Personal Finance for PhDs

Live a financially balanced life - no Real Job required

audio

This PhD Student Is Paying Her US Student Loans with Her Swedish Krona Salary

by

In this episode, Emily interviews Crista Wathen, an American PhD student in archaeology at Stockholm University. As a PhD student in Sweden, Crista is considered more of an early-stage researcher than a student, which was one of the reasons she chose to study there. Crista’s salary and frugal living habits permit her to pay down her US federal student loans from her master’s degree. Finally, Emily and Crista discuss her blog, Richful Thinker, and why she is pursuing FIRE as a graduate student.

Links mentioned in episode

student loan repayment from Sweden

0:00 Introduction

0:58 Please introduce yourself

Crista Wathen is a US citizen doing her PhD in Sweden. She is in the field of archaeology. She’s from Florida and went to the University of Florida for her undergraduate degree. She did her Masters in the UK.

1:51 What made you choose to go abroad for your Masters and PhD?

Crista says when she was an undergrad, she did an archaeology excavation trip in Ireland. She met another student who was applying to Masters in the UK, who explained that a Masters is cheaper in the UK.

Crista says that a Masters in Archaeology in the UK is only one year. This makes the degree half as expensive as a two year Masters degree in the US.

3:24 Was a Masters degree from the UK viewed differently than a degree from the US?

Crista says the degrees were viewed the same. For PhD programs in Sweden, they looked for people who could speak English or Swedish. She says most people speak English. Crista started learning Swedish, which helped her when she first arrived. However, she does not have a proper immersive language experience in Stockholm because most people speak to her in English.

5:24 What are the differences between doing your PhD in the US and doing your PhD in Sweden?

Crista says in Sweden, she is considered an early stage researcher as opposed to just being considered a student. When she applied, she had to propose a project and submit a research plan. She has two years of classes and two years of only research, though she does research all four years.

Crista says that many Masters degrees in Europe are research based. PhD programs in Sweden require applicants to have a Masters degree. Crista says she already has experience creating a project, and she built upon what she did for her Masters for her PhD application. She explains her PhD classes emphasize reading theory, and do not focus on lab or skills training.

8:33 How is your pay for your PhD research?

Crista shares that she has a salary for her PhD and she doesn’t have to worry about applying for grants. She receives monthly pay. The university pays into an annual pension fund on her behalf. In Sweden, she receives socialized healthcare. She pays up to about $100 US dollars out of pocket. She receives dental and vision care, and she has access to several other benefits such as parental leave.

Crista says she thinks she can take her pension with her if she leaves Sweden, or she can leave the pension in Sweden until she retires. When she moved to Sweden, she was given a person number and is always in the tax system.

Emily says that PhD stipends in the US are not generous, and in many cases they are barely enough to live off of. Crista says that she lives frugally. She lives in subsidized student housing, which she is able to stay in for the duration of her degree. She estimates she is paid about the median income for Stockholm, about $2,000 to $3,000 per month. She explains that the pay for PhD work increases each year. She gets 28 days of holiday leave.

14:26 Tell me about your student loans

Crista had a full ride for her undergraduate degree, the the state of Florida Bright Futures. Her loans are for her Masters program. When she exited her Masters, Crista’s loan balance was $60,000 and now it is $45,000.

Crista has federal student loans, even though her Masters was at a UK institution. When she was accepted into the PhD program in Sweden, she called the loan offices to learn about income based repayment. The loan offices told her that her pay in US dollars is effectively zero, so her loan payment is zero.

Because of compounded interest, Crista wanted to make loan payments even though she wasn’t required too. Crista is considering whether to keep her savings and make payments or to take her savings to pay off all her loans. The interest rates on the loans are nearly 7%.

Crista says the loan payment process has been smooth except for the fees to send money to the US and the exchange rate. Recently, the Swedish krona has been worth a little more than the US dollar.

22:02 Do you have any advice for a US citizen who is doing graduate work abroad and has student loan debt?

Crista says she was looking for a university that would take her project. It’s a new culture and experience, which is worth a lot. She advises to save up because it’s expensive to move. She says take logistics into account.

23:21 Where can people go to learn more about your story?

Crista has a blog called Richful Thinker. After her Masters, she worked in banking. She learned about the benefit of having a banker and all the things a banker can do for you. She thinks more people should know about this. She also talks about what it’s like to be an American doing her PhD abroad.

24:30 What is the FIRE movement and why are you part of it?

Crista explains that FIRE is financial independence, retire early. She is most interested in financial independence. She says most people who retire early are in their 30s or 40s. But since retiring is typically 65, even retiring at 50 is retiring early. Crista says she wants to be comfortable without worrying where her money is coming from.

Emily adds that for many young adults learning about personal finance, financial independence refers to being independent of parents. In the FIRE community, financial independence is being independent of a job. This could be through passive income, like making money from rentals or investments.

Crista says she knows it can be difficult to find a job after your PhD, so financial independence is a way to assure she finds a job that she will like. She doesn’t want to take the first job that’s open. Emily shares that financial independence can make having a job more fulfilling.

28:49 Conclusion

How Finances During Grad School Affected This PhD’s Career Path

by

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Scott Kennedy, a bioengineering PhD who now works at a start-up in a data science position. During the course of his PhD, Scott got married and had two children. While he hadn’t considered personal finance of great importance when he started grad school, he certainly did by the end. Scott considered pursuing a tenure-track faculty position, but ultimately took an industry position because the salary and location better supported his young family. This conversation around Scott’s reflection on his financial path during grad school is excellent food for thought for an early-career PhD considering different career and family formation options.

Links mentioned in episode

grad_student_family_career

0:00 Introduction

1:20 Please Introduce Yourself

Dr. Scott Kennedy has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering. He became interested in neuroscience of motor control and the neural basis of body movement. He went to the University of Pittsburgh and received a PhD in Bioengineering. His adviser was in the neuroscience department.

As Scott neared the end of graduate school, he began to explore options outside of academia that made use of his skillset. He took a job as a machine learning engineer at a startup in St. Louis, Missouri. He is enjoying the transition out of academia and into startup culture. Scott adds that you have to be creative about how your skills apply outside of academia, because graduate school training typically funnels you into academic careers.

6:25 Tell us about your family.

Scott got married in 2013, during his third year of graduate school. He says they knew they didn’t want to wait until after graduate school to start their family. They had two daughters while Scott was a PhD student. He says his adviser was supportive and he had examples of other parents in the lab.

8:40 What does your wife do? What was her job while you were in graduate school?

Scott says he met his wife in Pittsburgh when she was finishing her physical therapy degree. His wife started working as a pediatric physical therapist before they got married. Their combined income was enough for them to live comfortably. After they had children, Scott’s wife wanted to stay home but his graduate stipend was not enough money to support the family. His wife started working part time but they had to be very conscious about their finances.

10:11 When you started graduate school, what was your interest in personal finance?

Scott says he was fairly naive but he had interest. He says at the end of undergrad, he developed a spreadsheet to track his spending. Although he kept a budget, he didn’t have any financial goals. He wasn’t thinking about saving for retirement. He had some savings tucked away but for no reason. He was focused on simple living.

Emily shares that she was in a similar place when she was in graduate school. However, she had this sense of “doing the right thing” with her money and that motivated her to learn. Scott shares a story about his friend who was shocked that he didn’t have a Roth IRA yet. Scott thought investing was for people with money, then he learned that he should start during graduate school.

14:40 What was your transformation process into someone who cares about personal finance?

Scott says his first step was saving for retirement. Then, he wanted to purchase an engagement ring and pay for a wedding. He saw that his savings, his safety net, was being drained. He realized that he had to become more serious about budgeting and manage finances in partnership with his wife. He says personal finance is a balance between living your life, having goals, and having security. He adds that childcare was another big factor. Cost of childcare is about the same cost as rent.

17:27 What frugal strategies did you put in place to adjust to the new expenses?

Scott emphasizes that they leaned on their families a lot. They were fortunate to have families willing to support them and help them travel, but their vacations were to go home to see family. At home, they spent time at friends’ houses and chose very low cost entertainment options. They stopped going out to eat and would go for a run instead of having a gym memberships. Scott says that taking little steps adds up in savings in the long run.

20:34 How did finances during graduate school affect your career path?

Scott says two years before he graduated he thought carefully about what he wanted to do. Before he started graduate school, he thought he wanted to work in engineering and rehabilitation. He fell in love with science and could see himself being an academic and working as a professor. He felt like he wanted to go that route until he saw one of the graduate students from his lab defend, work as a postdoc, and apply to jobs while also having a family. He said there was a research faculty member in the lab as well who had a family and was having a hard time getting a faculty job. Scott says there were also stories of professors who got divorces during the tenure process.

Scott says he didn’t feel like he was able to support a family through a postdoc and a search for a faculty position. He says that even if everything worked out for him, his kids would have been in high school by the time he got tenure. He shares that this was difficult for him to comes to term with. After he realized this, he started to look for jobs outside of academia.

25:49 Are you happy in the startup job you have now?

Scott says he’s happy in his position now because he has freedom, flexibility, and autonomy in his work. He feels he works on interesting problems. He can work with leadership and have a more say in the work than you can as a graduate student. The location in St. Louis is closer to his family.

26:54 If you could go back and give yourself financial advice, what would that be?

Scott says he would tell himself to have goals in mind. He would tell himself to have an emergency fund and build it up. He says he would build savings for housing and consider buying a house to build equity. Scott says thinking ahead for childcare options, if at all possible, would have been a gamechanger for them.

Scott admits that as an early graduate student, it’s hard to know what your goals are. He advises that to the extent you can, think a couple years ahead. He says have saving goals and investment goals.

Emily advises that people at least consider buying a house if you’re in a place with a housing market that makes sense for graduate student budgets. She also says that it’s a reasonable assumption that anyone’s financial responsibilities will increase over time. Graduate school is a fairly long period of time and chances are that you will have more responsibilities.

32:17 Final Comments

Scott shares that he didn’t expect the number of weddings and the cost of going to them. He says that he regrets not being able to go to some weddings. Scott advises to find balance between living your life and having savings so that you can have buffers and cushions so you have money for unexpected expenses.

34:45 Conclusion

This Online Entrepreneur Turned His PhD Research into a Thriving Business

by

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Chris Cloney, an engineering PhD turned online entrepreneur. Chris blogged about his research during graduate school, became recognized as an expert in his field, and subsequently launched his research company. Through Gradblogger, Chris now leverages his vast knowledge of online business practices to help other PhDs start their own blogs and businesses.

Links mentioned in episode

PhD online entrepreneur

0:00 Introduction

1:01 Please Introduce Yourself

Dr. Chris Cloney has two businesses, Dust Safety Science and Gradblogger. Chris did his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He did his PhD in Chemical Engineering and Applied Science, but his focus was Industrial Safety within the subfield of Process Engineering. He worked nearly full time in an engineering company while he was working on his PhD. He left the job to focus full time on getting his PhD.

Chris calls himself a personal development geek, as well as a personal finance geek. When he left his job, he was intending to switch careers. His job was focused on military and explosions, and he wanted to switch to paths to industrial safety.

5:27 Can you give us an overview of your primary business, Dust Safety Science?

Chris says his thesis was on Industrial Safety, specifically fire and explosion safety in industries. He only deals with solid particle fires and explosions. He points to Apple MacBooks, for example, which are coated in aluminum polish. He explains that thousands are made each day in factories and the process generates tons of aluminum dust. The aluminum dust is a fire and explosion hazard if it is not managed properly.

He started blogging in this area at “My Dust Explosion Research” but after a couple years, he changed names to “Dust Safety Science” because it is a little easier to say. The business is online and they have four key pillars: awareness, education, connection, and change. One big motivator is to keep people from being injured, so awareness and education of safety science is important. The goal of Dust Safety Science is zero fatalities over twenty years, so they advocate at an industrial and governmental level worldwide.

7:41 What is the structure of Dust Safety Science?

Chris says Dust Safety Science started as just him, as most online businesses start with just one person. They have a website as a platform to bring people back to. They have an incident database where they track fire and explosions around the world. This is how they create material as a research company to publish on and present on at conferences. They conduct independent research as well. He has a podcast for Dust Safety Science.

Chris brought on his first help in 2017 at one hour a week. The team today is four core members. There is a content manager, virtual research assistant, technical writer, and website designer. Chris says it is a big transition from learning everything about personal branding and business to managing a team. They publish 500 blog posts a year, and this requires a healthy structure to run this research business.

Chris works from home and his businesses are his sole source of income. His team is virtual. He shares that he has a seven month old and his wife is home on maternity leave. He has his office at home.

11:44 Why did your blog turn into your business?

Chris says creating a personal brand, building online business, and being seen as the expert in an area is actually quite available to people who have higher degrees. He says one of the first steps for online marketing is to niche down really small, and Chris says that’s the definition of thesis research. He says six people read your thesis and three might actually care.

Chris was blogging about his PhD research. He says the academics in his field weren’t online and didn’t care for his blog, but industry people were interested so he started to make content for that audience. After six or nine months of blogging, he realized he had a good platform built. He was being invited to speak and he was seen as the expert in this topic. He got several job offers just from blogging about his topic. His goal was to switch careers and that was a success. He decided to focus on his online platform and build an independent research company.

14:13 How do you make money?

Chris says step one is to ask people for money. He says he had a newsletter with 250 people on it. The first time he made money online was by emailing a company and asking them if they’d like to put their logo and description in the newsletter in a sponsor block. He said he sent the email to the company, and he got a quick reply saying yes. He’d forgot to mention there was a fee of $200 per month, so he added that in the next email. The company representative said they’d take a year of sponsorship, and Chris realized that his price was too low.

He says his newsletter is now up to 1500 to 1600 people. Every month they take on a new sponsor. Now the sponsor block space in the newsletter is $600 per month.

Chris says if you have an audience, even if it seems small, there’s a way to monetize that. They have advertising on several outputs, and they have member companies. They are also working on courses for under-served portions of their audience, like firefighters and researchers. They can also make money from consulting and speaking. Ways to monetize start becoming available once you are the biggest source of information on your topic.

18:41 Why do you think that launching a business out of your PhD research is something that should be considered?

Chris acknowledges that it can be scary to put yourself out there. But people should consider blogging because it builds your reputation in your space. It leads to job offers. Chris says he had a lot of contacts just after six months of blogging and bringing on guest posts from experts in his field. He says you build your business by putting out content and being seen as an expert, then people contact you with opportunities. Another option is advertising when others want access to your audience. Chris says he wants people to install the correct safety equipment, so he is happy to work with advertisers.

If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, Chris says this slow process of putting out content and being seen as an expert is way easier than the startup route. Startups seek funding first to get started more quickly. He emphasizes that his business transition was simply asking for sponsors on the newsletter and slowly being recognized as an expert.

22:29 Are there any other business models accessible to PhDs?

Chris says the first model is consulting. Being an academic consultant is usually very lucrative. He also lists speaking, freelance editing and writing, and building courses as other business models. Emily mentions that professors often work as consultants on the side.

25:33 What is Gradblogger?

Chris says Gradblogger is a platform to tell his story of starting an independent research company. Gradblogger is a website, podcast, and online resources. He says the tagline is helping PhDs build their businesses so they can change the world through research and experiences. He wants to have a role in creating superstar academics who make a big difference in their fields but are not tied to a university.

Chris says that through Dust Safety Science, he has independence and security. They will fund a Masters student. He calls himself “self tenured” because he can make his own decisions through his independent research company. Chris presents this as an example of what other PhDs could do if they start blogging to create their own business.

28:48 Do you have any advice for a PhD interested in being seen as an expert by a wider community or in starting their own business?

Chris says getting started now is important. He says getting exposed to different ideas by joining relevant communities is helpful. He recommends taking an accounting class.

Chris recommends creating a virtual mentorship group, or Master Mind group. This idea comes from the book Think and Grow Rich* by Napoleon Hill. For his virtual mentorship group, Chris says he picks people who have already done what he wants to do and he learns everything he can about them. When he’s making a decision, he thinks about what his virtual mentor might tell him to do in the next step.

[* This is an affiliate link. Thank you for supporting PF for PhDs!]

Emily summarizes this as exposure. Being exposed to more ideas and different ways that people do things helps you break out of your silo.

34:06 Conclusion

How the Promise of Public Service Loan Forgiveness Has Impacted This Prof’s Career and Family Decisions

by

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jill Hoffman, an assistant professor at a university in Portland, OR. Decisions around finances, family, and career are bound tightly together for Jill because of her family’s student loan debt. Jill and her husband Mike are aggressively paying down his student loans while counting on Public Service Loan Forgiveness for hers. Required minimum payments also factored into their decision for Mike to become a stay-at-home parent to their toddler after they moved for her tenure track position. Emily and Jill discuss the rationale behind these decisions and how Jill is documenting her life as an assistant professor and mother on her website, Toddler on the Tenure Track.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

PSLF Professor

Will You Please Introduce Yourself and Your Family’s Finances?

Jill is an assistant professor at a university in Portland, Oregon. She has a PhD and master’s in social work and a bachelor’s in psychology. She has a husband, Mike, and a daughter, Ellie, who is almost three years old. Mike is currently a stay-at-home dad, but his background is in counseling psychology (master’s). When they moved to Portland for her job, it made more financial sense for him to stay home with their daughter than to get a job due to the high cost of childcare and cost of living overall.

Jill and Mike both still have one loan each from their undergrad degrees (2.5%-ish interest). Jill’s loan balance is $8300, and M’s loan balance is $6800. The bulk of their student loan debt from their master’s degrees. Jill has $16,000 remaining on one loan and $38,000 on another loan, both at 7.0% interest. Mike has $5,900 remaining on one loan and $6,300 remaining on another loan, both at 6.5% interest. Their student loan balance totals just under $82,000 as of April 2019.

Their recent focus has been on paying Mike’s student loans. In December 2018 they re-evaluated their debt and had a balance of just over $100,000, and they used some savings and cash flow to pay down the debt to its current balance.

Why Are You Attacking Mike’s Debt and Paying the Minimums on Jill’s Debt?

They are paying the minimum payments on the 2.5% undergrad loans. They are low priority due to the low interest rate.

Jill is enrolled in Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). Theoretically, after 10 years in the program her master’s degree loans will be forgiven, so they are paying the minimum for now. They are crossing their fingers that it will work out. The minimum payment doesn’t cover even the accruing interest fully or pay down principal at all. (This is because Jill is enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan with a repayment period of greater than 25 years.)

They are paying the minimum on one of Mike’s loans and attacking the higher-interest loan with all extra money each month.

Jill’s undergrad loans do not qualify for PSLF because they were taken out before 2007 (if she recalls correctly). At least for her, just her master’s degree loans qualify for PSLF. She was in undergrad between 2002 and 2006.

How Does Public Service Loan Forgiveness Work?

PSLF is for people who are in certain career types: non-profit and/or government employer may qualify. As Jill works for a public university, she is a state employee and her institution qualifies. Her job post-master’s also qualified for PSLF.

The applicant will make 120 payments perfectly while enrolled in one of the income-driven repayment plans (20-25-year repayment period). At the end the remaining balance will be forgiven. The forgiven balance is not taxed for PSLF, though it is for the income-driven repayment plans.

This is sort of a game because you are supposed to stick to making only the minimum payments even if you could pay more. often, and the payments often don’t even cover the full interest so the loan balance may be growing throughout that time. You have to do everything letter-perfect and hope that your loan balance is forgiven

The first crop of people became eligible for forgiveness in 2017, but the reported rate of actual forgiveness is quite low (1%). Many people who thought they were doing everything right for PSLF have been denied forgiveness.

Further reading:

Given the Low Rate of Actual Forgiveness Occurring, How Does Jill Feel About It?

It’s a daily struggle deciding which loan to prioritize because Jill’s loans are at a higher interest rate.

Mike has loans and is staying home right now. He might qualify for PSLF if he got a job, but it would still take 10 more years of repayment before he would qualify for forgiveness. That time frame was not appealing for them.

If Mike’s 6.5% interest loans are paid before Jill’s four remaining years in the PSLF program are up, they might consider repaying more of Jill’s loans. However, she doesn’t project that to happen within that timeframe. Since they will have to pay for more than 4 years, they’ll wait and see what happens with PSLF and hope for the best.

Emily likes that Jill and Mike are not resting on their laurels and going for the lowest possible minimum payment by both enrolling in income-driven repayment programs and only paying the minimums. Instead, they are attacking the debt in a strategic way. They are being proactive instead of just signing up for everything available to minimize payments.

What Else is Going on for You Financially Aside from Student Loan Repayment?

Jill’s employer contributes to her retirement funds. She is in a pension plan calculated based on years of service and highest gross salary upon retirement eligibility. In addition, they contribute 6% of her salary into a targeted retirement account (doesn’t come out of her paycheck). Jill doesn’t add anything to this for retirement for the time being. This does make her nervous.

Jill and Mike both have retirement funds from previous jobs, but they are not adding to them.

They recently started thinking about contributing to a Roth IRA given their lower current tax bracket vs. their likely higher future tax bracket. They are 34 years old and would like to be doing more on retirement, but they aren’t doing much for that right now.

Once they have the debt paid off, they will have much more cash flow to direct toward retirement or another goal.

How Did You Decide for Mike to Be a SAHD and Did Finances Play a Role?

When they moved to Portland for Jill’s job, Mike didn’t have a job lined up. Their plan was to move and find childcare, and then Mike would get a job. Infant care is really hard to come by and it’s very expensive. They were on a lot of waiting lists and had to pass the time until a spot became available. During that time, they were figuring out finances.

When a spot became available, it was $1,500/mo for full-time infant care at a childcare center. They enrolled and Mike started looking for a job. Jill set up her FSA to pay for the childcare. Ellie was enrolled for about a week when they really delved into their finances if Mike got a job. Their loan payments would go up to at least $1,000/mo, they would be paying $1,500/mo for childcare, plus they would have higher transit expenses and higher income taxes. Then they would be all the time spent at the job and commuting! To them, it didn’t make sense time-wise and financially for Mike to work given his employment prospects. In Ohio, he was making about $45,000/year, and the cost of living was much less. In Oregon, his salary wouldn’t be as much as Jill was making, and his salary would go largely toward loans and childcare. They thought, why not stay home? He was excited to stay home as well.

Emily thinks that what you want for your family doesn’t come into play as much as it should. There are financial arguments for one parent to stay home and financial arguments for both parents to work. But what about what the parents want individually and as a family? Personal finance is not just about numbers and money! In Jill and Mike’s case, there wasn’t a huge financial hit for Mike to become a stay-at-home dad.

Before Mike and Jill had Ellie, they joked about Jill working and Mike being a SAHD without thinking that was a real possibility. It’s kind of cool that it worked out.

What Financial Advice Would You Give Your Past Self?

Jill could have done a few things differently. She would have ended up with significant loans anyway, but could have reduced them by a lot. She went out of state for both her undergrad and master’s degrees, which adds a lot to the debt! Staying in state for the tuition reduction would have been a good idea. For her master’s degree, she could have worked in Pennsylvania first to establish residency and even asked her employer to pay for her master’s degree in part or in full. She didn’t need to go straight from undergrad to master’s. This would have reduced financial burden in the long run.

Out of state vs. in state designation doesn’t matter much to funded PhD students though it does to their departments at public universities. However, for a master’s degree being paid out of pocket, this matters a lot! Employers do fund master’s degrees, especially part-time. Doing the PhD was always Jill’s plan so doing the master’s slower would have been fine.

Mike’s master’s degree was helpful for him to get a better job in Ohio. However, he also chose to go to a private university for his master’s instead of an in-state university, so the costs were a lot higher. Now he thinks he should have gone to the state school he got into and reduce his debt. Once Ellie is in school, having the master’s will help him get another job.

Emily also went to private college and it was a huge price tag that her parents paid. Now, she wants to make public in-state university seem very attractive to her children!

What Is Toddler on the Tenure Track?

Jill started Toddler on the Tenure Track in December 2018 and is still figuring out what it’s about. She wanted to create a space to talk about how she’s doing her junior faculty job with young kids, such as how to be a whole person in a job that’s trying to consume 100% of your energy. It’s her way to document the process of being a whole person in academia and not be sucked into working 24/7 and to document her path through the tenure process. She writes about what’s worked for her and not worked in terms of planning and organization of being a faculty member. That’s a huge part of her job that’s not widely discussed. Some of the strategies she writes about might work for others.

Jill has written some logistical pieces, such as on the process of becoming a tenure-track faculty. She moved cross-country for the job! As a grad student, she would have wanted to know what being a faculty looks like on a daily basis. Educational debt is also a huge part of the lives of people who work in academia, she so also shares about her finances and loan repayment journey.

Go check out Toddler on the Tenure Track if you are a faculty member and parent or aspire to be!

This Grad Student Defrayed His Housing Costs By Renting Rooms to His Peers

by

On today’s episode, Emily interviews Dr. Matt Hotze, an administrative director at Rice University and co-host of the Helium podcast. When Matt moved to Durham, NC for his PhD, he immediately purchased a 3-bedroom house and rented the two extra rooms to his labmates. The rent Matt collected from his two housemates covered nearly all of his mortgage payments during his years in grad school, though he had some financial bumps in the road as well relating to house repairs and his dual relationship with his housemates. Ultimately, his decision to sell the property also hinged on his personal relationship with his tenants. Matt shares the overall effect this investment had on his finances and his three key pieces of advice for another early-career PhD considering this route.

Links Mentioned in the Show

PhD landlord

Would You Please Tell Us More About Yourself?

Matt has a PhD in environmental engineering. His advisor moved from Rice University to Duke University near the start of his PhD. He purchased a home in Durham when he moved there in 2005. After he finished his PhD in 2008, he did a postdoc in France and then another postdoc at Carnegie Mellon. Subsequently, he had a career in publishing with the American Chemical Society, serving as the managing editor for four journals, where he learned the business side of science. Currently, he works at an engineering research center at Rice with 80% of his time, and the other 20% of his time is dedicated to the Helium Podcast.

How Were You Able to Purchase a Home During Grad School?

It is no mean feat to buy a home during grad school!

Further reading: Purchasing a Home as a Graduate Student with Fellowship Income

First, Matt was “blessed” to not have any debt from undergraduate degree.

Second, when he started grad school in Houston, lived with his parents for most of his first year and banked much of the stipend. Living with his parents in the suburbs was cheaper because the distance from home to campus impeded going out and spending on entertainment. His motivation to save money was due to his upbringing; since he was able to save, why not do so? He expected there to be some use for it eventually, though he didn’t have specific plans to buy a home when he started. Saving the money wasn’t a big sacrifice as living with his parents was comfortable.

Third, in 2005-2006 the houses in Durham were not that expensive. This was after the dot com bubble burst in early 2000s and the housing crisis hadn’t hit yet. Matt hadn’t necessarily planned to buy, but he saw that the nice, recently built apartments were rather expensive to rent.

Though Matt had enough money for a 20% down payment, he still needed his parents to co-sign his mortgage because his income alone wasn’t sufficient to support the mortgage payments. He bought a modest 3BR home and rented out the other two bedrooms for below market rate. The purchase price for the home was approximately $200,000.

Further listening: How to Qualify for a Mortgage as a Graduate Student or PhD, Even with Non-W-2 Fellowship Income

Matt bought the house even before he moved to Durham, so he never rented there. He felt he was on a time clock to own the home for long enough during his PhD to make the transaction costs worthwhile. He decided he would either buy right when he arrived in Durham or he wouldn’t do it at all.

Emily had a similar thought process a few years into grad school when it might have been possible to buy, but since she was already a couple years into grad school she decided against buying due to the time clock.

Matt’s first tenants in Durham were the other grad students in his lab also moving with his advisor, which also influenced his decision to purchase right away.

What Were the Pros of Renting Out Rooms to Peers?

1) Matt had almost zero housing expenses as the rents from the two bedrooms basically covered the mortgage each month.

2) Matt’s house became the gathering spot for his grad school friends, so instead of spending money going out they would drink beer and play board games at home. (Emily had a similarly inexpensive social experience in grad school.)

3) Didn’t have any issues with the great majority of his tenants.

What Were the Cons of Renting Out Rooms to Peers?

1) Once Matt moved on from his PhD, he didn’t know his tenants quite as well. One of his tenants asked to pay his rent late a couple times. It wasn’t possible to handle this completely professionally because of the social ties between him and his tenants. This did end up working out, but it was stressful to handle this, especially from afar. Matt was especially concerned about being fair to all his tenants but not establishing a precedent that it’s OK to pay the rent late. The rental agreement between Matt and his tenants was helpful in this case, not only the legal components but also to set expectations.

2) The home inspector didn’t catch some flashing around the chimney, so a water leak developed soon after the purchase. Matt used some additional cash he had on reserve (~$500) for this repair, so it was a good thing he hadn’t used all his cash on the purchase. Another time, the water heater exploded. Thankfully replacing it didn’t cause an issue because Matt already had cash built up for these kinds of repairs. Emily references the 1% rule: You can expect to pay 1% of the home’s value in maintenance/repairs each year – but that’s only an average! It can be much higher or lower in any given year.

Why Didn’t You Sell When You Left Durham?

When Matt left Durham for his postdoc in France, it was not a difficult decision to keep the property. He still had tenants in place who would take a couple more years to finish their PhDs, and with three rooms rented out the property was now earning money above expenses. One of Matt’s friend-tenants served as the property manager so he didn’t have to hire a professional company.

At the end of grad school, Matt had a good amount of savings built up, and after the postdoc he had even more saved. This really set him up to be financially successful in subsequent stages of life. He lived in Pittsburgh for his second postdoc. When Matt married his wife and combined their finances, he was able to significantly contribute to their nest egg. It was great to not have to worry about (non-mortgage) debt.

All of this financial success came from the germ of financial parental help during college and that first year of grad school. Good financial fortune and bad financial fortune early in life do not guarantee any particular financial outcome, but certainly put momentum behind your finances one way or another.

How Did You Decide When to Sell the House?

When his friends finished their PhDs at Duke, Matt no longer felt able to hold on to the property. He didn’t have the bandwidth at the time while working in an intense postdoc position and applying for faculty positions to figure out how to hire a property management company from afar. Deciding to sell was really a trust issue. If he didn’t trust his tenants through personal relationships, he didn’t want to be a landlord any longer. It’s not always about numbers, sometimes it’s more about your feelings!

Matt ended up selling in 2009, which was pretty bad timing with respect to the national economy. He sold the house for just about the same price that he bought it for. Even without the property appreciating, the financial benefits he experienced through those years made it a good financial decision. Even though he didn’t make any money on the house, he defrayed all his housing costs when he lived there and continued to make money afterwards.

What Advice Would You Give to a Grad Student or Postdoc Who Is Considering Buying a Home and Renting Out Rooms?

1) Use a calculator to figure out whether buying and renting out rooms in a home makes sense financially in terms of the costs you will incur and the rental prices.

2) Are you OK having uncomfortable conversations with your tenants? Someone will inevitably not pay rent or break something or something stupid in the house. This will happen whether you know the renters or not!

3) Are you comfortable making basic repairs on your own? It’s expensive to outsource it all the time! Are you able to talk with vendors and negotiate? This is a needed skill.

4) What’s your gut feeling on owning rather than renting? You’ll make a good decision!

What Is the Helium Podcast?

Christine and Matt co-host the Helium Pocast. They help early-career researchers – senior grad students to early faculty – navigate the transition from grad school into first faculty position, from landing the position to navigating the position to advancing within the position. They bring on interviewees to talk about career transitions. Check them out! New episodes come out every Tuesday.

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

by

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

Links mentioned in episode

side hustling postdoc

0:00 Introduction

1:09 Please Introduce Yourself

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

13:17 How does a GrubHub side hustle work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

35:08 What is your YouTube Channel about?

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

39:40 Conclusion