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This Grad Student’s Podcast Expands Beyond Her Dissertation Topic

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In this episode, Emily interviews Alexandria Miller, and 5th-year PhD student in Africana Studies at Brown University. In 2021, Alexandria started a podcast, Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture, to further her vision for educational equity. Alexandria participated in a business incubator program at Brown and joined a Caribbean podcast network, and she’s now considering how to transition to podcast into a business, perhaps in the ed tech space. Alexandria and Emily discuss how Alexandria manages her schedule as a grad student and podcaster and whether she is open about her side pursuit within her program.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This Grad Student's Podcast Expands Beyond Her Dissertation Topic

Teaser

Alexandria M (00:00): At first, it started as a podcast in terms of just being a niche interest of mine in a way to bridge conversations with peers and, you know, others who I think are enthusiast of history and maybe are of Caribbean heritage like myself. But I, as time progressed and you know, I’ve been seeing how it’s grown over the last two years, I’ve really started to think about other ways to really make it a side business in itself and not just a hobby.

Introduction

Emily (00:31): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:03): This is Season 16, Episode 5, and today my guest is Alexandria Miller, a 5th-year PhD student in Africana Studies at Brown University. In 2021, Alexandria started a podcast, Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture, to further her vision for educational equity. Alexandria participated in a business incubator program at Brown and joined a Caribbean podcast network, and she’s now considering how to transition the podcast into a business, perhaps in the ed tech space. Alexandria and I discuss how she manages her schedule as a grad student and podcaster and whether she is open about her side pursuit within her program. As I record this introduction, I have just returned from FinCon 2023, which is a conference for financial content creators. It was in New Orleans, and I had a wonderful time and learned a ton! I don’t want to overpromise, but I am hoping to make some changes in the content creation and dissemination aspect of my business, so you can expect some changes like website updates and increased social media content. I’m even toying with the idea of writing a book, which is super scary to say out loud. If you aren’t already on my mailing list, it would be so so helpful to me if you would join so you can hear about all this new and updated content as I’m rolling it out. I would really appreciate the support. As a podcast listener, a great way to get on the mailing list is to go to PFforPhDs.com/advice/ and enter your name and email there. You’ll receive access to a document that contains short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast to my final question regarding my guests’ best financial advice. The document is updated with each new episode release. Again, that was PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Thank you so much! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Alexandria Miller.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:24): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Alexandria Miller. She is a fifth year PhD student in Africana studies at Brown, and we’re going to talk about her side business. Really exciting. So Alexandria, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today, and will you please introduce yourself a little bit further to the audience?

Alexandria M (03:41): Definitely. Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Roberts. It’s a pleasure to share with you, especially having been a listener of your podcast for such a while now. So as you said, I am a fifth year PhD candidate in the Department of Africana Studies at Brown. I did my undergraduate work at Duke University in history in African and African-American Studies, so similar fields nonetheless. And in addition to my work as a PhD candidate and all the things that comes with being a PhD candidate, of course, I also founded Strictly Facts, a Guide to Caribbean History and Culture in 2021. So a little bit over two years now, which is a podcast and educational platform just to expand the knowledge and awareness of the Caribbean and its history and popular culture.

Focus of Graduate Work and Podcasting Side Business

Emily (04:27): Absolutely. And so I wanna know how much overlap there is between like the work you’re doing as grad student, like the subject of your dissertation and what you’re doing with this side business. So can you explain any like similarities or differences between those two?

Alexandria M (04:40): For sure. They are not really similar. To put it simply obviously I am a historian and so my PhD is looking at Jamaican women’s history in the 20th century to contemporary times, but Strictly Facts is just, you know, more expansive in a sense. It covers Caribbean history across the region as well as the diaspora. And so not necessarily pinpointed to my specific project in terms of my dissertation, but definitely there have been crossover conversations in various episodes and things to that nature.

Emily (05:16): But it would be safe to say, is it safe to say that your, your passion or whatever inspired you to choose this as your, you know, undergraduate and graduate field of study is also what is fueling the, the side work, is that right?

Alexandria M (05:29): Definitely. I think I have always loved history and have always been looking for ways to see myself reflected in the history that I was alerting. And I think that in large part inspired my path towards the PhD in becoming a historian. It wasn’t till while in the PhD and especially after some years of work that I’ve done in terms of educational equity and accessibility, that I started also thinking of different ways outside of the classroom potentially to expand accessibility and educational equity. And you know, at first it started as a podcast in terms of just being a niche interest of mine in a way to bridge conversations with peers and, you know, others who I think are enthusiast of history and maybe are of Caribbean heritage like myself. But I, as time progressed and you know, I been seeing how it’s grown over the last two years, I’ve really started to think about other ways to really make it a side business in itself and not just a hobby.

Emily (06:30): And I think this is such an, a natural thing that happens with academics, I would say, especially the faculty level, right? But you’re getting a head start in that by doing it at the grad student level, right? Just the taking their subject matter or something broader than their subject matter and pivoting to a different audience outside that academic sphere. So yeah, I think you’re right in good company a lot of academics do this.

Alexandria M (06:53): I do, I would say so I’ve seen several who, you know, have even pivoted outside of academia into social entrepreneurship and things to that nature. I’m still sort of on the fence in terms of where I’d go because I definitely do love teaching and I am sort of looking forward to figuring out what that shift will look like once I finally finished the dissertation. Of course.

Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture Podcast

Emily (07:15): Absolutely. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with us about why you started Strictly Facts?

Alexandria M (07:20): Definitely. I think, you know, as a first generation Jamaican American, there have been several ways that I’ve envisioned just, you know, learning about my heritage and where my family comes from that I think has paralleled amongst and across people from other parts of the region. I have a great network of peers and colleagues who are either from the Caribbean or of Caribbean heritage, and we’ve had several conversations across, you know, not only figuring out ways that our histories have been linked but also there are things that, you know, based off things like national and geographic boundaries, the fact that migration, particularly to the global North, is so high for, for people from the Caribbean. There are just several ways that I think learning of Caribbean history and about Caribbean history could be expanded for those from Caribbean Heritage or from the region. And so that was another impetus for me to start Strictly Facts to really expand these conversations and unify all of the community together a little bit more.

Emily (08:26): And can you tell me more about the, the format of the podcast at least? Like is it an interview-based show? Is it solo episodes?

Alexandria M (08:34): It’s a mix of both, depending on probably how busy I am that week. So I definitely have solo episodes where I share a little bit about a topic and offer listeners, you know, additional resources and books and things for listeners to learn more. But I also have interview style episodes where different experts, enthusiasts of history, people have even came and shared, you know, sort of individual or more familial stories and takes on parts of, you know, how their families or even themselves have been part of Caribbean history. So it is really a fun thing in a sense, which is probably why it started more so as a hobby initially, but I’m definitely looking forward to expanding out Strictly Facts a little bit more beyond its podcast in the years to come.

Emily (09:24): Yeah. So going off that subject a little bit more, tell us about, I guess, the structure that Strictly Facts has taken to this point. What, what steps have you taken with it, and then what might you do in the future going forward?

Alexandria M (09:37): Yeah, so as I said, it was more so of a little bit of a hobby in a sense. And so that just meant, you know, me recording episodes and scheduling things scheduling episodes to record with guests. Since then though, of course I have been looking forward to expanding it out. And so I’ve, I am part of the Caribbean podcast directory, which has been a great resource in terms of just, you know, building the podcast community in a sense, helping me get a little bit more familiar with what that community looks like outside of, you know, getting out of my academic bubble sometimes. But also, you know, whether that be crossover episodes with other podcasters, et cetera. And really just growing my listenership. I have also, in terms of more so like the business angle of things, I was a part of Brown’s Breakthrough Lab or B Lab, which is an entrepreneurship incubator. And that really helped me to shift my framing a little bit of how I thought of Strictly Facts in terms of really considering things like consumers and, you know, where do I wanna take it and sort of the business aim, right? Am I looking towards being a solely content based business? What other ways I am hoping to expand out Strictly Facts. So that has definitely been a great help in terms of shifting towards some of my future aims. Of course though, I always say that I have two babies in a sense, finishing grad school and the dissertation and Strictly Facts. So, trying to graduate is on, is the major goal at the time, but I am looking forward to building out other things in terms of content, you know, educational products, ed tech devices and things to that nature in the future.

Brown’s Breakthrough Lab: Entrepreneurship Incubator

Emily (11:25): Wow, okay. I, I would love to hear a little bit more about this like incubator. ‘Cause this is one of those resources that’s uniquely available when you have a position, especially as a student inside of academia that would be very difficult to come by in the, in the rest of the world, right? So like, I don’t know, like what were the other students or other people who were participating in that program? What kinds of businesses were they, were they similar to yours? Were they different from yours that were involved in the incubator?

Alexandria M (11:54): I think in a large part it’s was a little bit over a year now . But it, in a large way, I think there were a lot of people who were definitely in the medical tech space creating apps for medical benefits and devices and things of that nature. So I definitely felt like I was a smaller portion of the incubator who took a sort of different focus in my terms of in, or my definition of entrepreneurship. I don’t think I even really realized it until I started sort of falling into this category that I do definitely have family members who are entrepreneurs who have their own businesses you know, primarily small businesses and what that has meant for our family and the growth and development of our family. And so I have, I used a lot of what I learned both from the incubator and as well from, you know, my own family’s perspective, family member’s perspectives to help figure out where I hope to go in the future.

Emily (12:56): Well, I think it’s just so intriguing that you mentioned like ed tech or like just the, the, I think like the productization like paths that you might be able to take from here. It just by happenstance, literally yesterday I started listening to a, a new podcast and a new to me podcast called Billion Dollar Creator and it’s co-hosted by Nathan something or other who’s the founder of ConvertKit with the email management software, which actually I use. And Rachel Rogers, who’s the founder of Hello seven, the author of the book, we Should All Be Millionaires. And so they’re talking about similar things like once you have sort of an, an area that you have that you’re getting attention in that people are coming to you for information or entertainment or whatever it is, like how can you start to pivot that and not just get paid for having people’s eyeballs on you, but get paid for something that you create from that, like a product or a service or something. And how can you then scale that to a billion dollars? So it’s very aspirational kind of podcast, but I just love that you’re, you know, that you have the opportunity to do this program and that you have these family members and just that you have these examples and influences around you that could help you think like really widely about, okay, this started as a podcast, but where else can we go from here? That’s really exciting.

Alexandria M (14:10): Thank you. Yes, definitely

Commercial

14:15 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2023. These pre-recorded educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2023 tax season starting in January 2024, I’m offering four versions of this workshop, one each for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the end users, graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs, can access them for free. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they sponsor one of my tax preparation workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about licensing these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Podcast Visibility

Emily (15:58): Okay, so you have this fabulous podcast and it’s part of a network and you’re going on other peoples podcast and you’re inviting guests on and so forth, and it’s related to your academic pursuits. So like do people in your program, like either the faculty or the other students, like, do they know what you’re up to? Do they know about this business?

Alexandria M (16:19): They definitely do. I’ve you know, I’ve had faculty members on this show. I’ve had peers on the show. I think my cohort and many of the other students who I’m close with, whether they’re in my program or outside of Brown even have been really supportive of my show, whether that’s, you know, sharing episodes on social media telling me that, you know, oh, I read this great book, have you <laugh> considered having this person on the show, et cetera. And so it, and it is a public podcast, right? It’s across all podcast platforms will soon to be on YouTube as well. So that’s many of the other things I’m working on right now. And so yeah, it is aware, I, you know, people are aware of what I’m doing. I don’t know if they have considered it in a sense, right? I think everybody’s really busy and has, you know, their own their own projects, many other students, but it is definitely a public show and everybody knows what’s going on.

Emily (17:18): How about your advisor or your committee? Have you had any like, direct conversations with them about the podcast?

Alexandria M (17:25): Maybe not necessarily a direct conversation, but it is a public show again, and so I do think many people are still aware of Strictly Facts and, you know, the incubator was through Brown, so there are several things that, you know, if you are interested on wanting to know more, it is all out there. Yeah,

Emily (17:43): I guess I’m just thinking about, you know, some graduate students who have a side hustle want to keep it quiet and don’t want their advisor or their committee or whatever to know about it. So I, I guess maybe for you, would it be safe to say that they’re probably aware and if they had concerns they would’ve raised them by now? Like about how you’re spending your time, for example?

Alexandria M (18:02): I would say so. I, I would think so at least. And it hasn’t been raised yet, so that seems to be a good note. But again, I think the fact that it is sort of in line with my work as an educator, as a scholar also helping me build out my network in terms of my scholarship and where my work will go post graduation is I think also a major plus for the work that I’m doing in this avenue.

Emily (18:32): Absolutely. It seems to be like augmenting your career in this area rather than like detracting from it in any way. Definitely

Time Management

Emily (18:38): Yeah. Well that sounds great. Let’s talk about time management then, because you know, you, you said kind of earlier, oh, it, the podcast is so fun, it’s like a hobby, excuse me. I know that podcasting is an incredible amount of work, plus if you’re not even just thinking about the podcast, but things that like extend beyond that. So please tell us like how, how, how much time are you spending on this? How are you balancing your time? How are you, I don’t know, even like project management stuff, like how, how are you handling all this?

Alexandria M (19:07): Yeah, I mean, I am really big on organization and doing things, you know, well in advance. And so I, I think back to even March, which was like Women’s History Month, or it was Women’s History Month, right? I had that episode scheduled like months in advance and, you know, maybe the listeners wouldn’t know that it was recorded in January or whenever it was. But those things planning has been a big part of the way that I continue to make Strictly Facts and stay on top of all of my other graduate work. So whether that is using, you know, social media manager management services like Buffer or, you know, some of the other similar ones to schedule post when things are going live and all of those things have really helped me. And it, you know, as you said, it does take quite a bit of time to time, make the show, edit it, schedule, coordinate with guests and all of those things, but there are a lot of resources out there that have made the coordination and the planning of it a lot more simple.

Emily (20:12): And I, I know with graduate students, this is certainly the case with me. I was allowing my grad school work to bleed over into all the time and also would allow personal things to bleed into grad school time. It was very like fluid back and forth. I’m much more strict with myself now <laugh> now that I’m like a business owner and a parent. And so I’m wondering for you, like, do you have any like hours that you keep for either grad school stuff or podcasting stuff, or are they separate? Do you allow them to overlap?

Alexandria M (20:42): That’s a great question that I probably should be a little bit more strict and diligent on. I try to, eh, I would, I wouldn’t necessarily say I have hours particularly for either of them. Sometimes it’s, you know, as things arise, I definitely, being that I’m amidst dissertating right now, that is the main focus at the heart of everything right now. But again you know, if it is a Wednesday and we publish episodes every other Wednesday for Strictly Facts, then you know, there has to be some time devoted ahead of Wednesday. But otherwise I, they do probably bleed a little bit, which is always, you know, not necessarily the best organization. But, you know, self-care is important and I think I’ve created a decent balance, at least at the moment of taking care of myself, maintaining this business and grad school as well.

Emily (21:36): And I think it’s very dependent on like the culture that you’re in, right? The culture of academia is a lot of flipping back and forth and transitioning and letting those boundaries kind of slide. And I’ve just found like as now like a full-time business owner that I need to be more strict with myself because again, it’s, it’s very similar to a dissertation. Like the work will balloon to fill any space that you allow it to. So you have to just draw some boundaries and keep it contained. So is the podcast currently monetized in any way?

Podcast Monetization and Ed Tech

Alexandria M (22:03): Not particularly. It’s not being monetized. I have definitely had certain offers, but I’ve wanted to ensure that they really align with my mission and focus at the moment. And I think partially the reason why I’ve reiterated a few times that it started as a hobby was, is because of that it’s not currently being monetized, but definitely again, I do hope to see it balloon into a really, you know, profitable business hopefully in the near future. And so yeah, at the moment it can be seen as more of a hobby or something I’m doing in terms of mere content creation. But again business ownership is something that I think is important to me. Financial literacy and independence is also important to me as well.

Emily (22:50): Well, you always have to lay the groundwork, right? Like it, it depends on the type of business, but I think for the type of business that you’re building, it makes sense that there’s going to be a period of, and especially if you’re selective right, of no revenue or low revenue while you’re figuring out what you want everything to look like. So what do you think the next step will be like? Will it be ads on the podcast? Will it be like, what, what is your next thought in the monetization process?

Alexandria M (23:16): Yeah. I have definitely been open to ads. They just, you know, I want them to be the right one and not necessarily something random just for kicks or anything. I do definitely want them to be in line with the Caribbean education history, things to that nature, but also really hoping again to venture into the ed tech space. So whether that is creating some more of those like digital products you know, I have three nephews and a niece who are always learning and, you know, I’m always engaging with them probably in a sense to give back to sort of like my inner child and having reflected on the ways that I hoped, you know, I hoped to learn or wish I had learned at the time when I was their age. And so I’ve definitely seen what products they’ve have, you know, what my brother and sister have bought for them in terms of their learning and figuring out ways to also input and ensure that the diversity, the Caribbean region itself is also a part of that.

Emily (24:21): Hmm. Can you give us any, ’cause like my mind meant immediately went to like books, right? Even children’s books or, or a book for adults, like, which would be a natural outworking of many people’s dissertations. What like what kind of other ideas are you thinking there in terms of like, yeah, books for kids.

Alexandria M (24:39): I mean, there are books, there are flashcards. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> you know, whether they’re like little alphabet things that has big for one of my, or two of my nephews right now who are two. And so there are things like that. But I’ve also thought of different ways to engage sort of like digital humanities in a sense, but from more so like a children’s perspective, right? So whether that is, you know, apps that are, you know, teaching a different facts about the region and things of that nature. There are, I think a lot of ways that I have toyed with expanding it in the future. But we’re, I’m still, you know, sort of at that idea phase at the moment.

Emily (25:22): Yeah. And like you said, right now the dissertation is project number one, right? To get that to the finish line <laugh>. Okay. Are there any other future plans that you’d like to share with us before we sign off?

Alexandria M (25:35): Not necessarily future plans in the, you know, in a hard line to find way, but there are always Strictly Facts episodes more than 60 to date. So feel free if you’ve never heard of Strictly Facts and want to check out what I’m doing there. We publish episodes every other Wednesday, again, across all podcast platforms, be that Spotify, apple podcast, you know, Google podcast, iHeartRadio, the list could go on. So feel free to check me out there and follow me on all social media platforms at Strictly Facts Pod. And yeah, feel free to let me know if you have any questions or even wanna be a guest on the show as well.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (26:16): I love it Alexandria. Thank you so much for coming on. But before we leave, I have to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best piece of financial advice for another grad student or early career PhD? And that can be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or it could be something completely new.

Alexandria M (26:34): Hmm, definitely. I think one for me that has been really imperative on both journeys, whether that is grad school or you know, as a budding business owner is applying for grants and that could be, you know, maybe fellowships or things of that nature from the academic side, but also, you know, business grants, startup grants, et cetera. It has been really helpful for one, in helping me define my projects in either sense, right? Being able to explain what I’m doing, what my passions are, what the goals are of either side, whether that be dissertating or Strictly Facts. And you know, if it comes through, getting a grant or a fellowship is definitely really helpful in terms of just building out your project and however that is, and also creating a little bit of freedom, right? I think one thing for me from the academic side is, you know, potentially like not having the TA for a semester or a year even has really helped me dive into my dissertation, focus on my research and writing and helping me get it finished a lot sooner than maybe possibly if I didn’t have that freedom. And so I think grants are really helpful on either way, right? Whether that is, again, just applying and helping you narrow your focus or, you know, then at the tail end if you are successful helping you branch out and dive into your work.

Emily (27:58): Absolutely. So well put. Well, Alexandria, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast. It was wonderful to meet you, to hear about your podcast and all the best for the growth opportunities in the future.

Alexandria M (28:08): Thank you so much, Emily. Thank you for having me.

Outtro

Emily (28:16): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

How This Grad Student-Parent Managed Her Money and Time in the Bay Area

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Ilana Horwitz, an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Tulane University. Ilana started her PhD at Stanford when her first child was nine months old, and she had a second child after her third year. Emily and Ilana discuss the frugal tactics and time management strategies that she employed while her children were young. They also discuss the income disparity and gender dynamics that came into play between Ilana and her husband during that period and when Ilana was on the academic job market. Finally, Ilana makes the case for having children as a grad student instead of as a faculty member. If you are a parent in academia, whether as a grad student or full-time employee, don’t miss this episode!

Links mentioned in the Episode

How This Grad Student-Parent Managed Her Money and Time in the Bay Area

Teaser

Ilana H (00:00): I think really creatively and outside the box about how you can garner resources in your community, in your social network to help you sort of accomplish things. And it’s not necessarily like a specific amount of money, but that, you know, if you have a talent, like maybe you can tutor somebody in statistics and in exchange they can watch your kids for a couple of hours.

Introduction

Emily (00:32): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others.

Emily (01:03): This is Season 16, Episode 4, and today my guest is Dr. Ilana Horwitz, an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Tulane University. Ilana started her PhD at Stanford when her first child was nine months old, and she had a second child after her third year. Ilana and I discuss the frugal tactics and time management strategies that she employed while her children were young. We also discuss the income disparity and gender dynamics that came into play between Ilana and her husband during that period and when Ilana was on the academic job market. Finally, Ilana makes the case for having children as a grad student instead of as a faculty member. If you are a parent in academia, whether as a grad student or full-time employee, don’t miss this episode!

Emily (01:50): This is your official invitation to please volunteer as a guest for one of the upcoming episodes! I love that on this podcast I get to feature PhDs and PhDs-to-be who are almost exclusively regular people and learn and share their real-life stories and strategies. Please go to PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/ and fill out the quick form, and I’ll be in touch over email. I look forward to interviewing you in the coming months! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e4/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Ilana Horwitz.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Ilana H (02:57): Sure. Thank you so much for having me on on this podcast, Emily. I am an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Tulane University. I went to graduate school at Stanford in the Graduate School of Education and I got my PhD in Sociology of Education and Jewish Studies. But I had a long career before I started graduate school. I worked in management consulting and in several sort of researchy and evaluation kind of roles and a couple of startups. And so I didn’t start my PhD until I was 30. And then after I did my PhD, I stayed at Stanford for a two year postdoc and then joined the Tulane faculty. And I’m now in my third year at Tulane.

Ilana’s Book: The Entrepreneurial Scholar

Emily (03:44): Excellent. And please tell us the subject of this book, ’cause I can already see there’s overlap with your professional history there and the subject and everything.

Ilana H (03:51): Yeah, absolutely. The title of the book is called The Entrepreneurial Scholar and it’s really a book about how early career scholars and PhD students can think about generating influential ideas while working with very limited resources and navigating an environment of high uncertainty. This is something that people who are entrepreneurial are really good at, but people who are really good at school tend to not be as good at. So it’s really a book that tries to get people to think differently about the dispositions and sort of habits that they bring to graduate school.

Emily (04:26): I love it. Absolutely. There’s no way I’m gonna miss this when it comes out. So we are recording this interview in September, 2023. The book is expected to be out in summer 2024, and I will have Ilana back on the pro on the podcast during that post book period promotional period. ’cause I’m so curious about this whole process, not just the subject of the book, but the making of the book. So is really exciting, but this is not our subject for today. Our subject for today is the fact that you had a child before you even started graduate school, and then you had another one during graduate school. And so we’re gonna talk about kind of the financial stuff that you did to, you know, make that work while you were a graduate student. And so let’s start off by talking about kind of what was your family structure and and what were the finances like at that time and all those details.

Family Structure and Finances During Graduate School

Ilana H (05:09): Yeah, so I had my first kid in January of 2013. And at the time I was working and I had applied to graduate school. And ironically today actually my kids are off from school. So if you’re watching the video here, they are in the background. here, they are much older. But I had Aria I was working and then when I had her, I, a few weeks after she was born, actually my advisor called me and said he had accepted me into the program and so I decided not to go back to work. And I was able to stay home with my first one for eight months. And then I started graduate school when she was nine months old. We had our second baby between my third and fourth year we actually tried to plan it to h her between my second and third year because of sort of but it takes so long to get pregnant sometimes that I realized that planning. It was a very silly attempt. At the time, in terms of our finances, we were pretty financially stable. My husband and I had both worked at that point for about a decade. And so we had a lot of money saved up and he had a pretty stable job in the Bay Area. I had about $40,000 of loans from undergrad and from my first master’s at Teachers Columbia. But they were in deferment and we, I had a pretty generous stipend from Stanford. It was only, it was $25,000, but I had an additional sort of $20,000 for four for a couple of years from an outside source. So I was making about 45,000. But we had very high expenses. So living, we lived on Stanford’s campus in the family housing, which I’ll talk a lot about. But we, our rent started at about $2,000 at the start of graduate school. And then it was up to 2,700 by the time I finished graduate school a month. And then we had really high childcare expenses. We did put our children in daycare full-time. And basically by the time sort of my last few years of grad school, we were paying $50,000 a year in childcare expenses. ’cause Each kid cost over $2,000 per year. So that pretty much all wiped out my entire salary. But we did have my husband’s income to get us through it.

Emily (07:39): Wow, okay. Thank you so much for all those details. So it sounds like your stipend from Stanford at least initially was around 45 k. Did you get any supplement for like a childcare grant or anything? I’ve, I’ve noticed that some other students have had access to those kinds of resources.

Ilana H (07:55): I did not. While I was at Stanford, there was a big push to help parents because parents were really struggling. One of my classmates, actually, Tina Cheuk, somebody you could talk to someday started a whole campaign around mothers and parents in academia. And as a result of this like amazing advocacy work that she did, I think parents were able to apply for grants of up to $10,000, partly to cover not just childcare, but also healthcare. My understanding is that the healthcare expenses through Stanford were in extraordinarily expensive and people weren’t able to pay for it. I was on my husband’s insurance, and so we were able to do it that way. But the sort of advocacy work that she did made a big difference to some parents. And I think by the time I left, there were more resources available to parents.

Emily (08:44): Thank you so much for telling us about that effort because it just goes to show that these advocacy efforts are effective in, in various places. I love to hear that. Tell me a little bit about, more about like, okay, you said we’re basically trying to basically getting by on your husband’s salary because yours is effectively going to childcare. I just wanna know because you said it’s high cost of living, but presumably your husband also has a good Bay Area type salary. I’m trying to understand how much of a strain this was being in graduate school. So like, were you guys still able to invest? Were you guys still able to save or was it like, Hmm, nope. Like there’s no, the building towards the future is the career thing here. It’s not the financial thing at this time.

Ilana H (09:22): We were able to, I think, continue saving, but part of I think my own challenge was that I I had grown up sort of like a, as a working class immigrant, my family moved from the former Soviet Union when I was seven. And then my my, my parents had sort of like pretty working class jobs and then my father unexpectedly passed away when I was 14. And so I think having grown up sort of in some economic precarity and also seeing my mom really having to figure out her finances on her own has always made me very like nervous about being reliant on somebody else’s income, which is, you know, nothing that my, is my husband’s fault, but it’s my own sort of struggle. And so even though we were fine financially, I was constantly trying to think about ways to sort of be frugal, ways to be creative about resources which I know we’re gonna talk about. But I, I felt like I had to sort of because I wasn’t working and I’d been so used to working, I felt like I had to find all sorts of ways to save money and be really, really efficient with our resources.

Creative Financial Strategies During Graduate School

Emily (10:25): So what kinds of things were you doing? Like what could be helpful maybe for other people in a similar situation to hear in terms of how you could keep a lid on expenses related to your children?

Ilana H (10:36): I tried to think really creatively about using and harnessing the communal resources of the Stanford community. So I mentioned that we lived in graduate student housing and our apartments were tiny. But what was amazing is that we had these communal playgrounds and I started spending time hanging out with other parents, you know, on the swing set and whatever. And I realized that like everyone had a lot of really interesting skills and I was like, how can we all sort of bring together all of our unique skills to help each other? And so one thing I knew I was good at was taking family photographs. I had like a background in photography, I really loved it. And so I posted, there was like a parent listerv, and so I posted an email saying like, I would like to barter my photography services in exchange for somebody coming to help me build my furniture. I don’t have time to build my baby crib and the dresser and all these things. And so if you come and build my furniture, I will take family photos. And so that was one thing I started doing. I also sent out an email saying, who wants to do like a meal swap? Because during my winter breaks, spring breaks and summer breaks, I would go on a intensive sort of cooking frenzy where I would cook a ton of stews and soups and chilies and then freeze them in mason jars. And I was like, but I would get sick of the same soup. So I was like, if other people did this, we could have a big soup swap. So I thought about doing that. I also realized, you know, your kids wear some of their clothes like five times and they’re brand new. And so I started organizing baby clothing swaps and also not just for clothing, but like strollers and cribs and all these other things. And I, I think the key thing was like not being shy to ask and sort of put the ideas out there because I think some people feel like, oh you know, I have to, we live in this very individualistic society and I had to get out of this mindset and think about what is the, what can the community do together that’s bigger than what all of us can do individually. I also started all of our houses were attached and I realized that our baby monitors would reach across homes. And so like we had good friends who lived like one door down, like there was somebody separating us. But our monitor reached over there and I said like, we wanna go out to dinner. We don’t wanna pay for our babysitter once we put our baby to bed. Can we give you the monitor and like you just check on our baby? And we did that and we, and then we would exchange those sort of services for each other. So those were some of the ways that I creatively thought about using and leveraging all the parents in the community to help each other.

Emily (13:15): Well, I love those ideas, not just for the specifics of baby clothes or bartering services, but because you were leading by example and you’re still leading by example by sharing this with us on the podcast. So did you find that people were very receptive to these ideas? I would be if I heard them, then again, I’m a pretty frugal person. So how, how were they received?

Ilana H (13:34): Yeah, I think they were received great. I think people were really in the same boat. And I think everybody was trying to make ends meet. There was a lot of stay-at-home parents and graduate housing. It was very typical for men to be getting their graduate degrees and for moms to be full-time with childcare responsibilities. Because basically if you have more than like two kids, it doesn’t sort of make sense to pay for care. It’s often, you know, cheaper for the mom to stay home. And so people who had three or four children did that arrangement and they were still really struggling. So people, yeah, definitely embraced the idea of communal sharing. They loved it. And we also lived in the Bay area where there was like a mentality of recycle, reuse, repurpose. So I think that helped us also,

Emily (14:30): Yeah, my mind is boggling a little bit, thinking about a family being supported by a grad student or postdoc kind of salary or stipend in the Bay area. But I know this often comes up for, for instance, international students and postdocs, right, whose spouse doesn’t have a working type visa, so they literally have no choice. But to be, you know, the stay at home parent or a stay at home home spouse wow, okay. That’s such an awesome idea and I think it really helped in your case that you all did live. I mean, it sounds like you put things out to the parent listserv, but also many of you were actually neighbors. And so that like proximity and the familiarity that that breeds, I would imagine helped a lot with that initiative.

Ilana H (15:08): Yeah, because I think what that did was develop a sense of trust. Like it wasn’t random people who who you didn’t know who you were trying to collaborate with, right? We had this like, I’m a sociologist, so I’ll just say like we had developed this sort of these networks of trust of social capital. And so I knew that like giving my monitor to you and other parent, I knew who they were, I knew who their children were, their children had probably played at my house. There was a sort of sense of trust and reciprocity that developed by the virtue of the fact that we were all in the same boat and living in close proximity to each other. I also took advantage of a bunch of some Stanford resources that I think some parents don’t, didn’t even know exist. And I wanna put this out there, like for students to see if this exists on your campus. So Stanford dining halls had amazing food and children ate for free, completely for free. And so not only did I not have to cook and clean for my kids, you know, but also it was free. And so we went to the dining hall on a very, very regular basis. It was also like nice to see other families there. It got my children to try new foods, but that was an incredible resource. I also did some things like I co-oped at my kids’ school. If you co-op meaning like you volunteer in the classroom for two hours a week, you can get a discounted tuition rate. So I did that. I also served on the board, which got me 10% off of the tuition. And then I also thought creatively about outsourcing and when I wanted to outsource things. So I come from a business background. Sometimes I like to think like an economist. And so there was a period of time in my sort of fifth year I was taking really some really hard classes trying to finish my work on my dissertation. And it was just too much and I just like wasn’t able to do all the cooking. And so I had talked to one of the parents I’m sorry, not the parents, one of the teachers in my kid’s school and she mentioned like she lived on her own. She was kind of lonely and she loved to cook. And I was like, would you like to come and like spend a couple hours at my house cooking on a Saturday or Sunday and I will pay you? And so I paid her $25 an hour and she came and she did a couple hours of cooking that basically would hold us over for the rest of the week. And the way I thought about that expense was like I was also doing some side hustling and had some consulting jobs on the side and I was like, for me to do an hour of work, you know, I would generally get paid, you know, between like 50 to a hundred dollars depending on the job. Sometimes it was a lot less. But generally I was like, for an hour of my work I could basically get, you know, several hours of time from for somebody to cook. And so I thought about outsourcing in a pretty strategic way because I had this other income coming in from side hustling.

Emily (17:58): Yeah, I love that point and thank you so much for bringing it up. A lot of people within the personal finance community talk about your hourly rate, like your hourly compensation rate and say, ah, anything you know, below that you should outsource it if you can get it done for less. I don’t quite agree with that, but in your situation there’s an exact corollary, which you just said this was not your base salary that you were comparing to. This was the extra hours you could put towards the side hustle that you were comparing to. So it directly freed up your time for that particular income source. So that’s why the comparison works really well. And I love this idea of you like, you know, in your first four years of graduate school doing all this batch cooking during your breaks and like getting prepared and getting your family used to the system of we eat freezer meals and we do this bulk cooking stuff. And then after that realizing, oh wow, I don’t, I now don’t even have time for the cooking part of it, but we’re already used to kind of the system and so you can just outsource that last leg of it and make it work for you. So yeah, thank you so much for like talking about your thought process through that. Was there anything else that you considered outsourcing other than cooking or, or did outsource? I mean,

Ilana H (19:03): Occasionally I would outsource some childcare help. So my kids were in school full time, which was like eight to six. And occasionally I would have people some of their teachers would come on the weekend and I would pay them hourly to watch my kids if I ne needed to do something over the weekend and couldn’t real, you know, ask my husband to sort of watch the kids yet again. I don’t think there was anything else that I can think of.

Time Management During Graduate School

Emily (19:29): Okay. Well now that we’re into kind of the time management portion of the conversation, can you share with us any other like time management related strategies used to make this period of your life work?

Ilana H (19:40): Yeah, so I in the beginning of graduate school, probably my first and second year I would put my, my daughter, I just had one at the time and she would go to bed pretty early, right? That’s the great thing about babies. They go to bed by like seven 30 and I would do a lot of work at night, but then I realized I couldn’t sleep particularly when I was working on my qualifying paper, which is what we have instead of comps. Because I was just thinking about the data in my head all the time and like trying to resolve puzzles as I was trying to sleep and it just wasn’t working. And so I decided to totally shift my schedule to go to bed by about 9 30, 10 at the latest and then wake up five to five 30. And my kids, especially in sort of the later years, were not waking up until like seven. And so I would get a solid hour and a half of work time in the morning and I felt so productive and so fabulous. It took, you know, other people I’ve given this advice to have started it. And then they give up really quickly. The, the trick is you have to stick with it for a couple weeks. Like the first couple days are so hard ’cause your body is not used to doing that. So stick with it and for, you know, it, it can work.

Emily (20:48): So this strategy is called the split shift. It’s something that I learned about in Laura Vander cam’s, I know how she does it, which is about working moms with high impact jobs. And yeah, it’s super, super common as you said, because your kids are only awake for those limited windows. If you’re working for a lot of that window, then you don’t get to see them that much. So you sort of shift the work around, like you said, you tried it in the evening, that’s what most people do, but it didn’t work for you for the reasons you said. And so I love that you just didn’t give up on the strategy entirely. You just shifted the window. Now it is very challenging to get up before young children, at least most young children, but it sounds like it was working for you all. And I know actually from the podcast that Laura Vander cam co-hosts, which is called Best of both worlds, that her co-host is also a very, very early riser. So she loves that morning split shift as well. So yeah, and I totally agree with you. I changed my own sleep habits sort of early on the pandemic. I had never been one to consistently be waking up at the same time every day. And I was a bit of a night owl, but I started getting up at 6:00 AM every day. And you’re exactly right, it’s the, you have to stick with the schedule, you have to power through the initial like difficult early part, and then it becomes more easy as your body then regulates itself towards that schedule that you’ve set instead of like me just being haphazard all over the place when you go to sleep and when you wake up.

Ilana H (22:03): Yeah, that’s absolutely right. Being consistent with a sleep schedule is really important. So I wake up really early on the weekends also. Another thing that I did or things people often said to me in graduate school, like, I don’t understand how you do it. Like, how can you be a mom and a grad student? And actually I think I was more productive than most people because I knew that I had this very finite period of time, right? Like, I have eight to six and that’s it. And so I didn’t, I wasn’t on social media. I like dilly, didn’t dilly dally. Like I didn’t waste any time, every moment that I had, I was incredibly productive because I knew my time was limited as opposed to, I think people who are like, I have all day, like, so what if I watch a couple hours of TV now as a result? I was like, had no idea what was going on in the world. I had no, I have no pop culture knowledge at all whatsoever. I pretty much lived under a rock, but I was really efficient. And so there’s something to be said about knowing that you have a finite period of time and being really efficient during those hours.

Emily (23:01): I think I have to imagine not only the the parenthood aspect of this, but your past work experience played into this as well because I think it’s really difficult for people sort of like me, I almost did this who go pretty much directly from undergrad to grad school and carry that like student mindset, the student schedule, the student finances, the student identity and so forth into their graduate careers if they haven’t had the kind of interruption like you did by a working career. So probably a lot of the habits and strategies you learned in your twenties were you, you were then able to apply once you got to graduate school.

Ilana H (23:30): Yeah, I, by the time I got to graduate school, I knew myself really, really well and I knew what worked for me and what didn’t. I think early in my career I was always like waiting till the last minute to do things and was a total procrastinator and submitted things late. And really I, and one of the things I, the biggest lesson I learned in my mid twenties when I tried working for a couple of organizations is that I didn’t do well having a boss. I really needed to have autonomy and agency in my work. And being a PhD student and now a faculty member is exactly what is, that’s exactly what I have and that’s what I love so much about my job because I learned that I really needed to set my own schedule. I wanna be able to work what I want on what I want and how I want. And I didn’t do well telling me to, having people tell me sort of how to do my job and when to do it. But so my biggest, you know, general advice for people when they come to me about career advice is to take time off between being an undergrad and a grad student because you learn so much about yourself as well as about the real world. As opposed to when you go straight through. There’s so many ideal things that we think about theoretical things we learn about in the classroom that just don’t translate or are much more difficult in reality. And when you actually go to work in the real world, you see some of those some of those things play out.

Emily (24:52): I love it. I give the same advice whenever anyone seems receptive to it.

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Family Roles and Responsibilities During Graduate School

Emily (26:17): Now, we already got a hint of this earlier in the email when you were talking about not wanting to rely on someone else financially. So I wanna ask about in your household during this period, how were the roles working between you and your husband? Did you have defined areas of responsibility? Was that something you were constantly negotiating? I’m sure it changed with time, but can you tell us about that process?

Ilana H (26:39): Yeah, absolutely. When I started graduate school at the time my husband had a very long commute to his job. This is in the day when people actually commuted to work. And so I was in charge both of childcare pick up and drop off. But also because I was, you know, in grad school and I had the more flexible schedule it was assumed and we never had like an outright conversation about it, but it was assumed that I was gonna be the one to take the time off. And so when my kid first started daycare, she was sick all the time. She had ear infections, she had flus, she had colds, all the stuff. And I also, at the time, Stanford operates on a quarter schedule, which I had never been on a quarter schedule. And it’s very different than a semester schedule because things move very fast. And so you can never say to yourself on a quarter schedule like, oh, I’ll get to that later. Or like, I missed that concept, I’ll get to it later because there is no later, it’s only 10 weeks. And so I just remember my first quarter it was really hard. I took this very difficult economics class or it was difficult for me ’cause I was trying to learn things that the other undergrad students in the class it was very intuitive to them, like integrals and derivatives. And my kid was constantly sick. And so even missing like two or three or four classes, which is what ended up happening set me back a lot. And so I really struggled with how to like navigate both, like the idea that the grad student is the more flexible one means that we are always having to, to take that on. And also as the mother, there’s so much of the like kind of invisible childcare responsibility. So for example I was the one that managed all the clothes. Like I knew when they would outgrow the clothes and where the next size was. And sort of keeping all of that organized. I did all the co-oping at the, at the school. I was the one that had to do all the paperwork for the school and do take with them to all the doctor’s appointments and hired, you know, anyone that we, you know, brought in outside of childcare hours. So sort of navigating all that kind of what was I think called the invisible responsibility of childcare fell on me. And that was really hard. Another thing that was especially hard is when I was on the job market when I went on the, I went on the job market three times and I was very unsuccessful up until I finally got this job at Tulane. But at one point I had been offered a job at or at least a postdoc at Brandeis. And at the time my husband, this was pre Covid and my husband said like, you want us to move to Boston for two years for you to make $50,000? Like that doesn’t make any sense. You know, it’s not a permanent job and it would mean that I would have to give up my job, which, you know, in terms of our household hold finances would make no sense. But for me it was hard to sort of navi like feel like, oh, when am I ever gonna get my turn? If it’s always about money I’m never gonna get to have a turn. And so when I finally got a job offer at Tulane, I said to my husband and he didn’t wanna move to New Orleans, I said, you know, if, if you, if we don’t move for this job, like I’m gonna be very resentful. Um and then Covid hit and he was able to take his job remotely with him, but he had even agreed to move to New Orleans before that happened. So and now actually he works from home. And when my kids are sick, he’s the one that now stays home with them and I go and teach and we have a much more even sort of distribution of childcare and it’s, it’s great. But because the grad school time is when you, you know, you’re more flexible, I think that compounded by the gender dynamics of childcare responsibility made it hard for me.

Emily (30:24): Absolutely. You were, it was a double whammy on you. Right? And you mentioned earlier about some of your peers and housing having like a stay-at-home spouse. Now I imagine, were there any women who were graduate students among that who had the stay-at-home husband? Or did you only see the opposite model?

Ilana H (30:40): I think I only saw the opposite model.

Emily (30:45): And isn’t that telling right?

Ilana H (30:47): It is telling.

Gender and Income Dynamics with a Working Partner

Emily (30:48): Yes. absolutely. So you had this, these two seemingly really good reasons right, why you should be the one to be handling the childcare and as you said later on, the roles changed and, and things shifted. But is there any like advice that you would give to your past self or someone else who’s in a similar gendered plus income differential, like kind of situation that would’ve helped you I don’t know, get to graduation faster, feel more balanced, whatever would’ve been a greater degree of success for you at that time?

Ilana H (31:18): This one is kind of maybe sort of silly, but you know, when I was on the job market maybe the second time and I was applying pretty widely, my husband and I would have these like extensive conversations before I applied anywhere. Like could we imagine living there and we would, you know, get into this whole thing. Like I’d apply to a job at Notre Dame and he’d be like, do you really wanna live in South Bend, Indiana? No offense to anybody listening from South Bend, Indiana, but he’s like . That wasn’t his first choice of places to move. But we would have these extensive conversations and in retrospect like that was a waste of time and, and a waste of emotional energy because none of those jobs panned out. So I don’t know why we bothered like sort of investing so much of our conversation time and emotional energy even having those conversations. Um and when I did apply to the job at Tulane, he was like, I, I had sort of given up by then about asking him where I should apply or not apply. That was my third time on the market and I was like, I’m just gonna apply wherever ’cause none of it’s gonna work out anyways. And when I applied he, he just kind of remarked like, oh by the way, like I have no interest in living in New Orleans. And I was like, oh well I won’t get the job anyways. And I did and it worked out. But I just, I wish I hadn’t spent so much emotional energy sort of thinking about whether we could actually move somewhere.

Emily (32:34): I would imagine compounded with this situation is the fact that you were living in the Bay Area and I’m imagining the type of job that your husband has, it’s very difficult to leave that area of the country and the job opportunities that it affords unless you’re really looking to get out, you know, and then you can, you know, leverage your experience and your high salary and all that when you go somewhere else. But if you’re not already desiring that, I can see that that area has a pull. I’m never gonna make as much money elsewhere, by the way. You don’t need as much, but I’m never gonna make as much money elsewhere as I do here. So I I imagine that plays into it as well.

Ilana H (33:04): It does. And also my husband has a job that he is really passionate about. He works in clean energy and I you know, he’s super, he was super supportive of me going to graduate school. I’m very supportive of his career. But it made it hard to look outside of the Bay area ’cause there’s not a lot of clean tech jobs elsewhere. And there was a point at which I was you know, interviewing for a job at a highly teaching focused university. I did not really want to be in a, in a teaching intensive university, but it was in the Bay Area. I didn’t end up getting the job, but that would’ve been probably a sacrifice I would’ve had to make for us to stay in the Bay Area so that we could at least kind of have you know have both of us be happy. But then, you know, because of the pandemic, his job did become remote and it enabled us to move to New Orleans and for him to be able to stay working for his Bay Area company,

Emily (33:54): That is one of the, so to speak, positive things that’s come out of our pandemic experiences. Like you mentioned the remote work possibility. I mean, child sick days are not easy, but it’s certainly much less of a strain if you didn’t have to leave the house in the first place for your job. And you don’t have to scramble for the backup childcare or sacrifice your whole day of going to classes like you had to do to stay home with the sick kids. So in, in that respect and the working remotely, you can work for a company here and live over here, which is something that my husband does. That’s all been very interesting and, and in some ways positive, but we’re still kind of working it out, right, as a society . Yeah. Is there anything else that you would like to say about that dynamic between you and your husband or anything that you would, you know, offer to other people by the way of advice or things to think about?

Ilana H (34:38): Yeah, I would say that no one really talks about the gender dynamics and sort of being the doctoral student and being a mother and all of that. Like, I just think I wasn’t psychologically prepared. It wasn’t a conversation that people were having, you know, people were talking about like where we don’t have lactation rooms and you know, sort of more the logistical challenges. But I was, I think navigating the sort of role dynamic challenge and didn’t have a lot of people I think who were part of that conversation. And I just wanna normalize that experience more for people.

Emily (35:19): Have you read Fair Play by Eve Rodsky?

Ilana H (35:23): I have not.

Emily (35:24): This is a suggestion for you slash anyone who has I would say a lot of work to be done in your household and maybe, maybe there’s children involved, maybe there’s not, but is feeling like my partner, I’m doing so much more, they’re not pulling their weight. And something that the book helped me realize was just the degree of work that is going on in my house and actually, wow, my husband is doing a lot and we both feel like we’re doing more than the other person just ’cause there’s so much to do and we don’t always see the labor that the other person is putting in. And so what that book does, and there’s like a sort of a game associated with like a card, like a, the cards have like responsibilities and you say, okay, this is your card, this is gonna be your responsibility, but I’m gonna take this card, it’s gonna be my responsibility. And so it’s a way of really putting that work of the household out in the open and making it much more explicit and splitting it in a way that makes sense for people’s time availability and interest and talents and all that sort of thing. So it’s, it’s a way of negotiating and maybe maybe taking the the edge out of that conversation by using this this game or this like set of tactics. So something to put out there as well. Now you mentioned earlier, for instance, your husband had a long commute and that is a day killer. Absolutely. So like really the availability, his availability was a legitimate barrier in that situation, you know, so we have to acknowledge that as well.

Ilana H (36:42): Yeah, absolutely. And he wanted to be, you know, really helpful. So part of it was like my own issue that I didn’t sort of maybe advocate for myself, but part of it was that, you know, yeah, he wasn’t, he wasn’t there and he was so, so, so incredibly encouraging and supportive of me going to grad school. I didn’t even wanna go at first. I didn’t think I’d be able to sort of do do it well. So I definitely don’t wanna paint a picture of him not being a supportive husband. He, he absolutely was. And now everything in our house is like, feels fantastic. But you know, it also took a little bit of couples counseling to figure out that dynamic, which is something I encourage people to consider.

Emily (37:21): And your kids are a little older than mine, but I’ve noticed it has gotten a bit easier as they’ve gotten out of the baby and toddler stage the workload.

Ilana H (37:28): Absolutely.

Emily (37:29): You know, once they can do some things for themselves, wow, okay, that’s your responsibility now getting dressed or whatever it is. So the workload comes down a little bit in that respect, although as I understand the emotional workload increases as the children get older. And I just wanna say like, I’m so glad that you were willing to have this, this aspect of the conversation with me. It is a very difficult thing to talk about. And it is a financial issue really because these kinds of thoughts and the gender dynamics and everything that we’re talking about plays into women’s careers and how much financial success they’re able to have, how much they’re able to bring to their household. You know, if you’re constantly the one who’s on for childcare, then are you really going to be viewed well by your boss and be up for that next promotion and so forth. So like these are real sacrifices that can have effect on the household finances as well as the individual finances. So it’s important to talk about it.

Ilana H (38:15): Yeah, absolutely.

The Benefits of Having Children During Graduate School

Emily (38:17): Okay, awesome. So one thing that you told me in our prep for this interview is that you were really glad that you had your children prior to and during graduate school instead of waiting until you had your faculty position. So I want you to make the case for why people who are emotionally and otherwise ready for children should just go ahead and do it while they’re in graduate school.

Ilana H (38:34): I think think there’s never gonna be a time where you have as much autonomy and agency as you do during graduate school. Like people in graduate school think they’re so busy. faculty life is, is much harder. Because now I not only have to teach at set hours, I also have to hold, you know, office hours. I have to go to faculty meetings. I have like real responsibilities that would make it so much harder if I had to worry about you know, my kid being sick or just like generally being tired. Because when you’re a grad student, like if you’re tired and you need to take a day off or a couple hours off, no one cares. But now people are gonna notice, or at least I would feel really self-conscious about it. And also you know, the, the sort of feeling of the tenure o clock is real now and it wasn’t real. Like if I needed to stay in grad school an extra year I could. And the, the sort of pressures that I feel now are much more significant. And so I think doing it during the freedom of graduate school if you can manage it financially is the way to go. Well,

Emily (39:47): I wanna probe on that point just one second further, if you can manage it financially. Now you had your husband’s income, so that’s great. And you have your, a generous stipend from Stanford. Do you think it would’ve been easier to do this as a faculty member with your faculty salary versus the grad student salary? What kind of difference would that have made?

Ilana H (40:05): No I mean I, my faculty salary is, faculty salary is, you know, it’s a little higher, but I live in New Orleans and salaries here aren’t that high. And so I don’t actually think it would’ve made a big difference. I, I mean also realistically, I couldn’t have waited. I was already 30 when I started graduate school. And I didn’t start my faculty job until I was in my very late thirties, so I needed to have kids then. But I think the, I think I would’ve preferred to just take out loans and still do it during graduate school as opposed to doing it as a faculty member.

Emily (40:46): Yeah, it’s interesting because you have to think about, especially like you said, when you’re starting graduate school at an older age, if your vision for your life is I wanna be a faculty member and I wanna have children and all this has to come together somehow, then really what you’re doing when you take out student loans is you’re betting on yourself and you’re, you’re borrowing from your future self to pay for your current life. And if you’re confident in the track that you’re on and that you’re gonna make enough income to be able to justify those loans and pay them back, then I do think that makes sense. And plenty of people do take out childcare to take out student loans, pay for childcare, for example. It’s a very reasonable thing to do when what you’re doing is investing in your career and your future earning potential.

Ilana H (41:21): Yeah, and I wanna just be clear that it doesn’t mean that you think you’re gonna make it into a faculty position. It means you’re betting on yourself having a job. And I knew that with a PhD I would get a job and that it would be a decent paying job. I did not expect to necessarily become a faculty member. As we’ll talk about a year from now the odds of getting a faculty position are incredibly low, like in the single digits. And so you have to be confident that you will get a job which you know, requires a, a whole sort of different kind of mindset but not necessarily a faculty job. And maybe you could get a job that pays much more than a faculty job because this job doesn’t pay all that much.

Emily (42:04): Yeah, absolutely. And I do think as you get higher up in the, you know, people with this degree level, you know, high school, college, graduate school, the people who have the highest degrees like doctorates have the lowest unemployment rates. So it’s pretty likely you’re gonna have some kind of job, probably a pretty decent paying job, even if it’s not the faculty member one, like you said, the consolation might be you make more outside of academia.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (42:23): So Ilana, this has been such a wonderful conversation. I’ve really enjoyed talking with you and I’m looking forward to having you back once your book comes out. I wanna leave us with the last question I ask of all my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or it could be something completely new.

Ilana H (42:40): So because this is a podcast specifically talking about childcare and directed at parents, my advice is gonna be particularly about that topic and that is to think really creatively and outside the box about how you can garner resources in your community, in your social network to help you sort of accomplish things. And it’s not necessarily like a specific amount of money, but that, you know, if you have a talent, like maybe you can tutor somebody in statistics and in exchange they can watch your kids for a couple of hours, but think creatively about the sort of non-financial resources in your community and how those can be exchanged to create, to create help for everybody.

Emily (43:24): And something I’ve noticed when I’ve started doing this actually in recent years with my neighbors, my immediate neighbors also have young families like I do, is that the exchange of resources also creates and reinforces the community. So like, it feels good to help someone else and it feels good to be helped by someone else so you can actually get, you know, stronger relationships out of this exchange as well.

Ilana H (43:43): Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right and I think it contributed to our feeling like we have a really strong community during graduate school and that people are really counting on each other. We again like live in this very individualistic society where we don’t want to ask other people for help. We wanna think that we can do it on our own and we just need to get out of that mindset.

Emily (44:03): Absolutely. Ilana, thank you again so much for volunteering to be on the podcast and I can’t wait to talk with you again in less than a year.

Ilana H (44:09): Thanks Emily.

Outtro

Emily (44:16): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

This Grad Student Strives to Change Financial Policies at His University

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In this episode, Emily interviews Jason Anderson, a 5th-year PhD student in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University. Thanks to his work experience prior to grad school, Jason developed an unusual ability to read legalese and view every “no” as a starting point for negotiation. Both as a part of the Graduate Student Council and independently, he has advocated for changes to the benefits Stanford offers to its graduate students, particularly with respect to retirement accounts, health care options, transit, and income tax on fellowships. Emily and Jason have a lively conversation regarding the history and current status of these benefits at Stanford and at other universities, culminating in Jason’s advice to other grad student advocates and personal financial advice for all graduate students.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This Grad Student Strives to Change Financial Policies at His University

Teaser

00:00 Jason A: So they made some changes this year that I, hopefully will alleviate the problem. But, you know, this problem could have been alleviated years ago if they were listening to the students.

Introduction

00:16 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others.

00:47 Emily: This is Season 16, Episode 3, and today my guest is Jason Anderson, a 5th-year PhD student in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University. Thanks to his work experience prior to grad school, Jason developed an unusual ability to read legalese and view every “no” as a starting point for negotiation. Both as a part of the Graduate Student Council and independently, he has advocated for changes to the benefits Stanford offers to its graduate students, particularly with respect to retirement accounts, health care options, transit, and income tax on fellowships. Jason and I have a lively conversation regarding the history and current status of these benefits at Stanford and at other universities, culminating in Jason’s advice to other grad student advocates and personal financial advice for all graduate students. You’ll hear in the second half of this interview that Jason and I dive into some of the issues regarding fellowship income and taxes, which as you know is one of my favorite subjects. By happenstance, we recorded this interview in late September 2023, and in early October, about a week before this episode publishes, I’m scheduled to give my new webinar, How to Not Hate Your Fellowship During Tax Season, for Stanford. I’m crossing my fingers that it really helps alleviate the stress of the grad students and postdocs and is received well, like it has been the other times I’ve given it.

02:18 Emily: If you’d like to bring that webinar in particular to your institution this fall or any of my pre-recorded tax workshops now or during tax season, just reach out! I would be happy to chat with you and give you more information that you can take to your graduate school or postdoc office to ask for this kind of support. You can reach me at [email protected] or read more about these offerings at PFforPhDs.com/tax-workshops/. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Jason Anderson.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:06 Emily: I’m so excited to have joining me on the podcast today, Jason Anderson. He is a fifth year Ph.D. student in Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. And Jason was actually connected to me by some of my contacts at Stanford who are hosting me for a webinar at the time of this recording. It’s coming up in a couple of weeks, and they told me that Jason is the person to talk to about some of the financial policy questions and concerns that the students may have. So that’s kind of going to be our topic for the podcast today. The advocacy work and the areas that Jason sees room for improvement in in terms of financial policies at Stanford and possibly at your institution as well. So, Jason, thank you so much for agreeing to come on the podcast. It’s a pleasure to talk with you here. And will you please tell us a little bit more about yourself?

03:49 Jason A: Sure thing. Thanks, Emily. It’s a pleasure to be here. And I’m really glad that I’m going to be able to share this knowledge. I’m really excited to help graduate students get get every everything they deserve. So as you said, I’m a fifth year aeronautics and astronautics student. My research pertains to augmenting GPS signals with cryptography in a way that is efficient and manageable. You know, GPS signals are have been around for a while, and cryptography requires a lot of data. So that’s what my research is about. And my hobbies would definitely be emailing administrators to get them to do things that the grad students need, you know, blow off steam. You know, that does come from some of my background working for and the legal field for a while writing those nice, crisp emails.

Connection Between Legal Experience and Advocacy

04:47 Emily: Let’s talk more about that experience that you had prior to starting graduate school. Yeah. So you were working in the legal field to some degree. Tell us about that experience.

04:59 Jason A: Yeah. So before Stanford, I went to UC Berkeley, go bears, and I needed to make a lot of money for my out of state education to be able to afford that. So, you know, I was a freshman engineer and applying to all these jobs to try and get myself an internship. So I, you know, I’d have have to have that income. You know, one of the checkboxes on one of those large websites was legal intern. And so the only job that returned to 19 year old Jason was that legal job. So it turned out to be a really interesting experience for me. I worked I worked there for between three or four years, actually, as a as a telecommute or working, you know, lots and lots and lots of hours and, you know, hours functioned as an executive assistant, which, you know, scheduling meetings, phone calls. But also my mentor allowed me to learn a lot about legal things. So I spent a lot of time reading agreements and reading laws, trying to trying to, I don’t know. So there’s this, you know, not to be cliche, but there’s this Sun Tzu person who wrote The Art of War. And, you know, his his main mantra was the art, the supreme art of war is to wage war without fighting. And so that’s like a big that was a big context for me. And the law of trying to use and take pieces together, strategy of trying to fix issues, using that. And then so that sort of prepared to me for a lot of the advocacy work today. And then after that experience, I worked at a different defense contractor and then came to Stanford. And so I have served as the in the student government here. I had no interest in student government in my undergrad. And it was not until I needed things that I became interested, like with regards to health care, retirement transit, a bunch of other benefits that I wanted I didn’t have. So I came to that quest to get them. And then, you know, so Stanford just voted to unionize and I am involved with that. So our union, as you know, is is undertaking a lot of these issues to help graduate students afford living. So here at Stanford, there are a lot of issues with affordability because, you know, Stanford is a very, very high cost area to live. So, you know, we have a lot of people going to the food pantry are especially partners with children, you name it. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that that Stanford is affordable. So and that’s that’s part of what I’ve been working on in my as my hobby project, I suppose pretty serious hobby. But, you know, I still work full time as a graduate student.

08:07 Emily: Well, thank you so much for telling us about that experience. And we’ll get into talking about these specific benefits in a moment. But I just wondered if you could really explicitly make this connection between having this experience, being able to read legal documents and grappling with that kind of language and how you’ve been able to employ that past experience and that skill in asking for finding, advocating for the things that you and your peers need.

08:34 Jason A: Well, so I say that the first sort of thing that comes to mind is like the grit to even though when somebody says no to you, it’s not actually a no. So like, for instance, one of the items we’re going to talk about is retirement and when we get to there, we’ll talk about someone gave you a legal opinion that turned out to be false. And so, you know, when someone says says no to me, it’s it’s just not no. There’s still ways there’s still a way that you can you can talk. There’s a way to position yourself to respond back in such a way. Because, you know, Stanford or pretty much any school administrator is counting on you going away like. Right. So students are there in and out. And if you can just persist just a little bit, you know, you’ll be 100 times more successful. Ah, let’s see there are a lot of student government things that come to mind, like, you know, I got food trucks to come on to campus. That was a that was quite the ordeal. You know, for someone said, well, we can’t do this because these four different department departments need to approve, you know, like the infrastructure and then, you know, like, you know, parking, transit and then fire and then police and then, you know, these other things. And anyway, so the persistence that comes from being able to respond back, you know, when somebody says no, but also to read the documents because someone says no to me and I’m like, well, can you point to me the written rule of why somebody say, no, no, they they might not be able to point to a written rule. What they want you to do is they’re just so used to saying, Oh, I can just say no to this person and they won’t question. And then, you know, there are a couple of times where somebody says no to me. I ask them where in the rules it says that. And then they’re like, Oh, well, we reconsidered. So yeah. So being able to essentially mean where can I appeal. Right. If you know I do appeal, well then yeah. So

10:41 Emily: Yeah, it’s kind of appealing or negotiating and also like asking for your source. Like if you’re telling me there is a rule, okay, I’d like to take a look at it myself. Would you send me the link? Would you send me the document? I found the same thing that people have an impression of what rules are, and that’s actually not literally how it’s written or they’ve misinterpreted maybe what was written. And there’s another way to interpret it. Yeah.

11:05 Jason A: Everything’s sort of like a game of chicken when you’re trying to spar with someone. So their game with chicken is all the same. I just said no, they’ll go away. My game of chicken is I need the rule and they’re going to have to do the work to find the rule. And then they’re going to they’re going to realize, I don’t want to do that anymore. And it’s easier just to let me get what I want. So anyway.

11:26 Emily: I like what you said, though, about, like, oftentimes administrators. I mean, I don’t like to ascribe ill will to people. That’s not very, very, very obvious that that’s what’s going on. But a lot of times people are just overloaded and it’s easier to say no or just dismiss you or whatever, because it would create more work for them. But if it’s really important to you and important to your peers, then you should both try to come to a solution together. That’s mutually appealing.

11:53 Jason A: It helps I don’t take things personally on these types of issues. You know, I am I’m not someone who takes things personally, so it’s cold water on a duck’s back to me. But I can still write that emails to respond back. But yeah,

Retirement Negotiations

12:06 Emily: All right. Well, let’s get into these enticing areas of negotiation and pushback that we talked about before. So I want to hear about your kind of personal experiences working with or against or whatever the Stanford administration in these these four areas. Okay. We’re going to talk about retirement, going to talk about health care, transit and then income tax withholding, estimated tax. So let’s start up at the top with retirement. Can you give me a summary of what’s going on right now and what you have tried to ask for, what you’ve tried to advocate for?

12:39 Jason A: Well, so I have the privilege of having some extra income. You know, not everybody at Stanford has that. But one of my goals is to save 15% of my income. If you start early, this is what Fidelity says it’s only 15%. But a Roth IRA isn’t sufficient for that. And, you know, I think retirement is more like a public health issue. So in that you should have it deducted and not think about it, because if it’s not there, then people aren’t going to do it. So that’s why I think the employer deduction is really important.

13:12 Emily: That’s why people are moving to opt in system or rather opt out systems rather than opt in systems that are normal type of workplace.

13:19 Jason A: Yes. And then also my first year, I needed to borrow for my retirement from my company because I was in a cashflow pinch for about three months. And I was able to do that because I was still employed. I was simultaneously employed. If I didn’t if I weren’t simultaneously employed and I would have you know, you have all these graduate students who are super cash for. But you know something? A lot of them work between undergrad and graduate. So, you know, if Stanford provided this retirement benefit, then, you know, a lot of things happen. You know, you can do that public health savings, you can borrow from it. And, you know, and the benefit is very cheap. So, for instance, another company I work for, I know that the price per person participant is about $4 per month. And that’s actually a very expensive plan. So what my my knowledge is, is that I know this is very cheap and it’s extremely beneficial. I mean, it’s essentially helping grad students avoid taxes from the federal government. Right. Or avoiding shark loans.

14:21 Emily: Absolutely. And furthermore, I mean, Stanford and every university already operates a 403(b) plan at a minimum. And that’s the plan we’re talking about here for the listener. We’re talking about expanding access to the 403(b) plan that the university already has for its employees and faculty and everybody to the graduate students who are also employees. Correct?

14:42 Jason A: Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly right. 401- 403(b) for for my institution because I guess we’re we’re exempt from income tax. But yeah.

14:53 Emily: Yeah. And so you’re saying, yeah, just what you said. Like if a student came in, let’s say they had a 401K or a 403B at a prior employer and they were able to roll it into Stanford’s 403B plan and they’re currently an employee at Stanford then like you did, they would be able to take a loan or while withdrawal could happen either way, but a loan against the four oh three B and then be able to pay it back gradually over time to alleviate the cash flow crisis. As you said, that is so common, especially the start of graduate school, very, very expensive transition. Generally speaking, they’re not helping you at all or very much so. Absolutely. That makes sense. And as you said, to continue the, I think it’s partially like a mindset thing, like because four oh three B’s are not typically offered to graduate students. It’s like not it’s not on their mind. It’s like an out of sight, out of mind thing about saving for retirement. And as you said, if possible, saving something like, you know, a few percentage is fine, but up to 15% would be an amazing goal to be able to accomplish during graduate school. And without the employer support on that, it’s easy to put it on the back burner. It takes a lot more initiative to open up an IRA, you know, separately from what’s going on at work.

15:59 Jason A: Yeah. The only reason why I was on my mind is because while I’m out of Berkeley does this. All right? Right. And so, you know, there are institutions out there that do do this. So

16:09 Emily: Okay. And so what communications did you have with the administration regarding the 403B?

16:14 Jason A: So, you know, student government is its own own thing. And, you know, so on the docket list of priorities, retirement is at the bottom one. Okay, because there’s far more important issues. Okay. But it also costs the employer nothing. Postdocs already have this. Okay. So this is like at the bottom of the list. You know, we’re hoping that they’ll give us the crumbs or whatever. Right. So when I pursued this avenue of advocacy several years ago and the response was, well, so if we give you this plan, then you’ll lose your FICA tax exemption. So just for your readers, graduate students and students in general do not have to pay FICA taxes and which is seven and a half percent off if your paycheck for Social Security and Medicare. So it’s like, Oh, wow, Well, we wouldn’t want to give up seven and a half percent of our paycheck. So I can I can have the option of putting 1% away. Right. Well, so you know that that’s where the legal experience comes in. I’m like, well, they said no for a very good reason to me. And so I go through and read the IRS law and I look up, I see I pull up the document just in case, you know, document number 9167, And on page 24, the IRS provides a comically helpful example that explicitly explains that graduate students can participate in the form of 403B plan and not be FICA exempt. And this is like so you know that tenacity I’m talking about. Well, I read that document from page one through page 30, right? It takes a lot of gumption, I think is to read through really boring topics like this. And it turned out to be helpful. So then as a student government, I got some pro-bono advice from a retirement lawyer. After I wrote my own opinion, I had the lawyer look over it and then I sent back this demand letter that says What you said is not true. And no, and we should be able to get this. And then so then after that, they’re like, Oh, well, nobody would use it. And, you know, the survey data that I have by most, my constituents shows that that’s not the case. People would in fact use it. But, you know, you know, I’m hoping that different organization, hopefully our union will be able to win that. But, you know, there’s a lot of other priorities, too.

18:30 Emily: Okay. So that’s the current status of you think you’re in you’re in the right here, at least their excuse number one was not a valid excuse. I haven’t looked at this myself. It’s very interesting to me. I’ll have to check this out after the end of the podcast interview. And that’s where it stands right now. You’ve knocked down their argument, but no further progress.

18:49 Jason A: Yeah. I mean, I think food insecurity and affordable housing and health care are much more important issues. But, you know, two years ago when I was working on this, I was, you know, you know, Thursday evening, I’m like, we’re doing my research and I’m like, oh, thank you, IRS they like, I’ll give you an example. Like, student J, is this No, they are exempt from FICA, which is I think it was kind of comical, but yeah, they didn’t do their homework or they were they’re lying to me to give me a go away. I mean, who knows? You know, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but at the same time I think it’s clear and Berkeley and other universities are able to do it.

19:31 Emily: Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, I agree in terms of, like, basic needs, you know, paying people enough that they don’t have to access food pantries and be housing insecure and all these things very important. But there’s also like the optics on, hey, like let’s treat grad students like they’re real employees and give them real benefits that other people have in other places. It’s quite standard. So there’s that aspect of it as well. But thank you for filling us in about that, because I am quite sure that many, many grad students around the country would also like to use their universities for 403Bs and you know, maybe they can get a little budge on this like you have so far not been able to, but good efforts to move on to the second topic of health, health care, health insurance.

Health Insurance Negotiations

20:13 Jason A: Yeah. So Stanford you know your readers can Google Stanford Bill on affordability and I, I wrote with my colleagues in the graduate Student Council 10 page actually explaining why Stanford is not very affordable. But one of those things is health care. We have the most expensive health care plan that I can find. And then one of the things that is expensive about it is that Stanford students, rain or shine, I have to pay $1,000 per year for their primary health care. I do think that other universities have similar fees, but they’re covered by their tuition. So I do have family who are health care administrators, and I’ve  participated in health care advisory boards. So it’s typical for an employee, an employer, a large organization to have advisors on benefits. Stanford faculty have this, Berkeley students have this. We’re still working on Stanford students, but essentially the students come together and they advise on what benefits should they should they have like, oh, graduate students need wisdom teeth surgery because we’re young or prescription eyeglasses would be nice at Stanford they’re not covered, you know, things like that. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be cost positive or neutral. The point is, is that people should have a say because they pay into the plan. And the administrators, I think, don’t have the best knowledge. The students have the best knowledge. So that’s something I’ve been fighting for for more than two years. I mean, retirement is probably the interesting thing about the taxes and whatever. But, you know, you know, you know, we’re that’s the thing I’ve been working on for a long time. So, like, for instance, Stanford recently changed and they passed just a smidge on allowing student advice on that topic. But they retracted actually. So we’re we’re still fighting for back. But essentially, you know, the advice that I was able to talk about is, you know, students want an app to use their health care because last year, in order to get claims processed, you had to mail in the claims and pulling your hair out like, I don’t know, maybe your readers have an app for their health care, right? So I had to help. I had an app for my parents when I was on my parents insurance. And then and then. Furthermore, the plan is a very high level plan which sort of prices out. Most everybody, only people on the plan have it subsidized. So, you know, the professional students are really hurting right now because they might be over the age of 26 and their only health care options are Obamacare or Medi-Cal or this plan that Stanford offers. So I’m really, that’s something that we’ve been asking for. And, you know, I think we’re going to get it with the with the union. But, you know, I wish that Stanford was as good as Berkeley, so I’m wearing my Stanford shirt. But, you know, Berkeley has been doing this for years. I wish Stanford would catch up on this on this regard.

23:11 Emily: Well, it’s good to have a nearby, you know, peer type institution to compare to and say what are the best practices that we can take from over there and share back and forth? I think in our prior conversation, you mentioned to me that the annual premium, if I remember correctly, for like a like a single person enrolled on the health insurance plan was like $7,000, is that right?

23:33 Jason A: Yeah. So the aggregate expenses are a 68 plus 1000. So I think about 77 to 7800. And if you have a student partner with a child, the premiums are 12 grand a year. At least 12 grand last year might be 13 this year. So and so to me. So, you know, there’s been issues with the plan because it’s in low participants and they’re apparently in a spiral out of control. And, you know, you wonder why it’s so, so, so expensive that nobody can afford to use it. So, yeah, to me, that price is like, please go away. That’s what the premium says, Please go away. So and then especially to our Stanford International students who bring partners and children and they have visa restrictions preventing them from getting other jobs, you know, those are the people who are at the food pantry every month because they are doing their best in such an unconscionable circumstances.

24:40 Emily: I can confirm when you said that number to me in our previous call that really raised a red flag for me, that that was very high compared to what I hear at other institutions. I want to say. I mean, I was in grad school some number of years ago, but I want to say it was like 2 to $3000 for the year for the premium for one person. So, yeah, a very different price level between those two. So that’s interesting that you. Okay, so you’re saying there it’s an under enrolled plan because the price is so high, which causes the price to go higher. So it’s like in sort of a death spiral. But the competition, let’s say, okay, if you’re a student, you can enroll in this plan. If you’re still under age 26, maybe you can enroll in your parent’s plan or maybe have a spouse. You know, there’s other places people can go, but then that last resort is like the ACA exchange rate versus the Stanford plan.

25:26 Jason A: Yeah, what’s sad about that is you lose a bunch of tax subsidies, right, because that’s why your employer pays for your health care. You know, and there are some tax subsidies. You know, I haven’t done my research into it, but I mean, it’s a very it’s it’s really structured that your employer should pay for this. And also the plan here is for the facilities nearby. If you go ACA, you know, who knows where you where you’re going to be and especially those international students who are coming into this health care system and don’t know what is going on. But yeah, yeah. And part of the reason why the plan is so expensive is because all all Stanford, pretty much all the health care, you have to go to the hospital. And Stanford also is a nice hospital, but it’s impacted. So like I tried to get an appointment nine month waiting time for myself, you know, So they made some changes this year that I hopefully will alleviate the problem. But, you know, this problem could have been alleviated years ago if if they’re listening to the students. So yeah. And also say a lot of this is my opinion. So take that with every grain of salt.

26:37 Emily: Absolutely. Okay. So the idea here is to get a committee, a student group that advises on the health care plan. And right now you’re voicing a main concern is it’s very expensive and it’s driving people away.

26:51 Jason A: Yeah. And I’m not the only voice. I mean, people talk about the mental health issues. There’s the minority disparities in health care that, you know, my family members talk about that I think are insane. You know, this is the type of feedback that needs to come in. And I think the best way to resolve it is to have everybody speak their own voice. And I just I’m just one voice. That’s why it needs to be a committee

27:13 Emily: Okay. Well, thank you so much for bringing that up.

Commercial

27:15 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2023-2024 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/speaking/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Transit Negotiations

28:35 Emily: Third on our list is transit. Tell us what you’ve been doing on that front.

28:40 Jason A: Stanford took away free transit benefits and May June and people are very angry about that. So I’m

28:49 Emily: Are we talking about on Stanford’s campus like busses? Are we talking about trains or what level of transit?

28:55 Jason A: Trains, yeah so rent is very, very expensive in Palo Alto. I don’t know if you’ve heard of so there’s a train that was very convenient that Stanford used to use, used to purchase the monthly pass for, and so I’d like to see that returned. Furthermore, I like on the subject of retirement benefits, costing them nothing. Every employee at Stanford has access to purchase those tickets pretax, which is an effective 30% discount to Stanford students. Right. So and yet another payroll benefit that costs them almost nothing that they can extend so that their employees get thousands of dollars every day. So I would say that that is the transit element that I would like to see happen.

29:40 Emily: Plus the environmental benefits of incentivizing, using public transit over other forms of transportation.

29:47 Jason A: Absolutely. As part of, you know, the Stanford just inaugurated a new school called the Doerr School of Sustainability. So yes, I totally agree with those arguments, although I am a little bit focused on the taxes because I’m a little bit biased on. Yeah.

Income Tax Withholding Negotiations

30:03 Emily: Great. All right. Fourth topic and one of my favorites, the lack of income tax withholding on paychecks for non employees who are U.S. citizens and residents of for tax purposes. And for that group, the possible requirement to pay estimated tax. So this is the issue that you and I first got connected over. So, yeah, I’d love to hear what you’ve been talking about on that front with the administration.

30:29 Jason A: You know, Stanford is an educational institution and I think it is on them to educate their students on their taxes. So one of the things I’ve been working with, graduation council, are these tax office hours. Well, where the government, the student government will purchase the CPAs time and will, you know, explain how to, how to do this. Students really don’t know. You know, I was fortunate enough to grow up in a high school district that literally made every single 18 year olds in your file taxes by hand and like a dummy scenario. So like I you know, you can go to the post office and get your tax forms. I didn’t know that. Right. So I came in knowing every single dollar that I earned, I have to pay tax. A lot of people don’t know that. So at the office hours, you have a wide breadth, you have your international student who’s dealing with tax treaties and all sorts of stuff, and then your domestic student who is this is their first time in their entire life that they’ve earned income and it’s a fellowship and they don’t get their W-2. It’s not you know, TurboTax can’t handle it. And, you know, TurboTax and professionals will get the advice wrong on certain aspects. So one of the things that I was fortunate enough to get Stanford to do is to take a stance on health care fees, the taxability of health care subsidies on fees. So a lot of students at Stanford, which is really why I’m excited to talk to you today, are are falsely paying taxes on their health insurance stipend. So they they get charged at Stanford $7800 a year and some people that’s partially subsidized and then it’s reported funk funky on the 1088 and 1098 is not an income tax. It’s just a it’s just a education benefits, deductions and credits right and graduations aren’t taking those deductions and credits. It’s really the wrong form for them. So you know stand for housing affordability issue. But, you know, I’m so glad that Stanford talked to you. I mean, the reason why they’re hiring you for this is I’m hoping, you know, so we can save graduates from $3,000 of taxes a year. Right. We have an affordability crisis where people are going to the food pantry every month with their wagons and children. This is $3,000 that they don’t have to be paying. Right. And so, you know, when I was student government and I had this from government to government is paying a CPA like $500 for their time. Right. And then you’ve got 100 people coming in and they’re overfull and each one of them is is saving thousands of dollars. Right. This is like the, you know, retirement, transit. But this tax stuff is probably the easiest way that Stanford can take initiative and stop all of this. You know, years ago when I was starting my advocacy on this, a Stanford person told me that that the interest and penalties that students pay every every April as part of their tuition rate, as part of their tuition, they don’t know. They come in. They they don’t know they need to make estimated payments. And then they get you know, they get those fees. That’s their tuition. It just made me so angry that they that they could send an email to everybody today. But this is an example of tenacity where Stanford’s like, it’s not my problem. I don’t want to be liable. What not. Right. But that’s not true. Okay. They they can say this is what a typical student does. You know, my high school in Marietta, Georgia, explained to us how to file taxes in a theoretical scenario. Stanford can do it, too. So, you know, I’m really glad that you’re coming on, you know, a couple of weeks to talk about that. So that’s the end of my long rant. But I could go on.

34:16 Emily: Absolutely. I mean, you hit on several different issues in there, which I think are incredibly important. So let’s start with that. Okay. $7800 in what I in my framework, it’s called awarded income. So it’s fellowship scholarship type income, not reported on W-2. That’s what I call awarded income. And as you were saying earlier, awarded income. Like you have to assume it’s taxable right from the outset. You have to assume that as part of your taxable income, unless you can prove that it went towards paying a qualified education expense and then it gets to be tax free. So the argument here is that whether or not health insurance premium paid, you know, for university health insurance for a student is considered a qualified education expense. And in my opinion, the opinion of the CPA hired to, you know, work with me on this. It is under limited circumstances where it’s required of the student and the student is purchasing it through the university. And that means that that premium or that means that the amount of money that goes towards paying the premium gets to be tax free because you all have such a high number on that. That 7800 really makes a big difference to you all, especially it’s going to be a lesser effect at other other institutions, but still in effect. And so it is an important thing to know that if you receive a 1098-T, that amount of that premium is not going to appear in box one as a as an education expense because it’s not a qualified education expense for the other benefits. As you were saying earlier, the Form 1098T is not designed for the tax free scholarships and fellowships benefits. It’s designed for the lifetime learning credit. It’s designed for the American Opportunity Tax Credit. But that’s not the one grad students are taking. They’re taking tax free scholarships and fellowships. So anyway, the 1098T is like, okay, as far as it goes, but you have to have this inside knowledge that it’s not a complete document. It doesn’t actually list all your qualified education expenses. And that’s a real disconnect. People think they receive a form and it’s kind of trustworthy and it’s really not. You have to double check everything on it to make sure that it’s complete and accurate for your situation. Oh, I’m going on my rant now too.

36:11 Jason A: Yeah, well this is why it’s really important to read those really dull IRS instructions after having three and a half years of legal experience. And you view me the legal brains like, well, health care is disallowed in sections two and three for undergrads, but it’s not disallowed in section one for graduate students. And then you’ve got a CPA. So like I’m in office hours, I’m literally arguing with someone who is has their own tax advice over the phone. And I’m like arguing with the professional over this because they’re wrong, because professionals get this wrong. And this is why Stanford needs to step up and take a stance here, because that’s a lot of money here. And anyway, it also kind of points to how our government should function because it shouldn’t require years of legal experience to be able to navigate our tax code. 

37:02 Emily: I totally agree. It’s interesting that you and I have kind of come to this in a similar way of just like I just I just read the thing like, I just sat down and read it, like, completely. And once you do that a few times over a few years, like you kind of get used to the language and it’s not so intimidating. And you can make those connections like, Oh, the definition of qualified education expense is different depending on which benefit you’re talking about. Oh, the definition of earned income is different depending on which tax benefit you’re talking about, but you only pick up on that after, you know, exposure. And as you’re saying, it doesn’t it’s very hard to find, I mean, this is the experience my client is. But if you work with me, it’s because they can’t find a CPA who’s versed in this because it doesn’t pay. This is not their typical client base. And so you either have to find a CPA and really educate them or somehow find a magical unicorn, which I have not found who is like already well versed in this. But anyway, that’s why people end up working with me, because while I’m not a CPA, but I have read this and I’ve really tried over years, including professional consultations to understand what’s going on, and now I can communicate that

38:04 Jason A: Yeah, I mean, humans were never meant to read all IRS instructions document, so I don’t really want to fault them for it, but that’s just the world we live in. So.

38:16 Emily: It’s tough, especially because even many tax preparers, CPAs included end up relying on software to prepare the returns, and they’re not necessarily deeply analyzing what goes in and what comes out of that software. And if the software, as you said earlier, like TurboTax, is not designed to handle, like you can do it if you know the tricks, but it’s not intuitively designed to handle this income. And so if the software is letting you down, but you don’t even know enough to know that it’s letting you down, it’s a really, really tough area. Oh, I’m getting fired up about this, too. I’m like, I need to create a software solution. Okay. Anything else you want to say about this topic of estimated tax or the reporting or the taxability of like this fellowship type income?

38:55 Jason A: You know, I just want to add like my one sentence obstruction, which is what I do is I go to this website called Smart Asset. I put in my expected income. I ignore the FICA taxes and I look at the federal income and state income, and I take that number divide by four. And that’s what you need to be paying every quarter. And if you forget, you’re going to be splashed with interest and with interest and penalties. Interest rates high now. So if you get a fellowship, you owe money. Even if they don’t tell you

39:29 Emily: Exactly. And that’s the same website that I recommend when I teach this as well for like, okay, honestly, the best best thing to do is to fill out the estimated tax worksheet in form 1040-ES. Yes, but a lot of people don’t do that. I understand. So that calculator is a really good like substitute. You may be paying more than the bare minimum you’re required to, but that’s okay. Like if you accidentally overpay a little bit, you’ll get a refund at the end of the year. And it’s a quick way to get some peace of mind that you’re like, you’re on top of this issue. You’re not going to be fined at the end of the year, most likely. So yeah, I really like that suggestion. And the other thing that I’ll mention, just throw in there for potential future advocacy on on your front is that the university that I went to, Duke, they did withhold income tax on fellowship, paychecks and fellowship stipends. I’ve only heard of a couple of institutions that do that. It’s very, very, very rare. But it happened to be that the one that I attended did that and it causes other complications with reporting. So it’s not an easy, easy solution. But they did it somehow.

40:26 Jason A: Stanford told me that they can’t withhold and now you say that that that’s not true.

40:32 Emily: No, it’s not true.

40:32 Jason A: They don’t have to. But you know just, another reason why it’s not my problem go away administrator, but. Yeah, I mean I talked to them about this and I totally, I it might not be the best solution but I think it’s better. People have their rent deducted. You know in the tax office hours, they’re like, my, I have this deduction why wasn’t taxes put in there. I’m like well your rent deduction didn’t include a tax deduction. So, anyway.

41:01 Emily: Yeah, it’s definitely not impossible. But as I said, it’s very, very rare. What ended up happening in my case is that the income then was reported on a 1099 Miscellaneous. So they basically so they had a box for your amount of income and they had a box for your amount of withholding. They had to use a form that did that because the 1098T doesn’t have a box for how much income was withheld from it. Now compared to back when I was in graduate school, there are 2 1099 options that sometimes gets used for fellowship income. One is the 1099 MISC and one is the 1099 NEC, I’m not sure which Duke is currently using, but I’ve noticed that some funding agencies end up putting fellowship income on a 1099 NEC, which brings up a whole other issue, which is people confusing their fellowship income with self-employment income, which shouldn’t happen and just PSA to anyone who’s listening to this, like do not allow that to happen on your tax return because the fellowship was not self-employment income, in my opinion.

41:50 Emily: Okay. 

41:51 Jason A: It’s very expensive mistake. 

41:53 Emily: Incredibly, I mean.

41:53 Jason A: Very expensive mistake, yeah.

41:55 Emily: You mentioned the 7.65% for your FICA tax it’s double that right for self-employment tax. So huge, huge issue to get into and actually I’ll reference in the show notes an earlier podcast episode I did with someone who went down that mistake route and had to correct it with the IRS. Okay. So among these four areas that you’ve been working on, along with student government and some other people, are there any like big takeaways or lessons that you can convey to the listener about like best practices around doing this advocacy around financially related policies on campus?

Best Practices for Financial Policy Advocacy in Higher Education

42:24 Jason A: I you know, again, tenacity to read the documents. You know, I think we’ve gone through three examples where a Stanford administrator says the wrong thing because there’s just not there probably want to go away but IRS instructions twice and then know. Yeah so like you know on our outline here about how to negotiate for better benefits, the first step is to ask and when they say no, do your homework with with the documents. And you know, I consulted that retirement lawyer and graciously gave me that advice to confirm what I had read in the documents. So, you know, student governments can engage lawyers, unions can engage lawyers, you know, get your own advice and stick them with the letter that says, no, what you said was false. Oh, and then get it in writing too writing is really important because. Yeah. 

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

43:22 Emily: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for that. That advice, that suggestion, that route to go down. Let’s end with the question I ask all my interviewees, which is what is your best financial advice for another graduate student or another early career path? Ph.D. And it could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

43:40 Jason A: So. Okay, maybe this might be this, this might make you chuckle a little bit. So what I do when I file my taxes is I use, I do it redundantly with two softwares and then I submit it with the free one. I make sure the numbers match and it’s actually debugging that is how I’ve really learned the tax code of of all this. So and then so don’t pay money to the to corporations that lobby for our taxes to be complicated. So I will not do that. But anyway so that’s that’s the first piece of advice.

44:14 Emily: I want to make a small comment on that because I love that suggestion A lot of people don’t know. So I’ll mention TurboTax just because I’m more familiar with the software. A lot of people just, you know, input their numbers and then the the return is generated and filed. But there’s a step before that where you can preview your return. So you preview the 1040 and any other forms that have been generated through that process. And that’s what you can compare apples to apples with another software. You also preview the 1040 over there. You get a nice PDF or whatever, and there you can compare line by line to make sure everything matches or see what the discrepancies are. So you don’t just have to blindly submit whatever forms this software is generating. You can actually look at the final form before it’s submitted.

44:55 Jason A: Yeah, and, you know, TurboTax has like the automatic import. So it’s not necessarily that you’re entering it twice. It can be a just a double check

45:04 Emily: Very good. Well, I love that suggestion. Also for me, filing my tax returns manually, like literally by hand or through the free fillable form system was a great education. And I’m very I don’t know. Is the IRS still on track for their own software coming out for upcoming tax season? I know I’m excited too. Okay what was your second suggestion

45:26 Jason A: You know, so there’s this Reddit financial or personal finance page with the flowchart on what to do. I would Google that and follow the flow chart. And then one of those things after you’ve done emergency savings is, you know, Roth IRAs can be a vehicle for your emergency savings under certain circumstances because Roth IRAs, you can pull out the contributions, you can put your emergency savings in cash and a Roth IRA or Treasury bills if you if you want to do that, low risk. And then, you know, if you have the emergency, you have the emergency. But if you don’t have the emergency and five years at six grand, you know, then you’ll have $30,000 in your retirement and your Roth IRA when you end, and then you’ll go straight into that high income job will not be eligible. So, you know, if you can, I would put your savings in cash in a Roth IRA until you have enough cash to start investing it. But.

46:25 Emily: This is an advanced technique. It’s not one that I recommend because I think it’s difficult to do that. The qualifier that you mentioned is keep it in cash or keep it in a very no risk investment inside the Roth IRA. That’s what I think is difficult and where people might not complete this whole process correctly, because it is to me very important that you not take any risk with your emergency fund. But yes, you can still keep it inside the Roth IRA. I love your point of like use that eligibility to contribute to the Roth IRA when you have it, because it may not be around forever once you get to those higher paying jobs. So good suggestion, but I want them to listen to your whole suggestion.

47:01 Jason A: Yeah, it’s all about the audience here. You know, a Stanford PhD student, you know, you’ll find people who are ready to do that advanced topic. I mean, graduate students but yes, you’re right. Totally right about that.

47:14 Emily: Well, Jason, I’m so excited that you agreed to come on the podcast. This is a wonderful interview. I hope our listeners will take some of what we talked about today and go back to their own institutions and start advocating for some of these same issues or using some of the methods that you mentioned. And I especially love your tip about basically perseverance, both in reading the documents and doing your homework and also with your communications, because you’re going to get told no. And like you said, just it’s not personal. Let it roll off your back. Come back. You know, do your homework, etc. So this is really, really valuable, I think. Thank you so much.

47:42 Jason A: It’s been my pleasure. Thank you for reaching out. And I want to say good luck to all of your listeners in their their financial pursuits and advocacy and good luck to SGWU you as well, because we’re going to we’re going to fight like hell to get to get all the things we deserve.

Outtro

48:04 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

This PhD-Prepared Nurse Managed a Night Shift Side Hustle Despite It Being Frowned Upon

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jacqueline Nikpour, who holds a PhD in nursing from Duke University and is currently a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania. Jackie side hustled with occasional nursing per diem jobs to supplement her stipend during grad school, but her side job also conferred unexpected benefits to her dissertation and career progression overall. Jackie details how she managed her schedule to fit in her research and writing, night shift job, and personal life. Jackie and Emily also discuss how finances are a barrier for many people to even pursue a PhD, how one-size-fits-all prohibitions against side hustling hurts the PhD workforce, and how Jackie advocates for the grad students she works with now.

Links mentioned in the Episode

PhD-Prepared Nurse Managed a Night Shift Side Hustle Despite It Being Frowned Upon

Teaser

00:00 Jackie N: You don’t just exist in academia as a, as a person and have nothing outside of it. Like we are fully complex, complicated, messy humans. And we sort of are the total package that we are. And so I think just creating a little bit more flexibility in place because every student, every discipline is so vastly different.

Introduction

00:28 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others.

00:58 Emily: This is Season 16, Episode 2, and today my guest is Dr. Jacqueline Nikpour, who holds a PhD in nursing from Duke University and is currently a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania. Jackie side hustled with occasional nursing per diem jobs to supplement her stipend during grad school, but her side job also conferred unexpected benefits to her dissertation and career progression overall. Jackie details how she managed her schedule to fit in her research and writing, night shift job, and personal life. Jackie and I also discuss how finances are a barrier for many people to even pursue a PhD, how one-size-fits-all prohibitions against side hustling hurts the PhD workforce, and how Jackie advocates for the grad students she works with now.

1:46 Emily: I’d like to take this opportunity to invite you to the next Ask Me Anything on mortgages and being a first-time homebuyer with Sam Hogan, which will be this Thursday, September 28, 2023 at 8:30 PM ET / 5:30 PM PT. Sam is a mortgage originator specializing in early-career PhDs, an advertiser with Personal Finance for PhDs, and my brother. If you are considering or embarking on the home-buying process and have a question about any aspect of it, please join us! That goes double if you have fellowship income, which can throw a wrench in the mortgage approval process. Register for the September session or any upcoming one at PFforPhDs.com/mortgage/.

2:35 Emily: You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e2/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Jackie Nikpour.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:51 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Jackie Nikpour she is a PhD prepared nurse, currently doing a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania. And our topic today is side hustling, especially as a graduate student. So Jackie, I’m really pleased that you decided to join me on the podcast today to talk about this topic and will you please introduce yourself to the audience a little bit further?

03:13 Jackie N: Sure. Thanks so much for having me, Emily. So, like you said, I’m currently finishing up my postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m a nurse by training, so started my career as a registered nurse in pediatrics, medicine, behavioral health, and then went into grad school, finished my Ph.D., and now working at the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. A lot of folks know that as the center that does all of the research on nurse staffing ratios and how that impacts patients.

03:51 Emily: And you shared with me just before we started that you are currently interviewing for a faculty position, so you are pursuing the academic faculty route.

03:58 Jackie N: Correct. I really want to stay in the research realm. Scholarship is sort of my bread and butter. And so teaching is something that I enjoy and I want to do. But my my focus is more tenure track.

Working Before Pursuing a PhD

04:13 Emily: And can you give me an idea of how long you worked as a nurse before you pursued your Ph.D.?

04:18 Jackie N: Yeah. So I would say everyone, every nurse who participates has a little bit of a different story. So I say I’m a kind of nontraditional person, but I don’t think there really is a traditional PhD prepared nurse anymore if there ever even was to begin with. So I kind of always knew from my undergraduate nursing school research experiences that I wanted to be on the research side. And I knew from both my personal life as a caregiver for a chronically ill parent and as a nurse later on, caring for kids from all over the world at Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia, but also kids from Philadelphia who oftentimes were from low income neighborhoods and might not have always had the resources to to stay healthy. I kind of knew that that as a nurse, I was often a Band-Aid for a very broken health care system. So I worked full time for a year and then pursued. I went directly from a B.S. to a PhD or a Bachelor of Science in nursing to a program. I don’t have a master’s degree at some point, and I get one that’s, again, that sounds a little bit atypical, but it’s becoming more and more common. These are more obviously research degrees, whereas a master’s in nursing is much more clinically oriented for the most part, so it’s seen as less of a requirement. So worked full time for a year, went into my PhD program and then we’ll talk about this a little bit later on. But about halfway through, started working as a nurse again in a per diem.

Transitioning From Nurse to PhD Student

05:59 Emily: Yeah. So the reason I wanted to kind of ask for this is because I wanted to know your motivation for taking side, hustling very seriously while you were in your PhD program. And I wonder if it was because you had experienced an income decrease coming into graduate school. It sounds like maybe you did, but it wasn’t like you had, you know, been multi multi year has grown accustomed that lifestyle. You were still kind of in a student kind of mindset, is that right?

06:20 Jackie N: Definitely. But it still was a hit. You know, I worked full time. I worked for a very well-renowned hospital, which is great in terms of the experiences I got. But also I think because of the name of certain well known hospitals, the pay isn’t quite as high. And so I was also long distance with my now husband before we were married at the time. So. So that was a hard kind of financial thing, traveling back and forth from Philadelphia to Atlanta. And I, you know, left that position, moved and went to making probably about half of the income that I was. But I prepared for that. I worked really hard to save up a lot of money as much as I could before I left. I tried really hard not to take as many vacation days as I had available so that they could all get paid out and say I was leaving all things that were a little bit tough but I knew were temporary and would help kind of set me up for success knowing I was going into a PhD program that would not offer the same kind of income support

Doctoral Institution and Stipend

07:30 Emily: And so where did you do your Ph.D. and how much was your stipend when you started?

07:35 Jackie N: I did my PhD at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. And when I started out, Oh gosh, I have to think back, when I started my stipend was in the 35 to 40000 range. I can’t remember specifics, but it was relatively decent. Actually a big reason that I went there was lots of reasons that I pick my program, but it was helpful that Durham, North Carolina, did not have the same high cost of living as major cities like Philadelphia or Atlanta or other places that I was looking at. So that was a cost. You know, that was a driver for me. And as I’m sure it is, and what is for a lot of people. So that kind of went into my my decision making and leading up to starting with the PhD program, I definitely plan out the financial. It’s very uncertain what my outlook was going to look like.

Why Start a Side Hustle?

08:32 Emily: Okay. So it sounds like you prepared really well in that year that you had working to do to set yourself up again for starting the program and you said you started side hustling about halfway through. So what was the reason for it? Was it financial or were there other other factors?

08:45 Jackie N: Yeah. So I would say that there’s a couple of things. One of the, I guess both challenges and opportunities that I had was I was part of a national scholarship program that fully funded my tuition, have some funding for expenses like conference travel, provided extra mentorship, things like that. And in exchange for that, I completed my Ph.D. program in three years, actually, I did mine in two years and seven months, which is very chaotic. But it was good and was not crazy in the nursing field. I would say most people do their PhD between three and five years, a little bit more, a little bit less depending because you’re not in a lab, you’re not really working as an R.A. or TA as much as maybe in a STEM or humanities type of field by job. But all that to say that once I got through the first half of my program, which was very class oriented and I was, you know, really hunkering down during the semester and focusing on coursework, once I got through that and I was no more focused on my dissertation, I had a little bit more flexibility. I think I wanted more clinical experience because again, I’d only had about one year of full time clinical work and I had a really good friend who I was living with at the time and she is very passionate about the adolescents with severe eating disorders population and turned out there was a facility about 10 minutes from my apartment that she started working at and they were really actively hiring folks was right before COVID hit and I decided, okay, you know, if I can do this per diem and sort of make my own schedule so that I’m still, you know, obviously prioritizing my Ph.D. and finishing my dissertation, this might be a nice way to make some extra income. And further my clinical training, which even though I’m focused on the research side, I think having clinical experience to some degree have helped shape your way of thinking. So all of those things kind of came together and supported me in doing that. Then I say it was right before COVID because after I got hired about three months later, COVID hit, everything was remote. So I wasn’t driving back and forth to campus anymore, which saved me some time. So I was doing my Ph.D. kind of discussion work from home and then just driving 10 minutes in and 10 minutes home the next morning because I work night shift sort of on a schedule that I was able to to choose. And you, you know, all of those things kind of coincided, too, to allow me to continue.

Side Hustle Schedule

11:36 Emily: So it sounds like you were really thinking about the side hustle as part of your career progression as well. Yeah, although to me, when you said you completed your PhD in two years and and nine months, it was a bit shocking to hear that you also fit in a major side hustling position once you started really working on a dissertation. So we’re going to talk more about that in a moment. So you mentioned, you know, what your side hustle was, why you decided to pursue it. Can I ask maybe this is a silly question, but working the overnight shift, were you sleeping overnight or were you then sleeping during the day or like how did that aspect of it work?

12:12 Jackie N: So I would really plan my schedule based on what I had going on. So like for example, Monday mornings I was always meeting with my statistician to do the actual, actual quantitative findings from my dissertation. So I wasn’t working Sunday nights because I knew I had to meet with her every morning at not every Monday. So I was planning out my schedule a few weeks in advance based on when I knew that I had a meeting scheduled, I would block off time to work on my dissertation on my calendar and really only picked those nights that I knew I could sleep in the next morning. So I would work 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., get home, sleep until about noon or 1 p.m. and then wake up and kind of go about the rest of my day. The days after night shift were a little bit tricky, so I tried to use those days to get done work that didn’t involve as much brainpower. If you will catch up on emails, Maybe if I had like a paper that I was a coauthor on and I just had to look over it and provide edits, I could do that. But those were not my, like super heavy intellectual working and writing my dissertation days. I sort of staggered those so that I wasn’t doing that. I really only worked probably 2 to 4 nights per month, maybe a little bit more in the summer. But it ended up being about one or two nights a week, if that, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on schedule.

13:49 Emily: What I like about what you said about how you set this up and what I think is applicable to other people who might not be taking on night shifts for their, you know, side hustle or maybe managing it at a different time is how you kind of you said a week or two in advance you would sort of like theme the days like on this day I’m going to be doing my heavy thinking dissertation work, really doing analytical stuff on this day. I know I’m going to be doing lighter work for your reason. It was because your sleep schedule was a little bit disrupted, but for other people there may be other reasons do that just because they maybe learned their own natural energy to the week when they’re going to work best and whatnot. And this is something that I have, I did not learn as a student, but I have only learned as an entrepreneur that like it’s really helpful, I think, to literally the podcast that I listen to, it calls this theme days. So like in my business, I have days when I’m more focused on clients and days and I’m more focused on content and days where I’m focused on business operations and so I find it really helpful not to just be like at any moment I could be doing any work and it’s all top priority, you know, like I know what the priority is for the day. So I really like that about the schedule that you developed.

14:49 Jackie N: I would say looking back, you know, I don’t think I intended to do that originally, but I do think that taking that role on really how my time management skills because I didn’t have a choice and and that was something that, you know, set me up for for success down the line. It not only allowed me to kind of think about how I would approach my week and set up days with, you know, priorities for the day and what that focus was going to be. But it also set me up to be in a better position when I was going for postdocs and even just life in general. One thing I did mention was that I was also planning a wedding at the time, so so that was a huge help for that. It was a huge thing that allowed me to help pay down my student loans during the student loan pause when there was no interest accruing. So it ended up being an incredibly valuable experience and in a lot of ways that maybe I didn’t anticipate when I started.

15:51 Emily: Yeah, is there anything else that you want to kind of add about that? People don’t like the word balance anymore, but the way you worked between your dissertation, work your side hustle, your life, everything else, anything else you want to add about that?

16:06 Jackie N: I would just say that I think it required a lot of intention. I am very lucky that I had a supportive partner, but even if you don’t have a romantic partner, you know, having people that you can ask for help when things get a little bit chaotic and knowing your own limits and knowing like, let’s say someone who is going to pick up a shift, if I knew it was a really busy week, say, you know, I can’t do this. So knowing to ask for help, knowing when you need to back off certain things. And I agree. I mean, the word balance, I think is hard because it’s never like a 50/50 balance of anything. It’s sometimes this is going to take the priority. You know, sometimes I need to be focusing on finishing this dissertation chapter. Sometimes it’s going to be summer and I keep focus a little bit more on making extra money for my wedding? Things like so priorities shift and just being mindful and aware of that. You go along. It’s for me something that I still do. You know, I’m not in a [??] role anymore.

17:12 Emily: And I love that so much. It’s just another way to like sort of broaden your horizons and, you know, get outside of the academic setting and academic bubble through your work and you’re also making money the same time. It doesn’t hurt.

17:23 Jackie N: Which was really, really valuable. And, and one thing that I wish was maybe a little bit more normalized in nursing programs. There’s a little bit of a hush hush kind of policy of you’re not supposed to be working because you’re supposed to be focusing on your dissertation. But stipends are low and often don’t meet the cost of living. And it’s a little bit untenable to expect graduate students who have a very applicable set of skills to not be using them in cases when they’re able to.

Commercial

18:01 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2023-2024 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/speaking/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Side Hustle Policies

19:22 Emily: Let’s talk about that a little bit more. So like, was there an official policy either for your scholarship or in your program regarding side hustling?

19:32 Jackie N: Yes and no. It was a little bit of an honor system in general, I would say, at least in most research intensive programs. I don’t know about teaching or other programs. It’s a little bit kind of hush hush like you’re not supposed to outwardly say that you’re working clinically. You know, I never told my advisor until after I finished my dissertation. Now that she wouldn’t have been understanding, but just that I didn’t want to put myself in a position where I was potentially not being seen in a very positive light. And that’s that was hard. You know, I wanted to grow my skills and I got a lot out of that, like I said, influenced my career and my and my research. For my scholarship program. And we came in, they had told us, you know, you’re not supposed to work more than 20 hours a week, and 20 hours meaning in addition to your your your scholarship and your your studies. But a lot of times people were just not either following that or some universities will require their students, their students, to to pay for 25 hours a week during the semester. And then it becomes a conflict between the scholarship and the school. And you’re kind of caught in the middle. And that’s a really hard position to be in to. The other thing is that if you are, so that was the scholarship that I was a part of, that was through a private foundation called the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It’s a very large health care foundation. I was not funded as a PhD student through NIH, National Institutes of Health. As a postdoc I am. NIH training grants that fund PhD students and postdocs have a limit that you are not allowed to work more than 10 hours per week outside of your funded scholarship work. And that’s, in my opinion, a little bit outdated because NIH also sets limits on what you are able to be paid annually. And so it was like, okay, you’re telling me this is how much money I’m going to be making and I can’t work more than this amount outside of this. So what am I supposed to do if I’m not meeting ends meet? Like it’s just is a little, and there’s ways I think to to kind of I don’t want to say get around it, but like for example, I was a co-investigator on a study and ended up doing the the brunt of the actual work in terms of we did qualitative interviews. I led a lot of the quantitative analysis and we ended up with an extra, I think like $500 on the grant. And it was just used to sort of compensate me for the additional labor that I took on. So that’s not like a quote getting around it like that. It’s perfectly legal, if you will, but there’s other situations in which that’s not a tenable way to exist as a PhD student or as a postdoc. And so I think that’s a big structural barrier that a lot of people are kind of calling on NIH to address.

23:13 Emily: What would you put forth as like your preferred policy? Like, would there not be a number, like a ceiling on outside work or like, Well, because we all like, I think everybody is in agreement that the Ph.D. work, the dissertation needs to be the number one priority. And the person, whether as a position or as a postdoc like, you know, be making progress towards whatever your goals are and whether it’s side hustling that has gotten in the way of that or whether it’s something else has gotten in the way of that, like the student or postdoc and the supervisor need to make sure that that person is still on track. So what should what should the language be?

23:47 Jackie N: That’s a good question. And I don’t know if I have a specific this is what it should be instead of this, but I do think that it should not be a one size fits all case because this is the case across all NIH, NIH has 27 institutes and centers and these students and all of those kind of areas of research look very, very different. And nursing is a great example, right? If we’re told you can’t work more than 10 hours a week outside of your scholarship postdoc work, well, nursing shifts are typically 12 hours in line. So you’re telling me I can’t pick up a 12 hour shift on a Saturday or Sunday when I’m working 40 hours Monday through Friday? Like that’s it just wasn’t designed with that in mind because it was designed to be a one size fits all case. So I think it’s about maybe tailoring some of these things for each discipline or each university or I think what I’m seeing just more broadly and a lot of college programs is mentor mentee sort of informal kind of contracts where each party, each mentor mentee kind of shares what that relationship is going to be like and what each person’s responsibilities are and creates an opportunity to come up with an individualized plan for your development as a scholar. And when those are in place, I think that does open the door to more conversations like, Hey, listen, advisor, I really need to make extra money. Not only, you know, because my stipend is as low as a student, but what about people who have kids or what are people who have aging parents or other kind of life things going on that that they need to be able to support, you know, those sorts of things I think need to be addressed because that’s what you’re bringing to the table, right? You don’t just exist in academia as a, as a person and have nothing outside of it. Like we are fully complex, complicated, messy humans. And we sort of are the total package that we are. And so I think just creating a little bit more flexibility in place because every student, every discipline is so vastly different.

Structural Barriers in Academia

26:13 Emily: Yeah, I’m starting to, as I’ve put more and more of my own focus on advocacy and not just on like the personal of personal finance. I’m seeing the finances of PhDs as a workforce development issue. And you kind of brought this up earlier, like who gets to do a Ph.D.? Who gets to the completion point of a Ph.D.? And the finances can play into this in terms of what populations even are able to pursue that. So can you talk a little bit more about that?

26:40 Jackie N: Absolutely. I think there are so many structural barriers that limit even who is able to get in the door in academia. And I have colleagues who are in the very position where they’re low income, have family in a different state or in some cases in a different country, oftentimes are trying to send money back home to support their low income families. Maybe not may not be able to afford a car, especially in a place like where I was in Durham. I had friends who they couldn’t afford to purchase a vehicle, which was hard because it’s a very car dependent place. You know, there wasn’t a ton of public transportation available. And so that impacts even the time it takes you to get to class and how long you you have to study and get stuff done maybe in the morning before classes or how long it takes to get home. And that’s just the timing takes away from other things that you could be doing, including your dissertation or assignments. Are there is the caregiver aspect that we just talked about. There’s so many things, plus the fact that, you know, this is a very low wage job because that’s what it is. It’s a full time job. You know, you’re still a student, but it’s work. And and there’s just so many people who I think we lose out on in all disciplines because they are not able to turn their lives upend their lives to complete the demands of a program. And there’s no resources in place to support so many of them.

Advocacy in Academia

28:29 Emily: So the side hustling could help, Right? Side hustling is a bit of a Band-Aid. Like ideally NIH, everybody else would just pay people enough that at least most situations you wouldn’t need a side hustle. Now, in your case, we just talked about side hustling had other advantages besides the financial and that’s awesome. So can you tell me, is there anything you’d like to add about how you advocate now for other PhD prepared nurses around being able to side hustle so they should they so choose.

28:55 Jackie N: Absolutely. I think, you know, I’m still in a postdoc role, but I do have students who I sort of informally mentor and like, for example, I work on on one project that is a clinical pathway. We support patients who are insured by Medicaid in discharging home from hospital, make sure they get the support resources they need so that they’re not readmitted. We have grad students who work on our data collection, who run our weekly case conference meetings, who do a lot of that labor. And I’m always, you know, encouraging them and watching them make sure you’re keeping track of your hours, make sure that you are submitting for all of the time that you are eligible to be paid, because we want you to get as much money as you as you are entitled to right like you’re signed on for 10 hours a week. Like make sure that you’re actually submitting those 10 hours per week. I am. I work a lot with trying to make sure that, let’s say when we hire doctoral students, research assistant, what is the maximum amount that we’re able to pay? And let’s pay them off because first of all, that’s grant money that needs to be spent anyway, number one. Number two, I know what it’s like to be in the position. I was in it very recently myself and so I would say a lot of that advocacy that I’m doing is just within my own kind of world and those students that I work with. But it’s also showed me a lot about the kind of mentor that I want to be, Let’s say when I have my own PhD student advisees. I want to make sure that I’m creating a culture where I know what my students needs are and they need to work to support that and support their families, then I’m going to work with them to make that happen. No matter what we need to do, we’re going to get it done. I think myself and a lot of other folks, anytime there’s like an NIH open comment period about how we support career postdoctoral trainees who are funded through NIH, I really make an effort to to comment on those sort of open forums and give examples of here’s what let’s say raising the stipend for each, let’s say first year, second year, third year each has its own kind of stipend, years of experience. Raising those that could help support so many things that actually contribute to better scholarship because you’re not spending ten, 20 hours a week doing this other work. So that’s part of it. I will also say that, you know, this was not my case, but I know folks who were in student unions as students, I will say in one case in a major cities like New York and L.A., where cost of living is super high, it’s actually a little bit of a disadvantage if you want to get an NIH doctoral funding award because the stipends for that would be lower than what you would get as a stipend just by being a physician at the university. And so that’s a barrier because getting those awards sets you up to be competitive for postdocs and faculty candidates. And so that’s creating space to dismantle some of those structural barriers that prevent people from even entering academia in the first place and then developing the best science that they can.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

32:23 Emily: Love it, Jackie. I think we need to leave it there. The hour has flown, so I want to ask you the last question that I ask. Of all my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early career? It could be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

32:39 Jackie N: I would say the best advice that I can give to anyone financially going to a PhD program is just to plan as much as you can for the years ahead. You know, you’re in a PhD program, you’re already going to be, you know, I think I don’t think there’s been a PhD student who’s never been stressed out. So you’re already going to be stressed out about figuring out your dissertation, finishing your coursework, getting all the things that you need to to to get your degree. You know, you don’t want to be stressed about finances, too. I think when I first entered my PhD program, I was so I need to know exactly what my dissertation question is going to be because I’m on this three year track and I don’t know what I’m going to do, how I’m going to have enough time. I wish I hadn’t been so focused on that and I had, you know, more so narrowed my focus. I mean I did to some extent, but just planning out and budgeting. Okay, what realistically is my income going to be? How can I save up as much as I can and prepare to not have this be a stressor when I’m in the midst of everything else? And that also includes knowing, you know, sorry, but that also includes knowing about what life is with taxes as a PhD student, because it’s very, very different than I expected. So just knowing what to expect, I think, again, your your website and your your content and your podcast is a great way to support incoming PhD students. So just the preparation involved is what I would say.

34:14 Emily: Well, Jackie, I love that advice. It’s been so wonderful to talk with you and thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast.

34:20 Jackie N: Of course. Thank you for having me.

Outtro

34:27 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

How This Grad Student Budgeted for Having Her First Child

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In this episode, Emily interviews Madeline Hebert, a rising second-year PhD student in Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut. Madeline’s household has an irregular income; her assistantship stipend varies between the academic year and the summer and her husband is paid hourly throughout the year with a variable schedule. Madeline details her household budget, which accounts for their irregular income, irregular expenses, and financial goals. Their biggest financial goal at the moment is to provide for their new baby, due just a few weeks after this interview was recorded. Emily and Madeline discuss the Big Five expenses that new parents need to account for: health insurance, parental leave, childcare, baby stuff, and home/car. Madeline shares all she’s learned about the benefits she receives at the federal, state, and university levels (she is part of a union), and how important it is to talk with your peers about their financial experiences.

Links mentioned in the Episode

How This Grad Student Budgeted for Having Her First Child

Teaser

00:00 Madeline H: Really look and consider that quality of life package portion of the Ph.D. like research interest that is super important. But having a livable arrangement is also extremely important for peace of mind, for, I knew that for us, pregnancy was a very real option for us during my Ph.D. So, I want to see like, what would that look like? What what coverage do they have and what kind of protections do they have? So.

Introduction

00:31 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others.

01:01 Emily: This is Season 16, Episode 1, and today my guest is Madeline Hebert, a rising second-year PhD student in Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut. Madeline’s household has an irregular income; her assistantship stipend varies between the academic year and the summer and her husband is paid hourly throughout the year with a variable schedule. Madeline details her household budget, which accounts for their irregular income, irregular expenses, and financial goals. Their biggest financial goal at the moment is to provide for their new baby, due just a few weeks after this interview was recorded. Madeline and I discuss the Big Five expenses that new parents need to account for: health insurance, parental leave, childcare, baby stuff, and home/car. Madeline shares all she’s learned about the benefits she receives at the federal, state, and university levels—she is part of a union—and how important it is to talk with your peers about their financial experiences.

02:08 Emily: My Office Hours are open to you this fall! About once per month I host a free Zoom call to which you can bring any financial question or topic that relates to your journey as a PhD or PhD-to-be to discuss with me and the other attendees. These sessions are limited to four people each. Register through PFforPhDs.com/officehours/. I look forward to speaking with you there! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e1/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Madeline Hebert.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:55 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today. Madeleine Hebert. She is a rising second year PhD student at the University of Connecticut. Now, we are recording this interview in late July 2023. By the time you hear this, Madeleine will ideally have a new family member joining her, which she will talk about later on in the interview. So first, we’re going to discuss irregular incomes and supplementing your income as a graduate student. How Madeline and her husband budget for irregular expenses and irregular income. And finally, about how they’re budgeting for their baby, who will be born by the time you hear this. Okay. So, Madeline, thank you so much for joining me today. Will you please introduce yourself to the audience a little bit further?

03:37 Madeline H: Thank you for having me. Yes. So my name is Madeline. I am a rising second year over at the University of Connecticut and the Human Development Family Sciences Department. And me and my husband are excited to be expecting our baby from Louisiana. I just started my PhD this past year, and then we got married in November and found out we were expecting in December. So lots of new changes that we’re really excited for and lots of things to consider when it comes to our financial budget.

Income Details

04:07 Emily: Yeah. What a year. What a blockbuster year for you. And it’s only going to get more exciting. All right, let’s jump into this. So let’s cover what are the incomes that you have in your household between you and your husband? And like, what are the pay frequency, the pace schedules for both of you?

04:23 Madeline H: Yes, so I’m on a graduate assistantship through my university is a nine month stipend type assistantship was like a W-2, so it’s not a fellowship. And then we get paid biweekly roughly. And then my husband works at a hospital where he also gets paid biweekly, but it falls on every other week in between my paycheck. So every single week we are receiving some sort of income just about. And then in the summer, during those 2 to 3 months that I’m not covered, we can receive income through our department sometimes, but not guaranteed. And a lot of students, myself included, find some supplemental income as well for that.

05:11 Emily: Wow. I don’t know if I’ve spoken with anyone before whose household has income coming in literally every week between two different jobs that pay go to that is actually really interesting. I’m so excited to get to your budget in a second. Would you like to share your income level approximately or specifically yours and or your husband’s.

05:29 Madeline H: So my school I have a master’s already and so they change how much you make based upon whether you have came in with a bachelor’s degree or a master’s degree or or a Ph.D. candidate, have defended your competence, taking your competency exam. And so I came in with the master’s and it’s getting bumped up to about 28,000. I think, for this upcoming year. Every hour we are unionized. My job is unionized. And so that means that they have negotiated a pay raise every year for us. And so it was 27 roughly this past year and now it’s moved up to 28. My husband’s job pays of roughly about the other 50%. We make about roughly the same per month, and so that makes it really easy for budgeting and stuff.

06:22 Emily: I can see that your income changed a little bit from your academic year income. It sounds like it was a little bit lower over the summer. But you also told me during our prep that your husband’s income is also irregular, even though he’s, you know, paid regularly like biweekly. So how what’s the nature of his irregular income?

06:38 Madeline H: So my husband works hourly and he is a he works at a hospital, so they have shifts and stuff, but his paycheck is by the, by schedule. It’s mostly regular, except every now and then he’ll get double booked or he’s able to pick up shifts or he, with everything with the travel and such, like my job covers for those kind of vacation funds. And it’s a lot easier for me to know like, okay, like if I have to miss a day or such like that covered fairly easily. But for my husband, if he misses any hours or if he has to leave early, those hours might get dropped and such. And so we have to kind of budget for those kind of factors as well.

Budgeting for Irregular Income and Expenses

07:22 Emily: Mm hmm. Yeah. So he experiences both. The upside of you work more, you get paid more. And also the downside of you don’t work, you don’t get paid. So, yeah. Okay, let’s dive into more about how you budget then with this frequent but very, very irregular and challenging kind of income. I’d like to talk both about how you budget for that irregular income and also for irregular expenses in addition to whatever financial goals you have. So however you want to tackle that, let’s get started.

07:50 Madeline H: Sure thing. So I track our spending using Excel spreadsheets. For me, that’s the easiest way. And what I’ve done when we before we even got married, I’ve kind of thought to myself, okay, like how much is it going to cost and how much is my expecting to make for myself and what kind of living situation would allow for us and for myself, even if I were just to live here by myself, Which was the plan the first few months before we got married was to make sure that the living situation I had that roughly that 50, 30, 20 budget that a lot of people kind of discuss about. And so when I did that, when he came up, we made a plan for, okay, you know, you find a job that makes roughly this much if you can try to like negotiate for pay. So this way it fits with our current living situation and this labor able to save. And so the way that I started budgeting was figuring out like, okay, this is how much the necessities cost our rent, our bills, our insurance. I just those are just solid numbers that we had to include. And then figuring out, okay, this is how much we already came in with. For a while he didn’t have a job, so we had to budget and figure out like, okay, what can we afford versus how much are we willing to take out of our savings? And then once he did get a job, I tried to budget to where we were maximizing our savings because we knew that we want to kind of replenish our savings after the wedding and such. And we kind of discussed, okay, like how much are we willing to spend on going out? I did a little bit of tracking, as you have always recommended, of like figuring out like, well, what are we already spending on groceries? What are we already spending on going out to eat and such and figuring out, okay, like, can we live on less?Can we can be budget a little bit more or figure out a way to make those expenditures last longer. So we got like a Costco membership, for example, so we can book by a little bit better to make it easier for ourselves for when we go get groceries instead.

09:55 Emily: So let’s talk more about the the budgeting that and especially with his income being irregular, how how does that work?

10:01 Madeline H: So to kind of account for that, what I do, I tried to make that not be such a stressful factor by having us use a credit card together and making sure that we are both having access to that credit card and to see like how much we’re spending on that. And we kind of talk regularly about like, okay, this is where we’re at in our spending, because it took a while for him to be able to see like what we’re spending. But, um, so even though we are getting paychecks every single week, that actually doesn’t factor into my budgeting so much because we are, we just pay everything on a credit card that we pay off at the end of the month. And but what’s nice about our budgeting practice is that because receiving income every week and we’re also tracking it with our credit cards, we’re able to see like, okay, has our credit is our credit card above what we are currently at in our bank, and then we’re able to kind of adjust. So I can see like, oh, he didn’t make the expected income that we were hoping for that we would have expected for like a full week, for example. And then we can adjust based upon that being like, okay, well maybe we’re just not going to go out to eat this week or we’re going to wait to buy this item that is not in pure necessity. And by that layer next month, for example.

11:17 Emily: Mm hmm. I see. So you’re kind of allowing the spending to accumulate on a credit card throughout the month and you can kind of look at those numbers and compare them to how much income you’re making throughout that same month and make adjustments, as you’re saying. And I assume also your husband might be able to volunteer for extra shifts like you might be able to increases income if he’s, you know, available and healthy and so forth.

11:39 Madeline H: Yes. So so in fact, he’s signing up for additional shifts. So this way we can kind of have a little bit of a buffer with the baby. And because of how parental leave is working for us. 

11:50 Emily: Yeah, definitely. Okay. So that explains kind of how well that explains a little bit of the irregular come and the irregular expenses to a degree because you mentioned maybe deferring some spending that’s not strictly needed to happen right away. Is there any other detail you want to give us about how you’re budgeting for irregular expenses?

12:08 Madeline H: For the most part, that is kind of how we work for irregular expenses. Although every month I also make sure to put a budget itself, a number being like about $100 being like, okay, this is for irregular expenses that we’re not into, that we don’t have like a specific category before. And as well, if I know that there’s an upcoming expense, like I know if we have like a doctor’s appointment or a dental appointment, I put that into our budget and see like, okay, where can we adjust the numbers for other categories when we expect an irregular expense, such as like a water bill or like a doctor’s appointment like that. And so that also gets kind of put into the budget that way for this Labor avoiding creating a habit of dipping into our savings.

12:50 Emily: Okay, so it sounds like in addition to doing the tracking that we were just talking about and the adjusting on the fly, you’re also budgeting proactively. Okay, So the beginning of the month, you can see, okay, here are some things on the calendar or some special things that take some extra money. So you already have a plan for how you’re going to account for all of that, and then you just continue to tweak it throughout the month.

13:08 Madeline H: Yes. That’s exactly what we did.

Savings Goals

13:11 Emily: Yeah, that sounds great. Now, you’re also you mentioned a high degree of savings and so forth. Do you have any like specific savings goals? And let’s maybe leaving aside the maybe I don’t know, we’ll talk about the baby stuff in a moment, but were there any savings goals outside of baby related?

13:29 Madeline H: Yes. So before we found out that we were pregnant, we were planning on saving for my husband to potentially go back to college for a new house. And we wanted savings for being able to travel home since we’re from Louisiana. So making sure that we would be able to visit home at least once a year. Those savings are, for the most part, still existing, but the contributions to them are a lot different. And the new home slash college fund is kind of the same bucket at this point. So it’s more just a matter of like Craig those in addition. And then the third one was the emergency savings fund itself.

14:07 Emily: It might. I don’t know if, I may be projecting. It might feel like a setback to you that you had to put pause or at least reduce these other savings goals you have when you found out about the pregnancy, which obviously takes up a lot of money itself. And now they’ve had, you know, whatever, 15 plus years of doing this budgeting stuff like life is long and things come in cycles. And as long as you keep the habit of saving where it might go and how it fluctuates at different stages of life, that may change what you’re doing specifically for a short time, but you’ll be able to get back to it and like you’ll be able to accomplish those goals. It just might be, you know, next year instead of this year or two years from now, instead of this year.

14:50 Madeline H: Now, I appreciate that, because, yeah, sometimes it feels like that and that’s been part of this whole process of like adjusting what our goals are and trusting what our expectations are and then figuring out like, what are we comfortable in? Like how can we just create like better financial habits, like so and one thing that I wanted to add about the savings is that I have an automated account, like one of them is now automated, like automatically just draws like $10 out, which is not going to be missed. But it’s just nice knowing like, okay, something’s being saved if not even if I’m not always like thinking about her or such like that. So that helps.

15:30 Emily: You know, I think I mean, I think the automated savings is wonderful, but even just the step of having a bucket, like even though it’s different count or sub account within something, having a bucket available to just capture savings itself is a big step, even if you’re not consistently contributing to it. Because you know that if you, you know, ever got back to it or you had a windfall come your way or whatever, you have a place to put the money and like the plan is already like half there, you know.

15:56 Madeline H: That was something that, that was another step that I actually did do. I have multiple savings accounts, so this way I can visually see like, okay, this is what we have set aside for this instead of just being like, we have this big number in our emergency savings account and then thinking that’s only for emergencies, instead of being like, okay, this amount isn’t allocated for this type of expenditure and these amounts are okay to be spent for these other types of needs and stuff. So that helped a lot as well, like wrapping your head around all the numbers.

16:25 Emily: Yeah, and I love that strategy. I don’t use it as much now. But when I was at your stage with the budgeting, like I was using it so intensively and it was really, really helpful. When we were doing our prep call for this, I told you my philosophy of finances around babies, that the things that people maybe don’t notice so much are actually the things that are really, really expensive and that I’m always, like, curious about how people are handling them. So I’m going to ask you about four categories of expenses and how you are going to manage them either now or after the baby comes. Okay. So four categories. Category number one is health insurance. Whose health insurance is this baby going on? Is it going to cost you more? What’s going on with that?

Health Insurance

17:04 Madeline H: So the baby’s health insurance and my husband as well in fact, or his health insurance, they’re both online with my graduate assistantship because I found out that in order to add him to my assistance, so to add him to my my health insurance was only $100 more per month, which is more than what his job offers. But given my health insurance does not have a deductible, it has only a maximum out of pay and it has a very low co-pay. We were like this works really well for us in our current financial situation. And then to add the baby, we were very, very fortunate that there’s only like ten or $20, maybe $30 max out in addition to the current pay that we’re already making monthly for health insurance. So it’s not been the it’s not been a huge addition for having the baby added to and creating a family plan for our health insurance.

17:57 Emily: Phew. That’s great to hear, especially about there being like the low, you know, co-pays and the deductible and so forth. Because when you have a child, that child is going to go to the doctor a lot. So that’s great to hear. Now, I’m curious if your husband was not already on your plan, like let’s say he was on his workplace plan, would adding the baby to your plan be that ten, 20, 30 a month, or would it be the hundred? Is it like the second person or is that specifically that it’s a dependent?

18:25 Madeline H: I think that is specifically that the second person went from a $10 a month to a $110 a month to add a second person, a second dependent, as I put it, if I remember correctly.

18:37 Emily: PSA for you and anyone listening, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you have 30 days to get that baby onto the health insurance before you’re, you know, special life circumstance window expires. So I have had people who in that, you know, that fog of New Parenthood have forgotten to add that child to your policy. And it’s a huge headache. So please get your child added within the window your insurance company provides.

Commercial

19:02 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2023 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 15, 2023. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at time tax, 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 consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. Now back to our interview.

Funding Parental Leave

21:09 Emily: Okay, a second expense, your leave and or your husband’s leave. If he’s planning on taking one, how are you going to fund your life when you are on leave?

21:19 Madeline H: That’s a great question. So I’m very fortunate. As I mentioned before, my job is unionized and our union fought for paid parental leave for six weeks. If you have a vaginal birth and eight weeks of you have cesarean birth. And so that will be completely paid for.

21:36 Emily: That’s 100% of your pay or is a lower percentage?

21:39 Madeline H: Yes, It’s 100% of our pay.

21:41 Emily: Awesome.

21:43 Madeline H: And that will be covered for, and we do not lose any of our benefits. We do not lose our tuition waiver. We do not lose our health insurance. It’s 100%, 100% pay. And then that’s, well, relief from work responsibilities.

21:57 Emily: Awesome. And are you planning on going back to work after that six or eight week time period? Or are you taking more time?

22:04 Madeline H: I am planning on returning back because when if I even though I would qualify under Connecticut’s FMLA, which is separate from the federal optimally, it would not. It would not. First of all, I would not be paid. And then second of all, it would not guarantee my tuition waiver. So I would potentially have to pay for the rest of the semester for tuition in order to take up to another six weeks of leave. So we decided that that was a little bit eating into too much into our savings account for that.

22:38 Emily: Okay. I’m glad you’re being paid at 100%. I’m not glad that this is only six or eight weeks. That is a short time period. I mean, in the U.S., we already have nothing guaranteed and whatever. We know how bad the situation is.

22:49 Madeline H: yes, I’m fortunate about that. And then also my department has been extremely accommodating, extremely supportive. They I had mentioned to them what my situation was and I talked with them and they were able to actually get me practically 100% remote of ga-ship for this semester. So even though I’ll be technically working, I’ll be able to do this from the comfort of home and being able to watch over my baby still. So.

23:16 Emily: That is a good benefit. Okay. I’m so glad that you asked for that note to anyone else. Negotiation is always available to you. Okay. And then what about your husband’s leave?

23:25 Madeline H: And then my so my husband, he is a he is at a job that is not unionized. And so Connecticut has a policy in place called the Connecticut FMLA and then also the Connecticut paid leave. They are two separate entities, but they both require that you’ve been working at your job for at least three months, different than the 12 month requirement by the federal FMLA. And the FMLA protects his job so he won’t be fired while he’s taking leave for so long. But then and that goes up to 12 weeks and it can be split however we need to just bye week. So like he could take six weeks off, he could take ten weeks off and one week off. And in the future, for example, as long as it’s within one year of the baby being born. So the CT paid leave is a program that works separately from the FMLA, but very similarly in that a lot of the events that qualify you for FMLA qualify you for the CT paid leave, and that provides supplemental income for while he’s on leave. So at the beginning he will be paid any PTO that he has left and so that will be full time pay and everything. But then once he runs out of PTO, the city paid leave will kick in and he’ll be paid 95% of the current minimum wage, which is $15 an hour, and they’ll be paid 95% of that at 40 hours per week. And then he’ll also be paid the difference between his current income and the minimum wage, and they’ll be paid out 60% for, I believe, 40, 40 hours or however many hours he generally works. I think he works 36 hours actually regularly. So it will be paid out 60% of that on top of that 90% of minimum wage. And so 95% of minimum wage. So that will all be going toward for however long he’s on leave. And that was very big in our financial decisions of whether or not how long we’d be on leave and for who’s going to be on leave and all that.

25:28 Emily: I’m so impressed you rattled all that off, and it just shows you like the detail that really you do need to dive into to understand all the different benefits that are available to you, both through your employer and the state and the federal government and everywhere. So that’s that’s great that you investigated that also thoroughly. And how long do you is he planning on a specific length or is it going to be like more play by ear kind of thing?

25:54 Madeline H: We are planning for him to be offered 12 weeks because we don’t have family in the area and we’re still fairly new in the area. So this way ensures that we’ll have the support that we need or I will have the support that I need. And so but we are kind of talking about whether or not maybe it might be more beneficial for him to take off six weeks and save that for another time in the future, maybe around the holidays or such. But so we’re still playing around with that. But knowing that regardless, like will be covered financially, that is really nice to know. And then I’m still trying to figure out whether or not he will be receiving PTO hours while he’s gone or like how that will kick back in. And so that might also play a role into whether or not we decide to delay further on that leave time.

Child Care Expenses

26:47 Emily: So it sounds like the pay aspect of the leave is not as much of an issue for you too, because you’re going to get your full pay and he’s going to get, it sounds like, pretty close to his full pay, but it’s more the length and it’s when to take it and so forth. So that that will be tricky. All right. Let’s move on to the third large expense, which is child care. So what is the plan for child care when you’re when one or both of you is back at work?

27:12 Madeline H: Great question. So we found out that childcare is very competitive in general. People. My cousin had told me that the minute that you find out that you’re pregnant, you should start looking for childcare. So when we were looking for childcare, I was trying to figure out like what are the general rates? I called a couple areas who’s offering where they located. We found I talked with other parents who are in our program, some other graduate student parents, and they suggested where to go. We’re very lucky that my school actually offers an on campus daycare, but there are some other daycares in the nearby city that the schools are located in. And so I called around both. We ended up deciding on the childcare that’s associated with the campus, not only because of its convenient location being close to me and my own work, but then also because it honestly was one of the cheapest options. It offers a sliding scale based upon the parent’s incomes of any I. Things should happen, especially considering the irregularity of our pays. We might be able to accommodate for that in the future years. And they also offered a legacy aspect which was important to us to ensure we have childcare in the future, something that we had considered. We’re not only the daycare itself, but the daycare is offering of like, well, they were doing it every, every few days be different than full time childcare and like if they offered partial days versus like every other day. My husband though, his job is his schedule is regular but changes every week it’s regular and that every two weeks that repeats and that does not work well for daycare. So we had to pick a daycare that has availability for the child to be there every day. And then we also looked at home care options, but us not being as familiar with the area, we felt more comfortable with the daycare, but we did notice that home care options were significantly cheaper options compared to doing like a full time daycare. But that was so that was something that we also had to consider.

29:20 Emily: That’s awesome. That University of Connecticut offers that on campus option and that it was available to you because I know sometimes those are full, full, full. And that they do a sliding scale. That all sounds really, really good. Are you going to pick up with the child care in the spring semester? Like when is the enrollment going to start?

29:40 Madeline H: enrollment actually we had to sign up for enrollment as early as February of this year. So we found out we were pregnant December. And then immediately I was like, well, and like I said, I hopped on that on that daycare list. And we found out every February is when Connecticut at least changes their rate for daycare. So I had to wait until February to be able to even ask about rate. And then by April, we were we were given a tour and then after the tour they said, you have two days to decide if you want this daycare. And when you do, you have to pay down the first month and then it will be your child will be enrolled starting in August. But then you are paying every single month and you for the entire year. So even though our baby won’t be born until August and will be with us for the first three months, we are already paying for daycare and we’ve actually been paying for daycare since May. In addition to that, in addition past the security deposit.

30:40 Emily: Whoa, I have never heard of that arrangement because you’re basically just paying to hold the spot. Yikes. And if the full rate to hold the spot, poof.

30:52 Madeline H: Yes, we have to pay the full rate and everything. Yeah, I still think it’s like that because it’s like I know that that means that the that the workers are guaranteed pay. But at the same time it’s like I’m paying first of all, my baby’s not even born.

31:05 Emily: Yeah, I mean, at least can you sublet it? Can you sublet the spot?

31:10 Madeline H: I wish. I though about that, we had asked maybe in the, if we do could it in the spring, if we could just sign up and enroll in the spring, but spots wouldn’t be guaranteed. And the difference in pay is so much that it’s about, it was looking around $1,400 roughly, $1,200 to $1,400 depending upon which we had chosen at the time per month versus $1,700 to a part time or the full time for another daycare and the difference in price per month even though its, we’re paying for time when we’re not there, if we need, the baby would need to be in daycare as early as November potentially. And so the savings technically that we’re making over the long term and being guaranteed having this lower cost daycare in the future own out over picking one that we would use for less time at a much higher rate.    

32:03 Emily: Yeah. I mean, I’m sure you were in your spreadsheet doing those calculations and the break even point and everything, but, I mean, you’re going to be in grad school for several more years, so you’re going to need this child care for quite a while. So, yeah, it does make sense. I can see how it would work out that it makes more sense to pay a little bit more upfront to guarantee the lower rate in the long term. Well, that was a tough decision, though, I’m sure, to to pay for a service that you’re not actually quite using yet, But as you said, I mean, the childcare situation is so difficult right now all across the country.

32:33 Emily: And you sometimes you got to just take what you can get, even if it’s a little bit less than ideal in this setup. But okay, Thank you so much for explaining that. Is there anything more that you want to talk about with respect to the childcare costs?

32:45 Madeline H: Yes, actually. So I mentioned kind of the numbers is like 1200, 1400 versus practically its own separate rent to kind of make this fit our budget instead of being like, okay, we’re going to like continue our high savings until we like, can’t I decide that it might be more it might be a better idea for us to reduce the overall monthly payments by spreading it out a little bit more? So we started those payments, like I said, back in May, rather than waiting until August to make the first payment. So this way those payments are definitely fitting within our budget and our monthly income rather than trying to figure out, well, okay, we’ve got to save this much and we’ve got to save as much as we can, and then we’ll take some of those savings later in the future to pay for the excess lays like it got very complicated Those the simpler to be like, okay, let’s make sure that this fits in our current income the best that we can. So that’s kind of how we do savings but ensure that we have the money each month to pay off the daycare.

Budgeting for Baby “Stuff”

33:49 Emily: So you’re kind of you advanced your budget, your budget didn’t need to be doing that just yet, but you decided I want to make sure this is all balancing and all working out. And our fourth and final category is what I call the stuff, which is what people mostly like to talk about when you’re talking about preparing financially for a baby, which is the nursery and the furniture and the, I don’t know, the clothes, the formula, the the gadgets, all these things. So how has the stuff made an impact on your budget?

34:18 Madeline H: Thankfully, it’s been not as big of an impact as as I had feared that it would be, because I found out a lot of doing a lot of research what stuff is necessary to buy immediately, first hand or like buy brand new versus what can be afforded through second hand or be afforded through gifts and registries and what’s common. So we decided that we’re going to wait for to find out the gender of our baby. And that actually plays has played a role in our financial decision somewhat in that when we had a baby and a baby shower, it was really easy for us to tell people like, these are the practical gifts we have, and because people don’t know what gender we’re having, they don’t spend as much money on like trying to get us gendered items that we don’t really need, like baby girl clothes, a baby boy specific clothes. And so they focused a lot more on getting us things like diapers and burp cloth and like little swaddle and such. So that was a that was really useful. And then because we’re from Louisiana, we had a travel, we did travel back to Louisiana for our fam for our baby shower. And we specifically requested primarily for gift cards or money. And so that was really useful for us and being able to determine like, okay, this is how much money we have now that became kind of the budget for the baby. And then and then shopping based upon that, we were very fortunate to have a lot of family support as well. Like my parents pitched in some money. My in-laws have pitched in of helping us buy things that we need for the house. But surprisingly, there’s not very many things you have to actually buy, like brand new, like you want to buy the baby crib brand new. And so that was on our registry. We told people like, this is really important for us to be able to afford because this will be the baby’s bed. But also, too, I’ve joined a lot of Facebook groups that are like the Buy Nothing project or like free items in this area. And that helped tremendously because people surprisingly give out a lot of baby stuff because baby stuff doesn’t last very long in the center. Babies outgrow it very quickly before. It’s not like before. They’re like kind of growth. And so you’re able to like get a lot of toys that way or you’re able to get like a we got a changing table, we got a bassinet, we got a rocking chair. In fact, all of those like free three things. So that’s been super useful. I have also we have have we are part of a free home visitation program that offered free dual services as well as a free diaper bank. That’s part of the Connecticut Diaper Bank as well. So we have access to all of that and that’s been very helpful in like making sure that we can afford everything. So that’s been primarily like how we’ve been managing, affording all the baby stuff, items and such. Also kind of recognizing like what is needed has helped. Like for example, you don’t have to have a traditional crib. You can have like a pack and play, which is significantly much cheaper than having a crib and also much smaller. And so choosing things like that has also been able to help us be able to afford everything that we needed. And then  the timing for, for when we had our baby happen to coincide with buybuy babies big clearance and closure. And so we were able to use that to our benefit of being able to buy some really important things like a stroller and the baby car seat that way. And figuring out things like, for example, the stroller has a car seat, come with it. That was a decision that we made purposefully so obviously we would have a car seat guaranteed and long lasting is during the summer, but having a summer baby worked out a little bit for us as well as that Amazon has Amazon Prime Day during the summer, which I found out about, and so we took advantage of the big sales going on then to when we were purchasing all of our baby items that we finally needed after the showers.

38:25 Emily: Wow. Thorough. Again, I love it. I’m so you’re such a great interviewee on this topic. This is wonderful. And I yeah, I just want to echo like a lot of you said, you probably did not use this as a strategy, but I like it as a tip for other people of like not revealing the gender so you can steer people towards some more like practical baby items that you really need instead of getting caught up in all the cute clothes and all that stuff and that long distance baby shower. I had a long distance baby shower as well, but I was not as intentional about use, about saying like, okay, cash is really something we can take back with us quite easily. Let’s save up for these bigger items. I love that strategy as well. And yeah, it’s kind of surprising. Like babies do need certain items for sure, like the car seat, you know, the you mentioned like a safe place to sleep. But beyond those like few big things, it’s really parental choice. Beyond that, whether you’re going to get things new or secondhand, how much you want to spend, whether you want to have them or not. I mean, I have love them, but I have some very bougie friends who have like the SNU, like, you know, they are able to and willing to spend a lot on their their baby’s first months of life. And their comfort is parents and their baby’s comfort. And it’s just it’s not necessary for everyone. So there’s a lot of agency in that.

Housing and Car Decisions

39:37 Emily: And you know what? Now that we’re talking about this, I have a fifth category of expenses, which is your housing and your car. I’m assuming you didn’t change either one of those, but a lot of people do when they’re expecting a baby. So can you just talk about the decisions around that?

39:52 Madeline H: Yeah. I’m actually glad that you mentioned this because we so we live in a one bedroom, one bath apartment and we had planned to stay in here for the duration of my PhD for the most part. And then like I said, maybe saving for a for like buying a home, but with the baby and everything, we were wondering like, where’s this baby going to go? We luckily have a walk in closet. And we thought to ourselves, Well, maybe the baby can go in there. We’ve decided against that. We actually just rearranged everything in our home to make space for the baby. And like I said, some of the some the living arrangement that we have has also contributed toward some of the decisions that we made, like such as having a traditional nursery space. So we thought about whether or not we might move to a two bedroom, two bath or two bedroom at least apartment. Now, something that was heavily kind of talked about, it’s still something over the bay. But right now this we decided in the end to keep because financially it just makes the most sense. We know that we can afford easily what like our living and home expenses are where we’re at and then and we don’t need to increase that the space fit. We can’t hold our parents as guests, which is a little bit tricky, but that’s been the biggest part. We kind of justify being like, You’re not staying here that long when you come up here. So it’s more important that we have financial security than being able to host our families for like two weeks, every couple of months kind of thing. As far as cars, we decide to keep our cars. We’ve joked about getting a new car for my husband just because we liked a car that we had been in in our honeymoon. But currently both of our cars are, we feel are safe enough. And I primarily take my car around for everywhere anyways. And so the idea is just that we have the baby primarily in my car because it’s going with me to the park where the daycare is. And then if we ever need to, like he has a he has a different car seat in his that a convertible since we have an infant only car seat that came with our stroller. So that’s kind of how we’ve navigated it for us.

42:08 Emily: Yeah, well, I’m glad that we covered that because like I said, a lot of people do choose to get a bigger place or get a bigger or a different car. And I think it’s a little premature just for an infant. Infants are in fact, in fact, quite small. They come with a lot of stuff that they themselves are not very big. And so I think it makes sense because, yeah, you may need to get a two bedroom place, but it doesn’t have to have have to happen this first year, you know, maybe for the subsequent year and the one after that as baby needs, you know, some more space and you two need to get some more space for yourselves, too.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

42:39 Emily: Well, Madeleine, this has been such a wonderful and detailed interview. I think it’ll be super useful to anyone, especially graduate students, who are, you know, preparing for parenthood as well, or just having that irregular income that we talked about earlier. So as we wrap up, would you please share with us your best financial advice for another early career, a Ph.D.?

42:59 Madeline H: Yes. My best advice that I have for someone who is an early career PhD would be to talk with other students who are in a similar situation as you. That helped tremendously for me in figuring out like, what do we truly need? Where can we outsource some of the other options? Understanding, especially as a new parent, understanding how does paid leave work for our department? How does paid leave work for the for the government or for the state? I joined other like communities that where people were familiar with what’s going on in general. My husband talked to his colleagues about a lot of these processes. So just talking with other people who are in a similar situation was extremely helpful and I think that was kind of general advice, but I think that that was just so beneficial and useful for us. And then I guess something that would be more specific towards a Ph.D. and this may be more useful to someone who is considering PhD programs is to really look and consider that quality of life package portion of the Ph.D. like research interest that is super important. But having a livable arrangement is also extremely important for peace of mind, for for us for being able to navigate like changes in life like these and stuff. So I’ve made sure that I’ve read over like all of our health care options, for example, because I knew I was going to be married and I knew that for us, pregnancy was a very real option for us during my Ph.D. So, I want to see like, what would that look like? What what coverage do they have and what kind of protections do they have? So looking into all of that before choosing whether or not to accept a program was really important for me.

44:45 Emily: Yeah. And like, look how how quickly that information came into play for you in this first year. And even just going back that decision of like, can I afford this apartment on just my income alone? And how much like that one decision cascaded through this year and is helping you to afford all these other life changes that are going on. So it’s wonderful. Again, congratulations. Thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast. And I’m really excited for all of this wonderful stuff that’s going to happen for you.

45:15 Madeline H: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure. I’m really happy to have been able to have the opportunity to be here with you and and to share a little bit about what’s going on in my life.

Outtro

45:28 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Financial Advice from PhD Career Development and Financial Wellness Professionals

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In this episode, Emily shares the microinterviews she recorded at two higher education conferences this past summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What piece of financial advice are you glad you followed or do you wish you had followed as a grad student or postdoc?” Listen through the episode for excellent financial strategies that have stood the test of time for the interviewees.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Financial Advice from PhD Career Development and Financial Wellness Professionals

Teaser

00:00 Beth H: So thinking back to grad school, the things I’m glad that I did is is really just stick to the fundamentals of looking at what my income was and make sure I was budgeting it, saving. I was investing in my Roth IRA and now 20 years later, has made all the difference. Even the $50 a month I found back then is setting me up for financial success now.

Introduction

00:30 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others.

01:01 Emily: This is Season 15, Episode 6, and today I’m sharing the microinterviews I recorded at two higher education conferences this past summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What piece of financial advice are you glad you followed or do you wish you had followed as a grad student or postdoc?” Listen through the episode for excellent financial strategies that have stood the test of time for these interviewees.

01:36 Emily: The two conferences I attended were the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting or GCC and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance Summit or HEFWA Summit. GCC is primarily attended by university staff members working with PhD students and postdocs in career and professional development. The HEFWA Summit is attended by university staff members working in financial wellness and financial aid across undergraduate and graduate populations. These two conferences were excellent networking opportunities for me on top of the built-in professional development. However, there are plenty of universities who were not represented at these conferences. Would you please consider recommending my financial education seminars and workshops at your university? My most popularly requested events for the upcoming academic year are How to Survive and Thrive Financially in Graduate School or Your Postdoc, How to Not Hate Your Fellowship During Tax Season, and Up-Level Your Cash Flow as a Graduate Student or Postdoc. Please direct an appropriate potential host within your graduate school, postdoc office, grad student association, etc. to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ where they can learn more. Thank you in advance!

03:00 Emily: You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s15e6/. Without further ado, here are the microinterviews recorded at GCC and the HEFWA Summit.

What piece of financial advice are you glad you followed or do you wish you had followed as a grad student or postdoc?

Tax Implications: Kaylee Steen, University of Michigan Medical School

03:19 Kaylee S: My name is Kaylee Steen. I work at the University of Michigan Medical School. The piece of advice that I would have financial advice for postdocs would be that if you are on a training grant, you need to be aware of the tax implications and the fact that they they’re not going to withhold your your paycheck for tax purposes. And so that will change or make your W-2 non-existent. And that can be really complicated. So make sure that you talk with your training grant administrator about the implications for taxes and any other kind of financial implications.

Value as a Student: Stevie Eberle, Stanford University School of Medicine

03:57 Stevie E: Stevie Eberle, executive director and assistant dean of BioSci Careers at Stanford University School of Medicine. During graduate school and postdoc training, I really wish I had understood my value that as a student I actually had value and I had the right to say no or to ask for more. That being said, as soon as I learned my value, I, I ran with it. And I have taken every opportunity to actually ask for more or to reject offers that don’t offer either enough or anything to. Examples were recently with an event that I was planning where it was a DEI related event and they were going they wanted me to do this for free. It was a 300 person event and I said no until they offered me something and I ended up getting a very nice package out of it. Another example was when I was I wanted a promotion and everybody around me had this and I had had the same title except for me. And everybody was making a certain amount of money except for me. And I had all the data and they were not listening to me and they told me, You love it here. Let’s face it, you’re not leaving. And I said, Oh, that is not true. I love it here if I’m being paid equitably. So I found something else. And then they were surprised. And then I miraculously got a promotion and more money. So what I was saying is I wish I’d known, but as soon as I knew I ran with it. 

Retirement Savings: Alicia Roy, Gladstone Institutes

05:39 Alicia R: My name is Alicia Roy. I work at the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco and I received a piece of advice that came from a cohort member’s parent telling them to open a Roth IRA immediately, which I had also heard from my parent. But hearing it from multiple places really helps. And the two of us did it together. We sat down with our laptops next to each other and we’re like, How? How does this work? Where do we go? And I think that really helped me actually open that account and actually make that happen for me. And I’m really glad that I did that along, for now. Now is actually a pretty long time ago. At the time I was like, Is it already too late? And I now have colleagues. I’m in my mid thirties and I have colleagues who still haven’t opened one and I’ve had one for over five years now and that already makes me feel a lot better about the future.

Financial Habits: Melissa Bostrom, Duke University

06:32 Melissa B: My name is Melissa Bostrom, and I’m the assistant dean for graduate student professional development at Duke University. What piece of financial advice am I glad I followed during graduate school? Well, I really kept myself to a budget and really watched my expenses and made sure that I saved money for surprise expenses, emergency expenses like car repairs and also conference presentation opportunities. And I feel like those and a little bit of buffer in my budget really helped me take advantage of opportunities when they arose. And some of them are very positive and others car repairs not so positive.

Housing: Yasmine Farley, UC San Diego

07:10 Yasmine F: So hello, my name is Yasmine Farley. I am a senior associate director at UC San Diego. And the piece of financial advice that I guess I’m glad I followed or wish I would have followed while I was in grad school. When it comes to I’m glad I followed was being flexible in my housing arrangements and making sure that I was getting the cheapest option. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into when I first moved for my Ph.D. program. And so then being willing to chat around with colleagues, classmates and move in with one and then looking for others each year really helped to cut costs for me. And what I wish I had followed during grad school is to not take out as many loans. I had a full ride. However, I took out loans so that I could live and pay for rent and food and gas. But I wish I would have taken out the bare minimum so that I wouldn’t be saddled with all the debt that I have now.

Socializing: Anonymous #1

08:18 Anonymous #1: One piece of financial advice for graduate school and actually for life, but that I developed with my spouse when he was doing his Ph.D. Was that be very thoughtful about who you are socializing with and what kind of approaches to finances they have, what kind of class background do they have, and genuinely try to find people who are spending less money than you, you know, for their socializing, for their life and hang out with them and get to be friends with them, use them as models for how to budget and save money and most of all, not spend money. So stay away. Stay away from the free spenders or the or the loose spenders and stick with the people who spend very little to not at all, especially around socializing.

Retirement Savings: Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann, Humanities without Walls Consortium

09:20 Maggie NH: Hi, Emily. My name is Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann. I’m the associate director of Career diversity for the Humanities Without Walls Consortium. Which is a grant for a Mellon funded, grant funded project at space at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But I am located at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I think what I wish I had done while I was a grad student was to continue to think about my investments after leaving a career that I left, that I had spent about six years in before starting graduate school. So as I shared with you earlier, I used to work in wealth management for Financial Advisor based at what was then an affiliate of MetLife and no longer exists. And I worked in that role during the Great Recession from about how I was in that role from about 2005 to 2011 when I started graduate school. And right like I was completely in that world thinking about investments, watching people have to make really challenging decisions just to save their homes. Right. Seeing people pull out money from their 401k plans before they hit hit the age that you’re supposed to raise when you can start drawing contributions from your 401K. And they did that in order to continue to make their mortgage payments. Right? So I was I was there and watched people go through those decisions to save themselves and their families, or at least to protect themselves and their families after in some cases losing their jobs for up to two years, which was not an uncommon phenomenon during the recession. But then I started grad school and right like every little bit of money that I made through my stipend and my assistantship I had to use to meet my material needs, as opposed to continuing to think about how do I put a little bit of that into savings or how do I put a little bit of that into my existing 401K or what I now have A 403b plan since I work in higher ed. So I wish I had continued to do that because now I’m kind of faced with all three. I’ve got about 25 years before retirement and I don’t know that my investment savings are going to be where I need them to be when I retire in my mid to late sixties. Right? And so that’s I think the advice I would give to students or even faculty who might be listening to your podcasts. You have to be thinking about what, how much income are you going to need to draw from your retirement accounts when you get to 65, especially for our generations who might see cutbacks in things like Medicare or Social Security, how much money are you going to need to live when you’re retired and you might not? Right. So I think that’s that’s what I wish I had done.

Retirement Savings: Delaney Dann, Scripps Research Institute

11:58 Delaney D: Hi, my name is Dr. Delaney Dann, I work at the Scripps Research Institute. My piece of financial advice is as much as possible. Maxed out your Roth IRA during grad school and your postdoc.

Retirement Savings: Eric Vaughn, University of Rochester

12:13 Eric V: Hi, this is Eric Vaughn from the University of Rochester. My piece of financial advice would be start investing early so you can retire earlier.

Financial Habits: Penny Baga, Vanderbilt University

12:25 Penny B: Hi there. My name is Penny Baga from Vanderbilt University, and I encourage everybody to spend less than what they make.

Funding/Income: Elizabeth Harrington Lambert, Vanderbilt University

12:34 Elizabeth HL: So I’m Elizabeth Harrington Lambert from Vanderbilt University. And I think the absolute best piece of advice that I can give you is apply for funding before you need it. And don’t apply for 20 awards, but apply for three or four. Give yourself a plan B, a plan C and a plan D.

Funding/Income: Jessy Ayestas, University of Kansas

12:53 Jessy Ayestas: So, hello, I’m Jessy Ayestas. I am awards and outreach coordinator at the University of Kansas and also Fulbright scholar. So my piece of advice for any anybody thinking of attending grad school would be to consider applying for fellowships for scholarships, for grants. That will definitely facilitate at least the first years of your graduate education. And if the support that you receive is for a timeframe that is smaller than the time that you will be in grad school, then definitely try and think about the options that you will have and what opportunities may be available at your institution to continue being funded until you complete your program.

Financial Habits: Lindsey Cauthen, Baylor College of Medicine

13:35 Lindsey C: Lindsey Cauthen. Baylor College of Medicine. And I’m the head of career development. So I think the piece of financial advice that I’m glad I followed was really thinking about exactly how you spend your money each month and being very, very intentional about the way that you spend it and accountable. Right. So when I was in grad school, I had my own place and I was able to go on vacation and I was able to manage my money well, and that was because honestly, I had parents that taught me how to do so. So I had the proverbial envelope system and everything had a place. I think what I also did was I bought life insurance back in that time. That was really, really good life insurance. And I’m so glad I did that. And I did a little bit of investing and I didn’t have any debt coming out of undergrad. So that made a huge difference. And I didn’t come out of grad school with any debt either. So that’s made a big difference at this point.

Funding/Income: Colleen Gleeson, University of Texas at Austin

14:41 Colleen G: I’m Colleen Gleeson. I am the assistant director for advanced Degree Employer Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin So when I did my master’s program, I didn’t really get any funding, and I just thought that was the end of that. But now, having worked with worked with master students on the other side, I’ve seen how current master students have asked, researched and just pushed to actually to get more funding and to advocate for themselves and to identify additional funding resources. So I wish that someone had told me to be more persistent because there is there are funds out there. You just have to you just have to put the time and the research into it.

Funding/Income: Derek Attig, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

15:22 Derek A: I’m Derek Attig I work in the Graduate college at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. And as a graduate student, I’m really glad that I saw that opportunity is to get income. Even small amounts of income from a variety of places, because it gave me a lot of skills as also as well as just consistent, reliable money coming in.

Retirement Savings: Peter Myers, Washington University in Saint Louis

15:47 Peter M: My name is Peter Myers. I’m at Washington University in Saint Louis. The piece of advice that I’m glad I took as a postdoc is to put everything I can into a Roth IRA.

Employment: Kelly Graham, New York University

16:01 Kelly G: Hi, my name is Kelly Graham and I am from New York University. One of the best pieces of financial advice that I ever got and that I followed was that to go work at the university that you want to get your degree from because then you can go for free. Most universities offer tuition remission, so identify the university I wanted to go to. I got a full time job. I went to school for free and I built my resume at the same time.

Funding/Income: Erin Brown, UCLA

16:29 Erin B: Hi. So I’m Erin Brown. I am the associate director of Graduate Career Services at UCLA. And I guess the piece of financial advice that I wish that I had followed when I went to graduate school is I should have done my research and I should have applied for every extramural grant or fellowship that I could have found. I think it would have made my life so much easier after graduate school. I think that what I did was I used my savings to finance graduate school, and that money would have been really helpful when I left graduate school because I feel like I ate up all of the savings that I had while I was in grad school.

Funding/Income: Baron Haber, UC Santa Barbara

17:11 Baron H: my name is Baron Haber I’m the assistant director of Professional Development for Graduate Division at University of California, Santa Barbara. So one piece of financial advice that I wish I would have followed during graduate school better is I wish I would have had a calendar that was alerting me to deadlines for fellowships and other extramural funding opportunities. Like I always found out about them like two days before the deadline and then, like, talk myself out of trying to throw together an application. So I think I could have taken more advantage of applying for those opportunities if I had been more organized and kind of like known to be anticipating these things. And also that if I would have just had like standard statements prepared for those sorts of things a little bit earlier on in my career by the time I figured out I should be doing those things, I was like beyond the university requirements for that. So

Funding/Income: Shawn Warner, UC Santa Barbara

18:06 Shawn W: My name is Shawn Warner. I’m the director of Professional development for the Graduate Division at UC Santa Barbara. And one piece of advice I’m very glad I followed was when I was considering applying to grad school, I talked with someone who was about to finish their grad program, and they said, Do not do a study program unless you are paid to do so. And so I was unfortunately applying to grad school in 2009 during the recession, and I applied lots of places and I only got a financial funding offer from one. Thankfully, that was my number one pick and that’s where I went and I’m very glad I followed that piece of advice.

Financial Habits: Katy Peplin, Thrive PhD

18:50 Katy P: Hi, I’m Katy Peplin from Thrive PHD. You can find me at thrive dash PhD dot com. I work with graduate students all around the world on being a scholar and a human and the piece of financial advice that I am so glad that I followed during grad school was. Pay attention to your finances. I know so many people got sort of caught unawares by tax bills that they didn’t have, like living expenses that they weren’t prepared to handle. And I was really grateful that I kept an eye on. My budget is activating and nerve wracking as that could be sometimes when I was low on summer funding and always took extra jobs to make sure that I felt as secure as I could because I knew I wouldn’t be able to study if I was panicked about where I was going to eat next week

Financial Habits: Roshni, Johns Hopkins University

19:36 Roshni: Roshni from Johns Hopkins University. And I’m answering the question what piece of financial advice did I wish I had followed during grad school or post-doc? And that would be to not be afraid about talking about money. Culturally, it’s not the norm from where I grew up. And so if I knew to get over some of the intimidation around money, I may have made more empowered and more informed decisions.

Commercial

20:04 Emily: These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2023 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 15, 2023. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at time tax, 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 consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. Now back to our interview.

Retirement Savings: Sonali Majumdar, Princeton University

22:11 Sonali M: Hi, everyone. I am Sonali Majumdar at the Graduate Career Consortium Annual meeting. I’m Assistant Dean for Professional Development at Princeton University. And I just wanted to say in terms of, like, what I wish I had done as a graduate student and postdoc in terms of financial decisions, I wish I had created a Roth IRA and started my investment portfolio early. That’s the best way to. It. Also incentivizes and motivates you to save and invest, and I wish I had done that sooner. So that’s my little advice.

Financial Literacy: Diane Safer, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

22:48 Diane S: So, hi, I’m Diane Safer, the director of career professional development for graduate students and postdocs at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. And I think the idea of just welcoming new post-docs and graduate students to the idea of financial literacy right from the start so that they understand, considering especially that postdocs are international and don’t know about saving for retirement and how to live on a paycheck, that’s not a lot in New York

Housing: Kathryn Sawyer Vidrine, University of Notre Dame

23:16 Kathryn SV: I’m Kathryn Sawyer Vidrine from Notre Dame, and I wish that when I was starting graduate school in South Bend that I had just gone and bought a house instead of dithering about it because I wasn’t sure if I was going to stick around.

Housing: Tom Meyers, University of Notre Dame

23:32 Tom M: So my name is Tom Meyers. I’m also from the University of Notre Dame. And to Kathryn’s point, one thing I do with graduate students now is when I get incoming graduate students, I tell them, you can rent an apartment that’s a studio for 1100 dollars a month across campus, or you can drive five miles and pay a mortgage of 858.77 every month.

Retirement Savings: Karin Lawton-Dunn, Iowa State University

23:51 Karin L-D: Hi, I am Karin Lawton-Dunn at Iowa State University. And this question is, what piece of financial advice do are you glad to follow during your graduate program? And that was a long time ago for me. But I did have a I did work three years professionally before. And my colleague, we came back to grad school and she cashed out her 401K and I left mine in and I’m getting closer and closer to retirement and I’m very thankful I left that in. So I do not cash out 401Ks.

Retirement Savings: Megan Brock

24:22 Megan B: Okay, so I’m Dr. Megan Brock, and I think that I wish I would have I would to really look into the retirement plans that people offer you, because as a new grad moving into the field. I’m in the state of Georgia, you pick a program and you’re in it. There’s no switching up. The only way that you leave is if you leave the system. So where everybody else has something that they can if they want to purchase a home, they could pull out there for a1k or whatever type of retirement plan. Well, I’m a teacher retirement system and then I’m, you know, my pension, so to speak, is invested for ten years. All my friends can go out, purchase a home and have that saved up because that’s like kind of and of course, it’s for retirement. But, you know, a house is an investment, right? I can’t do that. I didn’t think about it. I was like, Oh, it’s easy to click the button and now you’re in. And now there’s no way that I can kind of help myself. The first generation, everything first, you know, the first person in my family to be able to do this is like, I can’t I can’t leverage that kind of like professional benefit of having retirement savings accounts. I didn’t select that option. So, yeah, I would say like, you know, just ask people about their options. The pros and cons, pause, don’t feel rushed. Because it will seem like you have to fill your paperwork out by a certain deadline, but you can always ask for those types of extensions. You can always ask to meet with, like whoever the H.R. officer is. You can always ask for that, you know, more time to get it sort of position for whatever school system that you’re going to be with. And so that’s my biggest like, dang, I wish I would have known that other that other than like living within my means. But like, the biggest thing is like, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And it we have to be prepared to be the people who can honestly retire at 50 and 60, like enjoy the rest of our life if we plan accordingly and not just like pick something that’s the easiest option. So that’s my piece of advice.

Retirement Savings: Christine Krieger, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

26:13 Christine K: Hi, I’m Christine Krieger. I’m with the training office, with NIDDK and my question is, what piece of financial advice are you glad you followed or do you wish you had followed during graduate school or as opposed to. So the advice I wish I had followed was that you are always welcome to follow your dreams. Just open a Roth. From the very beginning.

Funding/Income: Katie Homar

26:40 Katie H: So I’m Katie Homar, and my advice is take advantage of small travel grants from student organizations and campus offices to travel to conferences and grow your professional network.

Financial Habits: Mabel Perez-Oquendo, MD Anderson

26:52 Mabel P-K: Hi. My name is Mabel Perez-Oquendo. I am a current admin public fellow at MD Anderson. So one piece of advice that I wish I knew when I was doing my graduate school is to have saving accounts. And this is because, like, unexpected things happens. And also we want to have some like personal work life balance and we want to like travel and we want to take vacations. But if we don’t have that saving account, how we can accomplish that goal. So I wish that someone told me, Hey, you shall save part of your salary to go out and have fun and travel when you feel overwhelmed. So that is my piece of advice.

Negotiation: Hecmarie Meléndez-Fernández, West Virginia University

27:35 Hecmarie M-F: Hi, my name is Hecmarie Meléndez-Fernández, and I’m a recent Ph.D. grad at West Virginia University. And the one piece of financial advice I wish I had followed was to negotiate your benefits package for your job. There’s always room for negotiation. So.

Housing: Amanda Figuera, University of Washington Tacoma

27:55 Amanda F: My name is Amanda Figuera. I’m the senior director of Student Transitions and Success at the University of Washington Tacoma. And during graduate school we got creative with housing arrangements, and so I shared a one bedroom condo with a roommate who was doing lab work. And so we had like a hoteling bedroom almost in the living room. And that was one way that we were able to afford the cost of living in Seattle.

Employment: Mallorie Smith, Mississippi State University

28:19 Mallorie S: My name is Mallorie Smith. I’m the financial wellness program coordinator at Mississippi State University. And one piece of financial advice that I’m glad I followed as a grad student was that I sought out employment with my school that I wanted to attend first. And because of that, I got free classes two free classes this semester, and I was able to get my MBA that way. And now I’m about to get my Ph.D. in the same way for free. So all I’m paying for is textbooks, and I know where to find that cheap.

Moving: Helen Colby, Indiana University

28:49 Helen C: Hey, I am Helen Colby. I’m an assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University School of Business, and I am the chair of the Heck for Research Committee. And the piece of financial advice that I didn’t get in grad school that I wish I had gotten was to plan for that post-graduation move because I was in grad school in New Jersey and I got a postdoc in Los Angeles. And I realized about three months before I actually started the job that I was going to have to pay to move all my stuff across the country and put a down payment and pay first month’s rent and live for a month because I got paid monthly as a postdoc. But I didn’t get my first paycheck until I had been working for a month. And I was already a little strapped because I was in grad school and my husband’s in law school, I wouldn’t have any money. And then to move, that was very complicated. So we worked it out by being broke and side hustles and the one credit card we had that had a $1,000 limit on it. But if I had thought about having to move as opposed to just this is great, I’m going to have a better job that pays more. Not a lot more, but more. I would have planned for that better and at the very least spread my side hustling across more.

Financial Habits: Matt Hertenstein, DePaul University

30:04 Matt H: Hi, my name is Matt Hertenstein, a college professor at DePaul University, received my Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley in 2002 the piece of advice that I wish I had followed in graduate school would be. Even then, I had a little bit to save, and I wish I had done a little bit better job at putting that away into a retirement account and started the snowball. Then rather than waiting a little bit

Debt: Eric Monday, University of Kentucky

30:35 Eric M: Eric Monday Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration at the University of Kentucky. I think the financial advice that’s most helpful when I think back to my grad experience is a professor told me do not take on an extreme amount of debt. You know, figure out a way, even if it takes you a little bit longer, don’t take on a lot of debt. So that’s the advice that helped me the most.

Debt: Byron Kerr, Texas State University

31:01 Byron T: Hi, I’m Dr. Byron Kerr with Financial aid and scholarships at Texas State University, and I received my Ph.D. from Florida State University in Tallahassee working on my Ph.D. I had developed a lot of debt over the years, like a credit card debt, and to get out from underneath that, I reached out to a nonprofit credit agency that helped negotiate with the credit card companies to help me get that debt that paid off.

Financial Habits: Anna Sheufelt, Duke University

31:23 Anna S: My name is Anna Sheufelt. I work at Duke University, overseeing the educational programing and outreach for the Office of Student Loans and Personal Finance. The piece of financial advice that I wish I would have followed when I was in graduate school, I would be to spend less and save more. It sounds pretty simple take to managing money, but I really wish I would have built up that financial foundation because once I increase my knowledge of other things I could be doing with my money, I would have been in a position to just act. And I sort of had to continue with that foundation of, Nope, I have to save first because I didn’t do a good enough job when I was in my master’s program.

Financial Assistance Programs: Gilbert, University of Texas at Austin

32:04 Gilbert: My name is Gilbert. Financial advice I wish I would have followed was maybe just looking more into assistance programs or basic needs programs here in the city of Austin, especially coming from an area that where the cost of living was pretty low. And we went to a city that has one of the highest cost of links in the nation. I wish I would have looked more into like rental assistance programs, and Austin has a couple of them that will help people with low income cover partial or full rental cost and also just any assistance with regards to just basic needs like food and Internet subsidies. That would have helped me focus more on my graduate program. Also, it’s in Edwards and working at U.T. and not have to worry about budgeting too much and sacrificing like someone’s and some needs to continue going to grad school and living here in Austin.

Financial Literacy: Anne Xiong, UC Berkeley 

33:02 Anne X: So, yeah, my name is Anne Xiong. I am the program manager for Financial Wellness Program at U.C. Berkeley. Answering this question, it is what piece of finish or otherwise are you glad you followed or do you wish you had followed during grad school? So yeah, there’s a reason is kind of related to the reason why I’m very passionate about financial wellness education because I didn’t have any. So I wish I had have someone that taught me more about money management so I can start to pay more attention to manage my finances. When I was in college, in grad school, I just felt like if I had someone provide me with more guidance, I probably will and was less staff and more resources. And then when I started my first job, I probably will just have a better start. So. Yeah.

Mindset: Kirby Williams, Advantage Publications

33:59 Kirby W: So I’m Kirby Williams, and I am the owner of Advantage Publications. We do financial education, Learning Materials. So I, I didn’t realize until just now why my father always said that if you would pay for high school in college and we would have no loans and that wasn’t very important to him. But that if we want to wanted to go to grad school, that that would be on us to pay for. And I think he really wanted us to see the return on our investment. But, you know, it’s a whole different feeling when you have to pay the bills for it. And he didn’t want us to stress about that for college, which is a wonderful gift that he gave us. You know, you didn’t have to stress about that. Um, but at some point you have to grow up and you do stress about it, and you should stress about it because it’s your career and it’s your life. And if you’re not going for something that gives you joy, then all the career and, you know, stress and the money, stress and the time is wasted.

Financial Habits: Becky Sparks, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

35:02 Becky S: My name is Becky Sparks. I’m with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and my advice that I wish I had followed is to save as much as you can while you’re in grad school. I know that’s a very difficult thing to try to do, but your future self will thank you and take it from me who did not take that advice. You will definitely be glad that you did Absolutely

Funding/Income: Robert

35:27 Robert: Yeah. So my name is Robert. I had a lot of helpful advice from people in my department and also people at the university who were able to direct me to different ways to apply for different fellowships and other kinds of opportunities to help me pursue my research in ways that I didn’t really know where there. So that was looking beyond the department, looking for other opportunities for external scholarships, external fellowships, and then finding those two and finally get me to complete my research in the end with that funding.

Student Loans: Sara, Baylor University

36:00 Sara: Hi, I’m Sara. I am at Baylor University. And then my big piece of advice that I followed after leaving my graduate program and currently is I utilize public service student loan forgiveness. And I think a lot of grad students who are either going into academia or the government or any type of nonprofit or education work often don’t know that they can really lower that Student loan monthly repayment if they go down an income driven repayment plan and then utilize. Public service student loan forgiveness. So definitely check that out as we’re going into student loan repayment.

Financial Habits and Retirement Savings: Beth Hunsaker, University of Utah

36:47 Beth H: My name is Beth Hunsaker with the University of Utah’s Financial Wellness Center. I’m the associate director, So thinking back to grad school, the things I’m glad that I did is is really just stick to the fundamentals of looking at what my income was and make sure I was budgeting it, saving. I was investing in my Roth IRA and now 20 years later, has made all the difference. Even the $50 a month I found back then is setting me up for financial success now.

Tax Implications: Ben Raines, Ohio State University

37:19 Ben R: So Ben Raines Program Coordinator for financial education and a student life at Ohio State University. So I was lucky to have a graduate tuition stipend as part of my one at the university. And I’m glad that I went through and thought about how much $25,000 taxable income would affect my income over the course of a year. And while that was unpleasant, I was at least prepared to have my take home income go down $800 a month for six months of the year.

Funding/Income: Michael Dedmon, National Endowment for Financial Education

37:47 Michael D: My name is Michael Dedmon. I’m the research director at the National Endowment for Financial Education and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Syracuse University. Graduate students approach the Ph.D. journey and get a different range of support from their institution, depending on sort of where it’s ranked, the kind of resources they have, and then where they hope to place their graduate students. I know that for me, I was a teaching at a pretty teaching heavy department where almost all of the financial support was really, really tied to doing that teaching. I wish that I would have realized earlier on the importance of seeking out external sources of funding, and I wish that I would have advocated more for myself. I wish they would have advocated more for fellow graduate students with the graduate school and with my department to provide those resources because of how critical they are, because it’s very difficult to do your work, to finish your degree, and to produce the knowledge that the university wants if you don’t get that additional support. But also the process of achieving and getting that support is really critical. And so I think the universities like the country over, especially the ones that are outside of the top ten that don’t have right, those kinds of resources need to think better about how to support graduate students in getting resources to specifically support their research.

Employment: Gilbert Rogers, University of Oregon

39:01 Gilbert R: My name is Gilbert Rogers, Senior assistant director of financial Wellness at the University of Oregon. So the piece of advice I wish I would have followed during grad school or during my doctoral studies was to seek out an employer that would pay for that. I didn’t know I would land in higher education. I was currently still working in corporate finance, and that’s where I first kind of caught wind of all the loans and loan debt. So I didn’t have zero debt until my doctoral degree. So that’s a piece of advice I work out.

Outtro

39:37 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.