If you’ve ever seen subway ads with phallic cacti or on your Instagram feed, those are advertisements from these direct to consumer telemedicine startups that I’m interested in kind of researching their kind of ethical implications. And I want to explore this more and you can’t really do that, you know, in law school. But I didn’t want to commit to a whole PhD, and Georgia Tech’s program is interdisciplinary. They have people who are coming from history of technology, coming from sociology of technology, also medical sociology. They have folks, faculty there, and it seemed like a great opportunity to kind of learn more about what I’m interested in without having to commit to a whole PhD to do it. And also, I was lucky enough to get funding to do that, which was a real difference maker.

09:03 Emily: Yeah, I was just going to say, I think the funding, like it’s clear from your work history. Like you’ve had some, not really jobs, but they come with money, right? Like the AmeriCorps thing, the fellowship that you did, or whatever it was, in Australia. So you have found a way to get money, at least some, while you’re still exploring these different areas. And the masters seems to be an extension of that as well.

09:25 Ben: I think that’s fair to say. Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t have done this program if I hadn’t gotten funding. I’m only going to take on debt for something that has a little bit more kind of monetizable potential.

Shifts in Money Mindset: From College to Present

09:38 Emily: Well, yeah, let’s talk more about the money stuff then. Through these various different jobs and experiences that you had since college, or maybe even before then, you know, what do you know about money or what is your money mindset right now that you think is different than what it was for you coming out of college or going into college?

09:57 Ben: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think college is a really weird time for finances. If you have the privilege that I did going to school, you know, I had to go to a school that had really good need-based financial aid, but I wasn’t financially independent. I didn’t have to make sure that I could afford rent and stuff. I was living on campus. And so I didn’t quite know how money worked really. So, and then living in Alaska, we all kind of shared expenses. Everything was very structured. So it was kind of, you know, the kiddie pool version of understanding what it is like to be a person who lives in a world where everything costs something. And so I think it was about the time I was 24 that I started living on my own for the first time, got a lease with a friend, and I started learning how things work. But of course I had some kind of money mindsets that I came up with.

10:48 Ben: And some of those were things like, my folks are very frugal and they went through a pretty lean time when I was in middle school. And so I definitely have a frugal kind of ethic. And I don’t spend money that I don’t need to. And I, you know, learned things like, you know, take advantage of credit card intro offers, but don’t carry a balance ever, ever, ever, or it’s not worth it. You know? So I was really lucky to learn some pretty smart ways of thinking about money from my folks. And also my mom does kind of investing almost as a hobby. She gets really into, you know, managing my dad’s and hers, you know, retirement finances, and, you know, thinking about how, you know, the best way to kind of help them to retire. She’s 10 years older than my dad and close to retirement. So this is something that’s very much on her mind and I’ve learned a lot from what she’s been able to learn, which I consider myself very lucky. Because I think, you know, this kind of, what you don’t know costs you. And that’s not fair, but I’m glad that I know what I know.

11:47 Emily: I’m really interested in hearing more about your AmeriCorps experience in particular, because I don’t think I’ve interviewed anyone on the podcast who did AmeriCorps, we haven’t had a detailed discussion about it. But I, as a person who didn’t do it, kind of think about AmeriCorps as even more financially difficult than your average grad student situation, like living on less. And I understand a lot of it is like, it has to be subsidized like your housing and your food and so forth in many places. So how do you think that you having had an AmeriCorps experience in your past, how do you think that specifically affects how you’re thinking about graduate school and your finances in graduate school?

12:25 Ben: Yeah. Great question. I think, so the interesting thing is, so it’s an AmeriCorps program, but it was AmeriCorps-funded to an organization called Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest, which has existed since before AmeriCorps existed. And so they take funding from the federal government for that, but they, you know, they already have a house where I lived, you know, they put me with these other people. And you know, the house’s rent is like prearranged with the landlord. So there’s a lot of that sort of stuff, which is so stressful about moving to a new place and expensive about moving to a new place. You know, it’s already furnished. The house just gets, you know, new people every year. So that was great. But you’re right. We had very little money. You know, we had, I think like $180 a month for fun, a hundred dollars a month for fun total. That’s if you want a burger, if you want a beer, if you want to, you know, take an Uber, whatever. You know, and we were challenged to not access any money that we had saved, but to actually try to live within our means.

13:27 Ben: And so I know, you know, preparing me for grad school. I know that I can live leanly. We, I think our whole house lived, we were six people and we spent $80 a week on food. Like we ate a lot of rice and beans, and if it’s beans and rice then that’s two dishes. You know, so I don’t intend to be living quite as lean, but I know that like, you know, I know that I can do that. And I definitely have some kind of ethic about like, do I really, is it going to be that much worse to do the easier option and save a lot of money, you know, for any particular thing? One example of that ethic is, you know, when I flew from Australia back to Portland at the end of my tenure, it was like $400 cheaper to fly to Seattle and then take a train down.

14:13 Ben: And so I did that. And you know, it’s kind of looking for that sort of thing. I think that’s a little bit of a mindset that I’ve picked up with my family. It was reinforced with AmeriCorps. And just one more thing quickly on that, you know, there’s definitely some negative sides to, you know, I think I still have a little bit of kind of a food scarcity mindset, you know, I’m always like, Hmm, this fridge is looking a little bare. You know, because we did run lean, you know, so there’s positives and negatives as well, but that was all part of it. And I’m, I’m really glad for the experience.

Financial Goals for Graduate School

14:40 Emily: I can’t remember where I heard this from, but it was recently and it was some well-known personal finance personality who phrased it something like spending money, like this is this person’s default mindset. Spending money is a failure of creativity. Like you can get anything or just about anything for no money, little money. And it’s only a matter of, do you want to put in the effort to be creative and you know, maybe take some extra time or something? Or do you want to go, as you were just saying, the easy route, which is spending a little bit more money to get, you know, the convenient option. So I’m not, I mean, that’s a very extreme view, but I can see a little bit of that, you know, in, in what you were describing. So going into graduate school again with your stipend, do you want to share what your stipend is by the way?

15:28 Ben: Yeah, so the standard graduate stipend is about $18,000. I have a little internal fellowship on top of that. That brings me up to about 22 or 23. And then I can also work as a research assistant for a faculty member and also work a little bit over the summer. So my understanding is that I can make between 30 and up to $36,000 a year, most likely.

15:57 Emily: And are you, have you already arranged for that assistantship or do you know that’s coming or is it like a possibility?

16:04 Ben: It sounds like an “everybody who wants one can get one” kind of a thing, is my understanding. So I haven’t started that process yet.

16:13 Emily: Okay. I feel a little bit relieved because when you said 18, I was going, oh no, Atlanta. Wow. Okay. But no 30. Yeah. Okay. We’re getting into a reasonable range there for, you know, for a graduate student. And so knowing that stipend or that range that you’ll be receiving, you know, looking at that, looking at the cost of living and so forth, what are your financial goals, if any, for graduate school?

16:35 Ben: Yeah, I think I have two big goals, which is to not go into debt, and continue to try to fully fund my retirement. I think that’s maybe a big thing that sets me apart from just people who are just coming out of undergrad is I’ve realized and, you know, thanks to folks in my life who have impressed this upon me, how important it is to, you know, save for retirement. And if literally, if all you do is max out your Roth IRA from the time you’re like 19 or 20, you can probably retire comfortably. You know, if you just do that, or comfortably enough. And that’s huge. And I know, you know, that what I wasn’t contributing as a 20 or 21-year-old, it’s all the more important that I, you know, max out my Roth IRA contributions now. So when I talked about that with the graduate advisor, that was, you know, that’s something that certainly wasn’t on her mind for us. And maybe a lot of graduate students aren’t thinking about that, you know, but for me, I’m not expecting to come into a lot of money later in life, and I want to be financially stable, and I don’t want to work until I’m 95. So those are the two main things, I think. Also have little fun maybe.

Retirement Savings History

17:45 Emily: Yeah, well, fun can be frugal, but if you want to max out that Roth IRA, there’s a definite dollar sign attached to that. What’s been your history with retirement investing through these various different jobs? Have you been able to do some or has it been kind of patchy?

17:59 Ben: Hmm. Yeah, I think it’s depended. I have typically, I think after the AmeriCorps year, I have contributed at least some to my Roth IRA. With my current job, they have a fantastic 403(b) program, which is like a 401(k) for nonprofits, I think. And they do a match, too. So what I do is I do the minimum for the full match from them. And then I contribute because I like Vanguard better than TIAA-CREF. I contribute to my Roth IRA separately. So I’m doing the best now that I’ve ever done as far as that’s concerned, but I have been contributing you know, anywhere from a couple thousand to the cap for the past five years or so.

18:45 Emily: Yeah. That’s great. And I love that you have these two goals that you articulated, don’t go into debt and max out the Roth IRA. I mean, as you said, like just those two things alone, you’re going to be in such good shape. You know, if you can do that through your master’s program or if you decide to go on for the PhD as well. Those are two very, very strong goals. How do you think you’re going to make it happen? Like, have you done any projections about cost of living in Atlanta? And you said you’re moving from New York there, right? So it’s going to be a big cost of living difference.

19:14 Ben: Yeah, actually it’s interesting. So I’m in Beacon, New York right now, which is in the mid-Hudson Valley. And Beacon is not cheap. My current living situation with utilities is probably $750, $800 a month, a room in a house. And so I think it’s realistic to get about that in Atlanta, just from the little bit of Craigslist slewthing that I’ve done so far. So I haven’t done a lot of planning. For all the stuff that I know about what you’re supposed to do with money, I’m not very good at actually budgeting for, for worse. But I think my mindset is assuming that expenses are not going to be that much different.

19:55 Emily: Okay. And when is your, when are you planning on moving?

20:01 Ben: My family is going camping in mid-August. And so I think I’m going to try to move right after that, which will mean that I’ll be like moving into a place and starting school in like five days, or something like that, in the mid-August heat and humidity which will be a heck of a time. But that’s what I’m thinking about right now.

529 Tax-Advantaged Savings Account

20:20 Emily: Yeah, that’s great. We’re recording this in April, 2021. So you still have quite a bit of time to be planning and finding a place and finding that assistantship and so forth. And I understand as well that you have a 529 that you wanted to talk about. And so for the listeners who do not know what that is, do you want to explain briefly what a 529 is and how you got one?

20:42 Ben: Yeah. Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding of a 529 is it’s a tax-advantaged savings account specifically for qualified educational expenses. So you can put money in there and then, you know, there are tax advantages that I think depends on the state at least to what the tax advantages are, but then you can spend that money on things like tuition, room and board, fees, other sorts of things.

21:11 Emily: That’s exactly right. But just to add onto it, so the growth, so money that’s contributed to a 529, similar to an IRA, typically if you invest it, it’s going to grow. And that growth is tax-free as long as when you end up withdrawing it, it’s for, as you said, the 529 definition of qualified education expenses, which is like tuition and also living expenses for a full-time student. And it depends on what state you live in, whether or not there is a tax advantage on the contributions. So there’s no federal like deduction the way you could have for like a traditional IRA, but your state, depending on what state you live in, when you do the contribution, they might give you a tax break on their state tax for doing the contributions. And it’s most common for parents to do this for their children or their grandchildren or something like that. So it’s something that often people start when their children are very young, so there’s lots of time for the investments to grow.

22:02 Ben: Yeah. And to the second part of your question, in my particular case, my folks did this great thing where, you know, I was expected to contribute two or $3,000 a year to my education in undergrad that I made from working over the summers. And my folks said, we’re going to take that money, instead of sending it to Vassar, basically, I think, we’ll cover that. And we’ll just hold it in a 529. And so when you go to grad school, you better go to grad school, when you go to grad school, that’ll be there and have grown and be there waiting for you.

Commercial

22:39 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch onto non-W2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or post-bac and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item number one: fill out the estimated tax worksheet in form 1040ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2021 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is September 15th, 2021. Action item number two: whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate named savings account for your future tax payments, calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax, and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account and to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives. If you need some help with the estimated tax worksheet, or want to ask me a question, please join my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. Go to PFforPhds.com/QETax, to learn more about and join the workshop. Now, back to our interview.

529: To Use or Not to Use?

24:19 Emily: Yeah, so you have this nice little nest egg that’s available to you but is kind of specifically tied for education expenses. So what are your thoughts about that? Like, is it something that you want to draw on during graduate school or that you feel you have to, or what are your thoughts?

24:35 Ben: Yeah, well, it’s kind of a use it, or it just sits there sort of thing. So I guess if I didn’t use it, then I would have to be doing something like giving it to my sister if she just needs it or giving it to a cousin or something like that, I suppose. So I definitely want to use it. And one of the questions in my head is like, does it make sense to use it now? Or if I’m probably, but not definitely, going to something like law school or a public policy program or even a PhD, you know, I could definitely use it for those. So would it make more sense to use it now or later, is one question I have. That’s kind of what I’m thinking about. And the way I’ve thought it is, basically, it would be really hard to max out my Roth IRA while earning between 30 and $36,000 a year at the most. But if I have, you know, the 529 is worth about $12,000. If I pull $6,000 a year from the Roth IRA, or excuse me from the 529, that covers my Roth IRA contribution. So it would be as if I was making 36 to $42,000 a year and maxing my Roth IRA contribution. And that sounds pretty good to me. That sounds doable. So that’s kind of how I’m thinking about it is making that possible.

25:56 Emily: Yeah, I was thinking kind of the same thing, because you were phrasing it just now as like using the money in the 529, but I’m thinking about it more as getting the money out of the 529 in a reasonable way where you’re not going to be taxed and all the growth and so forth. Just getting it out so that you can use it for whatever, if that is your Roth IRA contribution, I mean, money is fungible, right? So it could be the Roth IRA. It could be anything else. It doesn’t really matter. But yeah, to give you that extra cushion, and then let’s say it was sort of a, it feels like almost direct, like withdrawal from the 529 and a contribution $6,000 to the IRA. All you’re doing then is making the money more flexible actually, right? Because in the first case, it can only be used for these well, without penalty, can only be used for these qualified education expenses, versus with the Roth IRA, well, you can withdraw your contributions at any time or you can leave it and let it grow for the decades and, you know, withdraw it tax-free and so forth.

26:50 Emily: So yeah, I really see it more of it as not using the money, but just transferring the money to some other place in an indirect way, which you can only do without taxes and penalties and so forth when you have qualified education expenses as you do in this upcoming phase of life. Another thing to think about, another twist in this is, and I don’t know, I haven’t looked it up for Georgia Tech, but some, especially public, universities do allow their graduate students who are employees to contribute to the university’s 403(b) or 457. So that’s also something to look into before you, again, make a final decision about what to do with the 529 is, do I have access not only to a Roth IRA, but also a 403(b) or 457? And could I even supercharge my retirement savings above that $6K per year level? Yeah. So something else to think about.

457 Retirement Plan

27:39 Ben: What’s a 457?

27:42 Emily: 457 is another tax-advantaged retirement account. It’s a little bit similar to a 401(k). So 401(k) and 403(b) are very similar to one another, as you said. One is in the private sector, one is in the nonprofit sector. A 457 was originally constructed, I guess, for like highly-compensated employees. And so it’s available usually in addition to a 403(b) or something similar. But in some cases, at universities, it seems that it’s often, if they have one, it’s sometimes available to any employee, not just, you know, C-suite or whatever. So just something to look into whether or not there is one, whether or not you’re eligible for it. And the 457 has some slightly different benefits than a 403(b) does. If I remember correctly, you can actually access the money more easily than you can in a 403(b), like you don’t have to be like retirement age necessarily to do it. So I’m speaking a little bit out of my like zone of competency here, but yes, it’s sometimes available to graduate student employees.

28:43 Ben: Cool. Thanks.

What Are Qualified Education Expenses?

28:46 Emily: The other thing that I wanted to hit on with this discussion of 529s is what are qualified education expenses. And, you know, longtime listeners of the podcast or readers of my other material know that that term, qualified education expenses, is something that we talk about a lot with respect to figuring out your income tax as a graduate student. Now, and if you have dived really deep into my material, you know that there’s a different definition of qualified education expense for each different tax benefit that you might be talking about. And so it turns out that 529s, or qualified tuition programs, have their own definition of qualified education expenses that is vastly different from the other ones. So you mentioned earlier that qualified education expenses include tuition fees. You know, we’re, we’re accustomed to those things being qualified education expenses, but in the case of 529s, that also includes your expected living expenses.

29:38 Emily: I can’t remember what’s the exact term the universities use, like cost of attendance, I think, which is inclusive of both the educational expenses and also reasonable living expenses, whether you would be living on campus or off campus. Cost of attendance is something that I think comes up a lot for undergrads, but not so much for funded graduate students, but it’s really relevant for our conversation of getting money out of a 529. And one really good episode to listen to which I did previously on the podcast is season two, episode nine, with Seonwoo Lee. And we’re talking about 529s in that episode as well, but it’s from a different, a little bit of a different perspective, but it’s still a conversation about what is a qualified education expense and what are the anticipated educational expenses that you can use to remove money from a 529 without penalty. And so in your case, have you calculated like how much you would be able to get out of the 529 per year using that anticipated cost of attendance?

30:34 Ben: Yeah, so I think the, you know, again I have about 12 and change thousand dollars in there. And the estimated cost of attendance I think is about just by happenstance, Seonwoo also goes to Georgia Tech. So he mentioned that it was about $10,000. So if those numbers are still good, then, tell me if I’m wrong, but I feel like I’m pretty in the clear. You know, I’ll probably take about half of the 529 out each of the two years I’m in the program and that’ll go underneath the $10,000. And even if I do the thing that he was talking about, contribute $2,000 into a Georgia state 529 and pull it out for the tax advantage, credit deduction, whatever it is that’ll still be under the total of $10,000. I don’t know if that’s how it works. I assumed that I couldn’t like, yeah, like pull $10,000 out and then add $2,000 at the Georgia one and then be over my cost of attendance. I don’t know, but I don’t think I would do that anyway.

31:35 Emily: Yeah, that sounds right to me. So the way that you calculate how much money you could get out of a 529 each year is you have to take the total cost of attendance, and then you have to subtract from that all of your tax-free money. So in your case, if you’re fully funded, it would be like tuition and fees and so forth. So the cost of attendance is going to be reduced to, again, if you’re fully funded, it’s essentially just the portion of the cost of attendance that is like your living expenses. And so, I don’t know, $10,000 per year sounds really low to me, but I would have to look at the numbers too. So whatever it is, as long as you don’t have tax-free funding that is already paying for that, then that’s your cap for removing money from the 529 for that given year. And anyway, all of this, I was just reviewing it before our conversation. All of this is in publication 970 chapter eight, which is called qualified tuition program.

529 is Typically NOT in the Name of the Student

32:30 Emily: Yeah. Anything else you want to talk about regarding 529s? It’s an interesting and unusual topic for me.

32:36 Ben: Maybe just, this might be useful for listeners is I just remember that my mom did something kind of tricky or clever with 529s where she had it like, in her name, not in my name, because if it was in my name for undergrad, they would’ve taken all that money. And if it was in her name, I guess they, you know, the financial aid office looked at it differently or something like that. I never got the full story from her, but is that right? Is that how that works?

33:08 Emily: I don’t know exactly the mechanics of it, but it is recommended that 529 money be in the name of the parent or the grandparent, whoever’s doing the contributing, not in the name of the student. And I do think it’s for those FAFSA type calculations that it’s again, weighted less heavily in the assets of the family if it’s held technically by the parent. And in a 529, you have to designate a beneficiary. So you’re presumably the designated beneficiary on this particular 529, but it’s very easy to switch the beneficiary. So the money still belongs to your parents, so they could, you know, yoinks it away from you if they wanted to, because it’s theirs until it’s actually, you know, removed for your qualified education expenses and so forth. But that’s why it’s really easy to just choose a different beneficiary and move the money from, you know, let’s say in the case of like my family. So I’m about to start 529s for my two children. And I don’t really care whose beneficiary name is on it because I’m just considering it for either child. And if the oldest one has some leftover, I would just switch it to the younger one because I’m thinking of it as my money, right? Until later on in life. So yeah, so it’s really easy to switch the beneficiary and it does make sense for the contributor or the parent or whoever to hold it.

34:20 Ben: Okay.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career Grad Student

34:22 Emily: Yeah. Well, it’s been so much fun to talk with you, Ben, and it’s a very kind of different story for the podcast listeners. So I’m excited about that. The question that I end all my interviews with is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD or graduate student perhaps in your case?

34:40 Ben: I think of two things. One is to remember that like, money is real. And sometimes you feel like you can plug your ears and shut your eyes and it’s less real, but it’s still sitting there or not sitting there. So for me, it’s really helpful to try to develop a relationship with my money where I’m not, you know, checking my balance on my phone and going, you know, I just, I don’t want to have a contentious emotional relationship with money. You know, like, the world is structured to make us feel nervous about money. And I don’t think that it’s a healthy relationship to have if you have the ability to not be nervous about it in that way. So, you know, I try to check it more often, just, you know, just so I know what’s going on and there’s no mysteries, because it’s all internal to me, it’s all my own money.

35:33 Ben: And the other thing is there’s this really insidious idea that like, in order to feel like, like we’re told that we need to buy things for ourselves because we deserve it or because we need to like treat ourselves. And so people, you know, like I just saw this person who was like living in her parents’ house, not a lot of money, she’s like, should I buy like the iPhone, like 12, actually the iPhone 12, you know, gajillion or something like that. And like, you know, you do what you want with your money. I’m not here to like make moral judgements, but she was doing it in kind of the mindset of like, I want to treat myself or I deserve it or that sort of thing. And that is just a load of bologna that like marketers have worked really hard on for the past 20 years to be like, you deserve this meal, you deserve this trip, you know?

36:20 Ben: And like the more we can extract ourselves from like taking in that, like marketing lingo of like what we deserve and don’t deserve based on you know, like what is expensive or not expensive, if we can kind of like, you know, develop a more internal sense of like, you know, rewarding ourselves and not have it be based on how expensive something is. Like, you know, I love myself a lot. So I’m spending, you know, more on myself to get the nicer thing or whatever, you know, it’s like, I don’t know, it just makes me kind of sad. And so I guess my advice is to like, you know, kind of have a little kind of metacognitive experience and, you know, watch your feelings, watch the stories that are in your head, and just have, you know, a sense of curiosity, like, oh, where did this come from? And how is this helping me?

37:10 Emily: Wow. Yeah. I find both of those points to be super insightful. And actually we could probably do a whole other episode just on what you just mentioned about like observing feelings that arise in yourself when you think about money and so forth. I love that point, but it’s a great one to end on. And Ben, thank you so much for joining me today. It was really fun to talk with you.

37:28 Ben: Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you.

Outtro

37:31 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 four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email listserv, or as a link from your website. Three, 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 prerecorded workshops on taxes. Four, 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 and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.