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How to Apply Valuable Scientific Mindsets to Your Personal Finances

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Brock Bennion, a financial advisor with Kimball Creek Partners who draws on his scientific training when he works with clients. Brock and Emily discuss how the mindsets and principles that scientists learn can translate very well into their personal finances, everything from thinking long-term to avoiding flashy experiments to collaboration. Brock also lists the essential personal finance strategies to apply during or following the PhD to avoid making a big mistake.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

S13E7 Image: How to Apply Valuable Scientific Mindsets to Your Personal Finances

Teaser

00:00 Brock: In science, what we learn early on is the value of collaboration and how important it is to get your findings out there as soon as you have something. And you would never wait to present those findings until you were at a conference or you were publishing them in a journal. You find the experts along the way and you workshop it the whole time. We’re hesitant to do that with finances. You’ve got to talk with people who have done it and who have some expertise, even just through their experience. Because if you do that, you will start refining your way to a better answer.

Introduction

00:39 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. This is Season 13, Episode 7, and today my guest is Dr. Brock Bennion, a financial advisor with Kimball Creek Partners who draws on his scientific training when he works with clients. Brock and I discuss how the mindsets and principles that scientists learn can translate very well into their personal finances, everything from thinking long-term to avoiding flashy experiments to collaboration. Brock also lists the essential personal finance strategies to apply during or following the PhD to avoid making a big mistake. The inevitable—the unavoidable—is approaching. Tax season begins in about two months. But help is on the way! I have been busy this fall creating a new version of my annual federal tax return preparation workshop and updating the versions I have offered in the past. These workshops are designed exclusively for funded graduate students and postdocs.

02:08 Emily: I used to teach this material live for university clients, but in recent years have switched over to offering pre-recorded videos plus Q&A opportunities. I actually much prefer this format because you can work through the content at the time that is best for you, whether January or April or in between, and also at a comfortable pace. For the tax return preparation process in particular, I think it’s very helpful to be able to pause the videos and collect documents or make calculations and rewatch segments if you didn’t catch the nuances the first time through. Plus, you still have the ability to ask questions in case anything is unclear or you aren’t sure how to apply the information to your situation, and frankly these are even better questions than the ones I used to get during fully live workshops because you’ve had time to reflect. I’m very proud of these workshops, and they’ve been reaching more and more graduate students and postdocs every year. The new version of this workshop that I’m offering this coming tax season is for nonresident graduate students and postdocs, and I will continue to offer the versions for U.S. citizen/resident graduate students and U.S. citizen/resident postdocs.

03:20 Emily: If you would like to use one of these workshops in the upcoming tax season, you do have the option to purchase it as an individual via PFforPhDs.com/tax. However, I would much prefer that you gain access to it for free, which you can attempt to arrange by helping me find a sponsor at your university, such as your graduate school, graduate student association, postdoc office, international house, etc. I’m bringing this up now because these offices and groups generally need some time to figure out if they have any funding available to allocate toward this purpose. Please let me know of your interest in approaching a potential sponsor at your institution by emailing me at emily@PFforPhDs.com. I may already have someone in mind! Thanks for your help with spreading the word about these educational tax workshops! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e7/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Brock Bennion.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

04:28 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on podcast today, Dr. Brock Bennion. He is a PhD from WashU in St. Louis, and he’s also a wealth strategist at Kimball Creek Partners in Tacoma, Washington. So Brock, so delighted that you’re here today. We’ve met on Twitter, which is a really fun way for me to get to meet my guests. So, I’m so glad that we, you know, had some exchanges over there and now here you are on the podcast. So, this is really fun. And would you please introduce yourself to the audience a little bit further?

04:56 Brock: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Emily, it’s, it’s great to be here. It’s great to talk to you kind of face-to-face, like you said, it’s fun to meet people online. Like you said, I’m a wealth strategist at Kimball Creek Partners. My background is in biology. I was an immunologist, studied at Washington University. I studied viruses and autoimmune diseases and how those two things work together and I absolutely loved it. I still love science. I think it’s amazing, but I am enjoying my career here and, you know, we might talk about how I ended up here and why I did that. But now, I love talking about the interface of science and finance and how these things come together. And so, when you offered me the chance to come on the podcast, I thought, well, that sounds like a lot of fun.

Research Mindsets that Translate into Finance

05:38 Emily: So, we decided on our topic for today being, you know, for the researchers in the audience, the PhDs and PhDs-to-be who are listening, who want to enhance their practice of personal finance. What are the mindsets that we have already developed or are developing as researchers that are really going to serve us well if we’re able to translate those over into this personal finance space? And so, you and I kind of collaboratively came up with a list of a few different points together. So, we’re just going to talk through those and kind of have fun with this like, idea of translating these mindsets from research into the practice of personal finance. So, what was the first one that we came up with, Brock? And let’s start us off.

06:21 Brock: Well, so first we talked about the importance of kind of knowing your goal. I mean, if there is again, a unique aspect of a PhD, it’s the variable size and length, but how you really do view your projects in terms of years. You know, it’s not, you know, this semester’s, you know, test or you know, the upcoming quiz. It’s okay, how do I craft a story that takes place over, you know, years and then, you know, beyond your graduate work, you know, sometimes decades-long, you know, pursuits. And that’s what finance really is. You know, if you are thinking about finance properly, you’re thinking about it in terms of your life, and often beyond that and legacy planning for, you know, future generations and setting up your kids for their success. And that’s a really great skill. And something I think is underappreciated as a PhD student is the ability to say, okay, I’m starting at zero, you know, and I want to go to this point far off in the future. And that applies really well to finance, to be able to say, I’m starting at zero. How do I get to where I want to be? And let’s build a plan to get there.

07:31 Emily: I completely agree. This is one of the points that I kind of start off one of my talks with, The Graduate Student and Postdoc’s Guide to Personal Finance. I like to start off on a like a positive note of like, encouragement for the people in the audience who might feel a little bit like intimidated about, you know, a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about their finances or learning. So, I like to say to them like, if you as a PhD student or postdoc already have like a grand vision for your career and for how graduate school or your postdoc fits in to that vision of your career, you have to do that to get to the stage of being in graduate school. Like you have to write it in your essays, like how this is going to play into your career.

08:11 Brock: Exactly.

08:12 Emily: And so, you’re doing that long-term planning on the career side. And so if you could just pivot that and think about, you know, the decades in your finances and what you want your vision for your life to be, over not just the next few years, but you know, the decades, that’s already a skill that you’re developing there. And you just have to put it over to the other side of the finances and apply it there and it’s going to serve you really, really well. And I’m also thinking now about how like, you know, in setting goals, like, okay, this is what I want my career to be. And then you can break that down. Okay, that means this is what I want to do for my graduate degree and then I think I’m probably going to follow that up with a postdoc or this type of job after that.

Financial Goal-Setting

08:49 Emily: And you know, as you said earlier, people can pivot. You and I both, you know, made some pivots after graduate school, but we at least, you know, you can at least start down that path with a plan. And I think that is similar in the finances, right? Have the goals for the decades, but then back that out and have the goals for 10 years and five years and one year. And then that breaks down to your current goals as well. Yeah, is there anything you want to say about those, like links of time or like decision-making around goal-setting?

09:15 Brock: I think you’re right that like what PhDs do really well is they set these long goals, but then also that they set little goals to get there, which is the step of goal-setting that I think most people fall flat on. I’d say the first problem is people don’t set goals to begin with. If you ask somebody what are your financial goals, they’ll often just give you a blank stare. You should have some goals. And then what you need though, you need lots of small goals that get you there. You know, so if your goal is to discover, you know, something, you know, or show that a drug works, there are all these experiments that go into how does that line up? For the same way, when you’re doing a financial goal, one, you have to pick what your goal is. You have to know where you want to go. But then you’ve got to set the little goals to get there. It’s doing both of those things that really is where you harness the power of goal-setting and of planning.

Long-Term Goal: Retirement

10:03 Emily: I’d love to hear some examples now, like in that financial realm of a really long-term goal and then some more short-term or intermediate-term goals that will help you get there to that long-term goal.

10:13 Brock: Yeah, so usually, I mean, one that we talk about is just retirement. Now, not every scientist wants to retire. I used to joke that the retirement plan of many scientists, especially in academia, is something like drop dead in your office at 95 as you’re writing a grant, you know? But for those that do want to retire, you’ve got to come up with an idea of what that retirement looks like. You know, basic things of where you’re going to live, what do you want to spend your time doing? Because few people just stop and play golf now. I mean, that’s not really what retirement looks like for most people. And then, put a dollar figure on what that costs. Say, well, you know, if I want to travel abroad three times a year, once I retire, well you know, what’s that going to cost me? And then back out from there, and once you start getting a goal of a lifestyle type of thing, you put a big dollar sign on that. And then you take that big dollar sign, you break it down into smaller dollar signs of, well how much is that on a yearly basis? And then what do I need to start saving now to be able to accumulate those kinds of funds to be able to live that kind of lifestyle?

11:24 Emily: This example of retirement is one that I end up speaking about a lot because it’s obviously one of those biggest goals within personal finance that takes so long to properly prepare for, you know, and employing the power of compound interest and so forth. But I’m remembering that when I was in graduate school, and to some extent up until just like a couple of years ago, I didn’t really have that vision of what I wanted my retirement to look like. So, my shorter-term goal was just start saving and start investing and assume that you’re going to get to like the more specific vision later. Because I know it’s going to take investing to some degree either way. And I wonder if there’s a parallel that we can draw over to like the process of getting your PhD or your career on the other side of it. Like maybe it is just, okay, I’m pretty sure I need to have a PhD to do something with my career later in this area. So, I feel like a PhD is a good thing to complete, and that’s a nice five or so, you know, year term goal.

Value of Planning and Collaboration (PhD/Finance)

12:20 Brock: And I think with that recognizing though, like from the beginning, you’re investing a certain amount of time in your PhD, and what do you expect the return to be on the end? You know, for some people, it’s the logical next step from undergraduate. For others, they know going in, well this is what I want to do. And others figure it out along the way. And that’s totally fine whatever path you find yourself in, but you should be actively looking for your plan and your outcome. You know, the future belongs to those who go out and get it. And if you’re always just taking things as it comes, that’s an okay thing to do as you’re figuring things out. But eventually, you’ve got to set your sights on something, and you’ve got to go and get it.

13:04 Brock: And that’s exactly what I think a PhD teaches you really well to do. We all know the person who sat at their bench and didn’t do any experiments and eventually, they had to go do those experiments. And we all know the person that came in every morning at 6:00 AM and was off working, and they got a lot of stuff done. It’s no different in finance or in life. The other thing that you kind of brought up before, and I think, you know, dovetails nicely at this, is the hesitancy that people have to talk about their finances with others, and how they kind of hold this in close. And what I find so interesting is that’s so counter to good science <laugh> right? In science, what we learn early on is the value of collaboration and how important it is to get your findings out there as soon as you have something.

13:55 Brock: You know, from the time that, hey, I have this idea, and you go and you share it with somebody and they say, well that’s a terrible idea, but you know what, if you did this, this would be a better idea. And then you go down the hall and tell somebody else and they say, well that’s a pretty good idea. We could do this experiment that would find out if it would be a really good idea. And, and you would never wait to present those findings until you were at a conference or you were publishing it in a journal. You find the experts along the way and you workshop it the whole time. We’re hesitant to do that with finances. We say, well I want to keep this secret until I’m totally secure. Right? Once I’ve become financially independent, then maybe I’ll talk about my struggles early on or whatever it is.

14:36 Brock: And I think whether you’re choosing, you know, the loan forgiveness pathway or you’re trying to decide is now the right time to buy a house or should I go to a high cost-of-living area for this job that I think has potential? You’ve got to talk with people who have done it and who have some expertise, even just through their experience. Because if you do that, you will start refining your way to a better answer. And you don’t just talk about it once you talk about it every chance you get because everybody will add something different and you’ll form a really good understanding of where you want to go.

15:11 Emily: This is definitely something that, at least I would think many graduate programs you’re taught and encouraged to do this. In fact, find peers and collaborators at many different levels. You have your peers, like other people in your cohort or in your program or in your lab and they’re going through the similar, you know, struggles that you are and they can have something to say about your thought process or your goals or what have you. And then you have your mentor and then you have your committee, and then you have maybe a collaborator at another institute. You know, there are many different levels of people who can help and guide you. And you’re right that we don’t, I mean on like the personal finance side of things, I’m trying to think because like, yeah, some people work with someone like you, like a financial advisor usually after they have some money to be advised upon <laugh>.

Overcoming Stigma

15:54 Emily: And then before that point, when you’re in the, let’s say the training stage and you’re just like trying things out and trying to get some debt paid off and get your, you know, your investing off the ground or whatever’s happening, it’s much less common to talk either with peers or with a mentor or someone who’s been there before. And you know, I do kind of serve as that role as like an educator, but I don’t have like one-to-one relationships with people. It’s more of a teaching like mechanism for me. But people, yeah, don’t tend to talk very much among their peers, even though they could be really good, resources and sounding boards. Yeah, what have you seen, like, I guess with your clients or have you seen any way to like kind of overcome this stigma that we have?

16:34 Brock: You know, it’s hard. Like any stigma, you know, and if we’re talking about, you know, mental illness or social issues or whatever it is, any stigma is best broken by breaking it. And you really just kind of have to start and realize that most people don’t judge. Most people are very accepting, very welcoming to that being honest and open. And you actually forge some real connections with that. You know, some of the best relationships that, you know, me and my wife made during our grad school years were with other couples who were going through the exact same thing. And we’d talk about, you know, our struggles of how do you make this work in the finances, and everybody’s dealing with the same stuff. And typically, people who have already overcome are even more empathetic because they remember those years and they think about, well, how could I have been helped? I wish I would’ve known this, I wish I would’ve known this. And it’s really valuable.

17:32 Emily: I think that’s definitely an encouragement to the listeners to talk with whoever’s a little further along than you are. Like if you’re an entering graduate student, talk with an older graduate student, talk with a postdoc, anyone who’s at like a later stage. And what’s kind of interesting about academia, I mean, obviously people come from very different, um, financial backgrounds. And you know, some people might be deeply in debt coming into graduate school. Some people might have resources from their parents or maybe a prior job that they had before they started graduate school. We can all be coming from different places, but within your program, it’s pretty likely that people are being paid somewhere in a similar range to each other unless there’s like an outside fellowship involved or something like, so at least you have some degree of commonality that you can like start conversations from. Like, oh wow, you know, rent is like 40% of my income.

18:22 Emily: My goodness, what are you paying for rent? I love that question. What are you paying for rent? It’s a very easy one to answer. Everybody knows how much they’re paying for rent. And it’s low stakes, right? Like, it’s not a judgment, oh, you’re paying more or less, whatever. Oh, we found a great deal. I’d love to know how you did that. I literally did this in graduate school because I ultimately moved a couple times in graduate school, and by the time I got to the last place that we stayed, it was like the best deal that I ever lived in during that period of time. It was because I asked people, how much are you paying for this place? Seems great. Oh wow, I can’t believe it’s that little. I’m going to get on the waiting list. You know? So, it it took that like collaboration, like we were talking about earlier, in sharing information to get to those great tactics that actually really help your finances when you can do something like reduce rent. One quick example, easy example. Very easy to talk to other people about rent. I found <laugh>.

19:09 Brock: No, that’s a super great example. No, and I love that because you’re right, people, everybody knows what it is and you know, you don’t judge anybody. You know, you don’t feel any judgment. You feel like you got a deal if somebody’s saying, oh, I paid this or I paid this, and Oh, that’s a great question. I like that.

Commercial

19:26 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as 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 2022-2023 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker 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 emily@PFforPhDs.com 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.

Not-Flashy Experiments in Research and in Finance

20:49 Emily: Another point that we put in our outline was to choose experiments that you are fairly confident are going to work in the sense that they are going to give you information. And the way you put that was don’t be flashy. So, what does this in the research realm, and then how does this translate over to the personal finance realm?

21:11 Brock: Yeah, I hope this wasn’t just me in grad school, but I feel like a lot of grad students, maybe it was just me, you know, early on, will sit down with their advisor and say, Hey, I read in the literature about, you know, this new aspect, this new cool thing that’s out, and I was thinking that this might be affecting this, which might be affecting this, which is actually driving, you know, my project. And you know, the advisor lovingly looks at you and says, mm, probably not <laugh>. You know, like that’s a really long stretch. It could be, and if it did, it’d be really cool and to be really impactful, but the chances of that being true, that’s not really well-grounded in the literature. And then they steer you to some experiments that whether or not, you know, whether you get a positive result that you’re expecting or a negative result, it’s the right question to be asking.

21:59 Brock: It’s the right experiment to be doing and that can go into your paper, you know, be part of your project. And, you know, often people will ask, you know, what do I need to do to be financially independent? And like a really basic way to start is save 10% of your income. Not super flashy. It’s not about a specific investment or it’s not about, you know, doing a fixer upper home or having a side hustle or whatever it is. It’s just, you know, what, if you save 10% of your income, you put it away super diligently for 30 years. I don’t run into many people that have done that and aren’t in a good place financially. They may not be super rich, but they’re in a good place financially. They did something with a high degree of probability that it was going to work, and it worked <laugh>.

22:51 Emily: I think the way that I would put this, and I’m trying, I think this was advice that I sort of, I don’t think I applied it but I sort of heard it during graduate school, was to have a couple of sort of safe aspects to your project. Maybe more conservative, maybe more likely to pan out. And then take one high flyer on some strange idea you have. But don’t devote all of your time to it, right? We’re talking about 10, 20%, something like that. And have, you know, in terms of like constructing your dissertation, like have a couple of chapters that you’re pretty sure are going to work out and then save your, you know, strange, unique, possibly very high reward, but also very high-risk idea for, you know, the last one, right?

23:32 Brock: Yes.

23:32 Emily: And so, I think that that translates over very well to personal finance. It’s like, yeah, a few people might, you know, make it big financially on essentially a gamble, but the vast majority of people do not win the lottery, whatever, you know, the crypto lottery, whatever the version of the lottery is that you’re playing. You can try it, but with the vast majority of your resources, let’s do something that’s a little more tried and true. As you were kind of saying earlier, like, you know, I think about, and maybe we’ll link it in the show notes if you can find this, but I don’t know if it’s a PhD comic or xkcd or something like that, but it’s like, you know, a circle and it’s like these are the boundaries of human knowledge, and the PhD is like putting a little tiny bump on the edge of that circle, you know, like that. It’s the same thing with finances. Like the circle is like, do the stuff like saving 10% of your income, having insurance, like do all the regular stuff that is boring. It’s not flashy, but it’s going to work. And then, okay, yeah. Like, let’s take a little risk over here and a little risk over here as, you know, your personality might lead you to, or something like that. Is that another way of phrasing what you said?

24:38 Brock: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are things that you should do that make a lot of sense. And then yeah, you know, I’m certainly not saying you can’t take any risk or you can’t, you know, say, have fun with some aspects of your finance. But where you get hurt is when you devote too much time to that, just like you would in a project where if you spend all your time doing high-risk projects, maybe you get lucky and you hit it out of the park, but most likely you’ll end up with a lot of dead ends. You’ll be years into your project and you won’t really have a good foundation. And that’s what we’re trying to avoid.

Not-Flashy Personal Finance Advice (But it Works)

25:15 Emily: So, let’s give people some not-flashy personal finance advice. Let’s come up with like, I don’t know, three or five like baseline things, not flashy stuff, great strategies to be using. Whether that starts during graduate school or starts a little bit afterwards if they’re not quite ready for them yet. What’s on your list?

25:31 Brock: Well, I mean, you know, you’ll always hear, you know, my favorite is they’ll always say something like, you know, man, if only I bought, you know, insert whatever tech company in the nineties, you know, now I’d have, you know, this whole fleet of jets or something, right? Like, what people don’t say is, man, I sure wish I bought a diversified low-expense ETF in the nineties. But if you did that and you waited 30 years, it grew <laugh>, it worked. And there were a lot of companies in the nineties that just went away. And so yes, we can in hindsight look back and say, it would’ve been great to have bought this one that became big and changed the world. But if you just bought a low-expense, you know, ETF-type solution, it’s not flashy, it didn’t make you a billionaire, but it did work and it did grow.

26:19 Emily: Because, also by the way, it probably included that flashy tech company, whatever the sector was that, you know, is hot at the time, right? You just bought a tiny bit of it instead of a hundred percent of your bets on that. But the thing is like when you make that diversified portfolio bet, as you were just saying, you’re going to have some winners in there. If the economy is winning, you’re going to be winning with that portfolio. And you’re going to have a lot of losers in there, too. But thank goodness you bought some of the winners as well because you were so well diversified and it didn’t rely on your research and your ingenuity and your insights and blah, blah, blah to pick those out. Okay, so passive investing, index funds, ETFs, that’s a non-flashy strategy. Great. What else is on your list?

26:58 Brock: You need to have some form of life insurance if you have people that depend on you. Now, this does not mean an expensive, you know, universal whole life, whatever policy. But what we’ll tell people is, you know, make a list of everybody you say I love you to. Put a checkmark next to anybody you’re financially responsible for, and then ask yourself what would happen to those people if I wasn’t here? It’s not a flashy way to do it, and the goal is that you die never using it, but if you’re wrong and you don’t have that, you could leave people that you care about in a very unfortunate position.

27:42 Emily: Yep. Love it. And I want to add to that disability insurance too.

27:45 Brock: Yes.

27:45 Emily: Own occupation. Okay. What else is on your list?

Don’t Overextend Yourself

27:48 Brock: Just little things like don’t overextend yourself. Keep a budget, you know. Understand where are you putting your money every week? Is that in line with your priorities? And the example I sheepishly use, soon after undergraduate, I found myself working at a company as a microbiologist and I would go to lunch at just a sandwich shop every day. And all of a sudden I looked back and I’d spent like $300 that month going to the sandwich shop. Well, it didn’t put me in a bad financial position, but I thought, this is not in line with my priorities. It didn’t bring me that much more joy and to think that I could have put that money to something that had, you know, more in line with what I wanted to be doing, well that compounded over time. And so, again, there’s nothing flashy about bringing your lunch or making those small purchases and funneling your money in the direction you want it to, but it does work and it does add up, especially when you start early.

28:52 Emily: Yeah, I think I would phrase that as like an awareness of your money and just being willing to make adjustments when things are kind of out of alignment. And as you said, not overextending yourself. When you said that, I always think of housing and transportation, right? Like large fixed expenses, like especially challenging during graduate school, but like as much as possible, keep those in alignment with your overall income at that time. It’s obviously going to be really challenging in high cost-of-living areas, but just do the best you can during that kind of strange period of life, and you’ll be able to be more in balance later on when your salary is higher. But do the best you can and be aware of it. And like we talked about earlier, just be aware of opportunities where maybe you could find a way to spend a little less on one of these expenses if you feel overextended in that area.

Focus on Your Main Job

29:38 Brock: The last one I might add to this is just lots of times, people will focus on having a side hustle or side job, which is great if you enjoy that. I’ll often talk to people about focus on your first job. You know, there are things especially early in your career that you can take on more responsibility in different areas and accelerate your career growth and your career trajectory so that you’re making more money and you don’t have to spend 10 hours a night doing something else. You could spend an extra hour at your job and show that you’re willing to take on more responsibility and you grow. And as your salary grows, you don’t let your lifestyle creep with it, but you find ways to put that money to where you value most.

30:25 Emily: I love that point, kind of the rise of the side hustle corresponded with when I was in graduate school, like during the great recession, I think you were there at that time as well. And you know, at that time it was like sort of a necessity thing. Like a lot of people didn’t have primary jobs, couldn’t make more of their primary jobs, so they were turning to the side hustle. And then sometimes we were talking about earlier, like you see these successes of people who have a great side hustle or turn their side hustle into their main thing and their businesses and forth. And that can seem really attractive. But the 80/20 on this is just make more at your primary job as best you’re able to. And that could be through negotiation, that could be through, I want to say like preparation.

31:03 Emily: So, as a graduate student, as a postdoc, I want you to negotiate, I want you to apply for the fellowships. I want you to advocate for yourself. Absolutely. But if you’ve done that to the greatest degree you can and that’s where your income is for the time being until you graduate or move on or whatever, what you can still be doing is preparing for that next stage in your career through professional development, through networking, through gaining more skills. And so, that will pay off later. It’s not going to be in the immediate future, but when you have that first post-PhD, you know, career, job or whatever, that’s when it can sort of be like pedal to the medal and you’re going to apply all that stuff you learned, you’re going to negotiate, you’re going to do all the stuff to get that great salary.

31:39 Brock: Yeah.

Don’t Be Wrong

31:40 Emily: And the last point on our outline, Brock, I love the way you said this was, don’t be wrong, <laugh>. So, what do you mean by that?

31:48 Brock: Well, it comes back to the idea of, you know, doing what works. But we’d often say that the number one rule in science is don’t be wrong. You don’t have to be totally right. Nobody publishes a paper and at the end says, and this is it. No reason for a follow-up study, no reason for discussion. This is the end of the study. No, everybody has more questions. Every good study brings up implications and has things that spread from it. What you can’t do in a study is say something that’s wrong. You can’t make a claim that’s unsubstantiated, you can’t, you know, lead the field down the wrong path. You don’t have to be a hundred percent right, but you can’t be wrong <laugh> if that makes sense. And it goes the same way for finances. Making bad investments, things that are too risky early on, paying way too much than you should for things like a car or a house early on in your career. Those are things that can get you sideways financially and really throw you off course for a long time. It is better to just not be a hundred percent right. Talk about buying a diversified fund or something like that. You buy everything, you buy some losers, you buy some winners, you’re not wrong even if you’re not a hundred percent right. And I really think that’s important. Too many people are looking for that, well what’s the trick that’ll get me there faster? And it’s those tricks that usually mess you up.

33:22 Emily: Yeah, I feel like we went over this a little bit when we were talking about those like non-flashy strategies. Because the flashy strategies are the ones where we’re like, well, you might be right, but you definitely might be wrong as well. And it takes a lot of time to like figure that out, right? I mean, if you are an active investor for example, and you love to pick your own stocks, time will tell whether your strategy was successful or not. But it’s going to be time over like decades, not over like a year. And there’s less time to course correct once you’ve figured out that statistically that did not, you know, work out very well for you. So, don’t make a big mistake like we talked about earlier, like having sufficient insurance, not just life and disability insurance, which we mentioned, but like keeping health insurance and all that other stuff. Like insurance generally is one of those like nobody wants to pay for it, but guess what? The reason why the product exists is because you have an area in your life where if something terrible happened, you would not financially be able to recover from that, or at least not very quickly. That’s why you have the home insurance and the renters insurance and all that stuff. So like insurance is definitely one of those like, don’t make a mistake kind of products like yeah, it’s not pleasant to pay for it, but what’s really unpleasant is if that thing happens that you’re trying to insure against.

34:30 Brock: Yeah, we talk about, you know, you invest in what’s probable and you insure against what’s possible. So, the things that are possible but financially devastating if they were to occur, that’s where insurance can mitigate that. We don’t invest in those kind of things that are possible but not probable. We invest in what’s probable, insure against what’s possible.

34:51 Emily: Interesting. And can you think of any other areas that would be like a big mistake? Something that we haven’t already mentioned?

34:58 Brock: Yeah, I mean the one that comes to mind, and this is probably for people considering a graduate school or something like that, but where I look at people who go into a program and don’t finish. Or, you know, and I’ve seen people that drop out, you know, maybe just after five years, but just a year or two away from finishing that you get going down the wrong path and you decide that’s not for you, but you leave taking away nothing. It’s better to finish all the way to the end and then pivot once you’re out, and this isn’t for everybody, but in a lot of cases. Because then you have something to show for that. You show you’ve completed this, then you can move on to the next thing. But where again, you can get yourself really sideways is if you spend half a decade or more going down a path only to drop everything and not at least attempt to build on that momentum that you came up with.

35:57 Emily: Yeah, this is an interesting point and I feel like actually it could apply in other areas of career as well. Like not just the choice to go to graduate school or not, but sort of going down the wrong just career path generally for you. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about knowing yourself, knowing your values, knowing your personality. And I think just as soon as you start to notice a misalignment with whatever is going on in that area, it behooves you to examine that and then take action. Whether that’s the action to decide to finish, let’s say the PhD, the action to leave at that point before you, you know, spend three years in that state and not take any action about it. Because there are off ramps, right? Out of academia that can still be fruitful.

Be Open to Pivoting

36:35 Brock: Oh, I’m obviously all for pivoting. Me and my career, I pivoted. I think it’s great. I think you have opportunities throughout your career to pivot. But there’s a way to build on your pivots so that they aren’t turning around, but just changing course. And I think that’s important.

36:54 Emily: Yeah, I think actually my career has been an illustration of this point, actually, because I started knowing maybe around two years into graduate school that I probably wasn’t going to continue in research. But at that point, I really did a heavy reexamination period for about a year and decided that I did want to finish the PhD and it was because I was interested in several, you know, quote unquote alternative career tracks where the PhD would be useful. And so, I finished and then I picked my head up and did another reevaluation and said, oh, but I really love personal finance now and I really wanna go in this direction. So, I ended up pivoting again. But as you said, I was very happy that I got to the credential and got to the finish point because it has been useful since then. Then again, if I had been certain earlier that I didn’t want the PhD, then that would’ve been a good point to take that exit.

37:42 Brock: Exactly. Because, just like you said, those additional years that you would’ve invested. I mean, the relationship between time and money I think is very important. And, you know, whether it’s that you realize that my time is more important spent in this other direction, that’s great. Pivot. Leave grad school if that’s the right call for you. But know and recognize what you’re giving up and what you’re changing to. Because those are the kind of decisions that, you know, make a big swing in your career, in your finances, in your life. You’ve got to pay attention where you’re swinging.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

38:19 Emily: I want to finish up now with the final question that I ask all of my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And we’ve talked about so much like advice-y kind of stuff in this podcast episode already that I actually want to give you a more specific assignment, if you don’t mind.

38:36 Brock: Yeah. Okay.

38:37 Emily: Which is that you mentioned earlier that you had children while you were in graduate school. And so, I would love it if you would give advice for another graduate student or early-career PhD who has children maybe at a time when their peers do not yet have children, and what is some financial advice for that person?

38:54 Brock: You know, I <laugh> that’s a hard one. It is hard to have kids in grad school, but for me it was so worth it. It was great. My wife and I are a fantastic team. I hope she would say the same, and certainly she shouldered a lot of that burden. And I wouldn’t have been able to focus on grad school the way I did if it wasn’t for her support. And, you know, she deserves probably more credentials than I do. The advice that I would give to somebody thinking about this is to be really intentional with your time. Kids, whether you have one or I have three now, so I can speak up to three, they take up all your time. No matter how many you have. They are, you know, they expand to the volume to which, you know, the container holds.

39:51 Brock: And so, you need to be very good about structuring your day and your time so that you can be where you need to be. Now when kids are young, they don’t really know whether you’re home or not. So, it’s as much about supporting, you know, your other team member, you know, your significant other, in that process. And you need to do that. You need to be an equal team. But know that you will have less time. You will have competing priorities, and it will be hard. But I’d say that’s okay because it’s really fun. I’m a big fan of kids <laugh>.

40:37 Emily: I think, you know, the first thing you mentioned there was like time management basically, like being really intentional about where you put your time. And that’s something that I’ve definitely been learning as a business owner and as a parent. Sort of like the, when you’re at work, be all at work, be really focused, get what you need to get done in that time. And then when you’re at home, be off of work, be with your kids, like have that quality time together. And hopefully, you can make the arrangements with your partner and your childcare provider and all this stuff so you have that like, committed time that you can devote to both. But yeah, like you just become pretty, I at least have become a lot more hands-on manage-y about my time because I need to be now that that’s a factor in my life.

41:23 Brock: Yeah. And again, it’s different ways of doing it. You know, so I mean, I had friends in grad school that they would come in later in the day and they’d stay until three in the morning. And that worked really well for them. And for me it was get in early and leave in time for dinner at home and come back if I needed to, if there was a late night time point or something for an experiment. But you need to find something that works for you. You know, your life, your finances, have a goal of what you want that to look like and then you make a plan to get there. It’s not easy. It’s actually incredibly difficult, but it is worth it, and you will find more happiness if you do it that way.

42:06 Emily: I love that note to end on. Thank you so much, Brock, for giving this interview. It’s been a pleasure to talk with you.

42:11 Brock: Thanks so much for having me on, Emily. It’s great talking.

Outtro

42:18 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 Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

PhD Home Buying Updates for 2022

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In this episode, Emily interviews Sam Hogan, a mortgage loan officer with Movement Mortgage who specializes in graduate students and PhDs. Sam lists numerous housing markets where graduate students and postdocs are able to buy a home on a single income or two incomes and explains why the rising mortgage interest rates should not be a deterrent to buying. Sam also illustrates why qualifying for a mortgage with fellowship income has historically been difficult for graduate students and postdocs, but how he and his team have found a way to reliably get them approved. They wrap up the interview with explaining how Sam’s recent shift to working for Movement Mortgage is going to smooth the path to approval even further.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

S13E1 Image for PhD Home Buying Updates for 2022

Teaser

00:00 Sam: This is advantageous to the PhD community because there are other things that are so stressful about the home purchase. You know, putting a $20,000 deposit down can add a little, you know, you might lose half an hour of sleep every night. I don’t want anybody losing sleep because they’re well qualified over income like letters. It’s totally ridiculous.

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. This is Season 13, Episode 1, and today my guest is Sam Hogan, a mortgage loan officer with Movement Mortgage who specializes in graduate students and PhDs. Sam lists numerous housing markets where graduate students and postdocs are able to buy a home on a single income or two incomes and explains why the rising mortgage interest rates should not be a deterrent to buying. Sam also illustrates why qualifying for a mortgage with fellowship income has historically been difficult for graduate students and postdocs, but how he and his team have found a way to reliably get them approved. We wrap up the interview with explaining how Sam’s recent shift to working for Movement Mortgage is going to smooth the path to approval even further.

01:46 Emily: Since we jump right into the discussion of mortgages in the interview, I want to take a moment here to prepare you for what’s to come! Sam has been on the podcast several times before if you’d like to catch up on our previous conversations. If you plan to listen to them all, please do so from oldest to newest. You can hear him on Season 2 Episode 5, Season 5 Episode 17, and Season 8 Episode 4. We have also held several live Q&A calls in the past in which Sam takes questions from grad student and PhD first-time homebuyers, and I’ve published a few clips from those calls on the Personal Finance for PhDs YouTube channel. We don’t have our next live Q&A scheduled yet, so if you’d like to be kept in the loop on that, please join my mailing list through PFforPhDs.com/subscribe/. Links to everything I just mentioned will be in the show notes. You’re going to hear me being pretty pro-homebuying during this interview because I get so enthused about it when I talk with Sam and reflect on my own rental and home ownership history. But I want to acknowledge up front that of course homebuying is not financially feasible for most graduate students and even if feasible is not necessarily the best financial or lifestyle decision. In my book, renting is a perfectly valid choice. Don’t feel pressured to buy by this interview. It’s more about encouraging graduate students and PhDs who are interested in buying that it may very well be possible for them and showing them how to do it. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e1/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Sam Hogan.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:35 Emily: We have an extra special episode of the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast today because my guest is my brother, Sam Hogan, who is a mortgage loan officer with Movement Mortgage. And for the past several years, he has been specializing in writing mortgages for graduate students and postdocs and PhDs. And I’m just so delighted to have Sam on! By the way, he is an advertiser with Personal Finance for PhDs, and he’s going to give us some updates on what’s going on in 2022 and recent developments in the mortgage industry that’s relevant for our audience. So, Sam, thank you so much for joining me! And will you please introduce yourself a little further?

04:12 Sam: Thank you for having me. It’s Sam Hogan, I’m newly with an old employer, Movement Mortgage. And my NMLS number is 1 4 9 1 7 8 6.

04:23 Emily: And let’s get your contact information upfront in case anyone knows already that they want to get a quote from you.

04:29 Sam: Yes. So, my best phone number is (540) 478-5803. And the new email address for me is Sam dot Hogan at movement.com.

Homebuying Markets for Grad Students

04:41 Emily: As probably everyone listening knows, in 2022 we’ve seen a lot of rate hikes from the fed, which has trickled down into the mortgage industry. And so, I know that graduate students and PhDs are really concerned right now about still being able to afford to buy with these recent rate increases. So, can you tell us some examples of places or markets where you’re still seeing PhDs and graduate students able to purchase homes?

05:07 Sam: Yeah, absolutely. Some of our steady markets, I would say nationwide, are just pockets of the country where you can still find single-family homes or townhomes under $400,000. Whether it’s a PhD or postdoc buying on their own or with a partner. We see a lot of activity in North Carolina, and that’s within the Research Triangle and also outside of that area. I’ve had a couple of deals done in Winston-Salem for Wake Forest students. But outside of Chicago, Northwestern, those areas are good as well, including, you know, Philly, Providence, Rhode Island, for people who are going to school just across the bridge at Harvard or MIT. And also Austin, Texas, and outside of those city limits has been steady, no matter what the rate is. And I say that because with these lower-priced homes that are a little more affordable for PhDs, the interest rate, even when it goes up, it doesn’t make a huge, huge difference in your monthly payment.

06:14 Sam: Now, if someone was getting a high balance loan at seven, $800,000, when the rate goes up just a little bit, it makes over a hundred dollars difference monthly. Our first barrier and hurdle with the PhDs is, and will always be the monthly income. <Laugh> Not just including it, but finding a property that fits within that budget. You know, people who are debt-free and have a little bit of money to put down, still, it’s the monthly income that we say, Hey, 10% down is going to have to get the job done because the income is very tight.

06:49 Emily: Yes. Can you give us some examples there? Because I mean, you just threw out $400,000, which like is sort of breathtaking for me. And I assume that’s with two incomes, maybe people could afford that. Let’s talk about one income. Let’s talk about a PhD stipend. Maybe it’s $30,000 per year or something similar to that. If you had a person, a single person buying on their own with that kind of income of good credit score, no outstanding debt, I mean, we’re talking ideal candidate here. How much would they be able to qualify for with current interest rates? We’re recording this in August, 2022.

07:27 Sam: Most recent live data is a loan closing tomorrow and she purchased at $185,000 outside of Chicago with 10% down.

07:39 Emily: And what was her income?

07:42 Sam: She was a second-year student, I believe it was around $34,000 a year.

Keep an Open Mind to Possibilities

07:48 Emily: Okay. Okay. So, ballpark numbers. That’s great to hear. Obviously, like you said earlier, it’s going to be a stretch for a graduate student, especially a single one as I was just mentioning, to buy a home on a stipend. But there are some markets around the U.S. where this is still possible, and even more so if you do have a partner to buy with, or if your income is, you know, better than the average graduate student stipend. Basically, my message always when I bring you on is like, audience members do not completely dismiss out of hand the possibility of you owning a home during graduate school or your postdoc. At least look into it a little bit. Yeah. There are a lot of places where it’s not going to be possible, but you may be surprised that it is possible in some places.

08:27 Sam: Yeah. I mean, I have a client who is buying in LA right now, which people would immediately write off as way too expensive. She does have a second job that she has history of working. So, she’s able to afford a little bit more than just her stipend. I believe she’s going to UCLA right now. So, she’s still buying in the upper threes. You know, she does have 20% down, right? Which helps bring down that loan amount, but I’m only qualifying her off of the stipend and a small seasonal job. So, yes, she is looking at a studio with one bathroom, but that is what she knows she’s going to be comfortable with monthly. And I think just the biggest thing about owning in grad school is completely flipping your net worth, right? You could have a hundred thousand dollars of student loans going into grad school, but turn that into $200,000 net worth and then also rental property when you move out of the area.

09:31 Sam: So, even if it’s a studio, it’s still a wonderful stepping stone. You know, you get that first purchase out of the way and you realize, okay, you know, closing costs are basically the only thing I spent my money on that doesn’t go into equity on my home, right? And you know, learning these small steps of home ownership, like filing an insurance claim if you have to, or like, why do I have plumbing issues every month, right? Whatever, maybe my washer broke, what do washing machines cost, right? All these things are just, you’re going to learn them eventually, and the benefits of a five or six-year plan of you owning while, you know, progressing yourself personally is just unmatched, I would say.

House Hacking

10:16 Emily: Sam, you put that so eloquently, and long-time listeners are going to know I’ve said many times that one of my big financial regrets from graduate school when I went to Duke in the Triangle was not buying my first home when I had the financial means to, because I had a lot of limiting beliefs going on at that time about what home ownership was for graduate students. So, I won’t belabor that point right now, but if you want to go back and listen to some previous episodes we’ve had on home ownership, you can check out season eight, episode 18, where I talk a lot about my own limiting beliefs around home ownership during graduate school. And we’ve done multiple episodes with Sam as a guest in the past, but I would especially point you to season eight, episode four, which is when we talked about, the title episode is Turn Your Largest Liability into Your Largest Asset with House Hacking.

11:03 Emily: So, we talk a lot about what house hacking is, which is basically just when you buy a home that’s larger than what you need and you rent out one or more of the bedrooms to tenants slash roommates. And it can be a really powerful strategy for graduate students who are able to pull it off. So, especially go listen to that one because we, again, talk about all these like options for exiting a home ownership situation, if you are leaving the city, when you finish your graduate program or when you finish your postdoc. You could sell, but if it’s not the right time to sell, you could hold onto it, and it could become a rental, like Sam was just saying. Or there are other options as well. So, anyway, great episodes to listen to. Sam, is there anything that you want to add about like where graduate students in PhDs are buying and able to buy right now?

11:42 Sam: I can say reflecting on my last year’s worth of production, there were 17 states which I originated for PhDs last year, or I guess in a calendar year. I definitely see a lot of business in the Northeast. So, people who are going to any New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut area type of university. I actually had a very successful purchase for a student who goes to Yukon. His name was Joshua DuPont, and he implemented a wonderful house hacking purchase. Couple quick data points on it. He purchased at about $130,000. It was a two-unit, separate levels. The rental comp on the second unit was about $800 a month, which exceeded his mortgage by about 50 bucks. So, he was covering his entire mortgage by having that rental unit above his. I’m not sure which one he lived in, but it was a perfect example of someone who was making the commitment for five years, and then, I mean, his opportunity now financially is completely different than it would be if he was the person renting that unit from someone else, right?

13:05 Emily: I love to hear that. I’m so happy for him!

13:07 Sam: Yeah. And that’s actually the third PhD that bought a multi-unit.

Rates are a Moving Target

13:11 Emily: Wow! That’s so exciting! Okay. So far what we’ve heard is don’t discount home ownership. It’s possible in a lot of different markets. Secondly, rates are going up, but it won’t affect these on the lower end of home prices purchases as much as it will affect larger-scale home prices. So, still go ahead, get a quote from Sam, get a quote from somebody else, see what you can qualify for just based on your income.

13:38 Sam: I wanted to touch on rates one more time. You don’t want to be 100% focused on what rate you’re receiving. Because everyone at that time of the year is going to be in a similar boat as you. Rates have gone up, people will qualify for less at a higher rate, right? But the main goal is to find the right house within your budget. So, whether that is off of a 5% rate or a 6% rate, it still has to be a comfortable payment for you. Okay. So, while you’re looking for your home, rate is basically a moving target, right? What a lot of lenders implement is a float-down policy. So, my client in Chicago that’s closing tomorrow, when I locked her rate, she was up at 5.625. You know, condos have a little bit higher rates than single-family homes, but we’re able to lock at day one when we decided it’s a good time to lock.

14:41 Sam: And then also look at a second day in the future that’s before closing to see if the rate is better that day. In her scenario, the rates had improved for a few weeks. And so, we ended up floating down her 5.625 down to 5.1 at no cost to her. So really, when you’re locking your rate in, you’re just preventing the rate from getting worse, right? You’re locking in it at, let’s just say 5%, for example. Your rate’s never going to be over 5%. Should the market improve significantly before you close, ask your lender about a float-down option. They usually have one. I would say if they’re a competitive lender that does a lot of business, they have a float down policy. Okay. So, mainly, the point I’m trying to get across is, no matter what the rate is, even if it’s at 10%, don’t be discouraged from buying, because you still have the equity you’re going to gain in the home, the amount you’re going to pay your loan down, your tax write-offs, and the ability to either keep or rent out that home after you don’t want to live there anymore. So, all these things, compared to paying rent, rent is a hundred percent interest. The only good thing about paying rent is you get to call your landlord and say, Hey, I have a problem. Instead of dealing it with yourself.

15:55 Emily: That is a good benefit of renting, and one that I miss.

15:57 Sam: It’s the best benefit. Yeah.

15:59 Emily: I appreciate your points about still buying even at higher interest rates, if you qualify, right? The question is, if graduate students were at that tippy top max of their budgets anyway, and increasing rates have caused their monthly payment to go up to such a point where they could no longer even afford a house anywhere in that market, if they were on the bubble like that, then it’s an issue. But if you could still qualify at the higher rates, like you said, I still think it’s a reasonable idea to go forward with buying. Especially because, you know, let’s say next year or the year after that rates are lower, again, that person can refinance. As we saw so many people do with low rates over the past 10 years. And so, it’s not necessarily that that rate is going to be your rate forever. As long as you can still get into the property. So anyway, it’s worth investigating.

Buying Down Your Rate

16:44 Sam: Okay. So, I’ll add these details from what I experienced originating at higher rates right now. Like you just said a moment ago, you’re already on a tight budget. That’s not changing. And rates going up, you’re going to qualify for a little bit less. It’s not going to take you out of the market because now the rates have gone up, and home prices are actually starting to come down in some areas, right? You’re not going to go, you know, over contract price plus 10 grand to get into the home. Okay. So prices will adjust for a smaller buy approval that doesn’t qualify for certain amounts, right? And then secondly, usually PhDs are putting down savings or they’re receiving a gift from a family member or a friend. Some even are selling a previous home and buying another one, right? So, the $5,000 you needed from a family member to close, you know, planned on, might be $10,000 now.

17:44 Sam: You might just have to put a little more down to qualify for that house you want, right? Then again, I still have people buying single-family homes in North Carolina for under $150K. So, if you don’t need more than three bedrooms, you’re going to be able to find something. And then the last thing I wanted to point out is the realtor that you decide to work with is important because they’re going to work hard to find something that fits your budget. What we know already to start is that it’s going to be a tight budget monthly. So, I want to get my eyes on every property that you’re going to put an offer in to make sure it fits for your scenario. So, the room for error is very small here.

18:29 Sam: What’s very unlikely is that you’re looking for a home and I’ve preapproved you at five and a half percent. And during that period, rates go up to six and a half, and now you don’t qualify. That won’t happen. Because the cost to buy down the rate, if it were to go up, would be minimal. So, the rate that you don’t pay for has gone up, but if you are willing to put 1% or even 2% of your loan amount to buy down your rate, we can do that. Sometimes it’s cheaper to buy down for a lower rate versus getting another five or $10,000 to put down towards your loan. So even with the tight income monthly for one, you know, grad student on a stipend, it’s still achievable.

19:21 Emily: That’s really good to hear.

Commercial

19:25 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 2022 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, 2022.

20:07 Emily: Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate, named savings account for your future tax payments. Calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives. If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please 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.

Getting Ready to Purchase

21:29 Emily: Both of us have mentioned a couple times so far, like, okay, you know, ideal buyer candidate, like zero debt, and like, okay, how much money do you have to put down? Is it 5K? 10K? More? Let’s lay out for the listers right now, let’s say for someone who is really thinking they’re going to buy, maybe it’s within the next few months or next year, what can that person do within their finances and their life overall kind of to get ready to be in a good position to make that purchase a little ways down the line?

21:58 Sam: Well, you want to have a full understanding of where you stand credit-wise. [Annualcreditreport.com], we’ll have to check that for the show notes, but once a year, every consumer can get a copy of their credit report.

22:19 Emily: I just looked it up. It is annualcreditreport.com.

22:22 Sam: You really want to make sure that you have some money saved, you’re at a good credit standing, and you’re, I guess, mentally prepared to lose out on a couple deals before you find the right house. <Laugh> I would also say, if you do believe you’re going to be receiving a gift, to have that conversation a little earlier on in the process. We really don’t like to transfer money until we know things are done deal, but you know, prepping a family member or a spouse like, Hey, are we prepared to move around 10 or $20,000 to get this deal done, right? And then aside from credit and assets, your other main player is your income. We talk a lot about stipend income. I might know it better than some universities, but be aware of if your funding is changing. Usually, we have these annual increases.

23:25 Sam: But when that goes into effect, sometimes I receive funding letters that haven’t been officially signed. I’m like, we need to make sure you have a signed funding letter. And we do want to see some continuance, but we are not like every lender. We can still approve income even on a short-term contract. We look at the full picture, and Movement Mortgage uses common sense underwriting. So, if I can just show that you’ve always been in good standing as a student, and now you’re transitioning to this PhD in, you know, X science field or arts and sciences that we support you. We understand you’re a good borrower. We just, you know, there are obviously no guarantees because we want to make sure people fall into the right credit buckets, have the right assets, and the trio of how you qualify someone, right?

Advocacy for Grad Students with < 3 Years Continuance

24:24 Emily: Let’s talk a little bit more about that, because in one of our earlier episodes, it was quite a while ago now, season five, episode 17, we talked about this term continuance that you just mentioned. And at the time, again, it was a few years ago, the way things were understood regarding fellowship income–by fellowship, I mean, non-employee income, non W-2 income, awarded income is what I call it for my tax purposes. What we understood at that time was that fellowship income was sort of viewed differently than employee income, W-2 income, with respect to qualifying for a mortgage. And I was getting a lot of messages from graduate students and postdocs who were saying, oh my gosh, I was denied. I couldn’t get a mortgage. I couldn’t buy the home that I expected to because of the type of income I have. Not the amount of income, but the type of income.

25:13 Emily: And so, you looked into this, this is sort of how, you know, we started kind of collaborating together several years ago, you looked into this and one of the first things you found was, oh, well, if you have three years of continuance stated explicitly in your offer letter, which means this funding is guaranteed for three years, think like National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, it’s going to continue for three years. If that’s in the offer letter, oh, no problem. You’re golden. We’re going to be able to write that mortgage easily. Now that’s what we said in that earlier episode, but there has been some development since then, as you’ve been working more and more in this industry, you’ve actually gotten a lot of other types of people on fellowship approved. So, can you tell us more about the updates on that and the success stories that you have that don’t involve W-2 income and don’t involve three years of continuance?

25:54 Sam: Yes. So I have to kind of break this down into layers. So, what all lenders–that’s banks, mortgage companies, anybody who’s given a mortgage out for, I’ll say conventional loan–they have to go by the oversight committee, right? Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, right? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have guidelines. And they are just mortgage laws everybody has to work with. Now, as you get down to the company that you’re working with, that company will also have a set of mortgage laws that are on top of what Fannie and Freddie consider, what they will ensure and take, right? Now, under that layer is your underwriters. The underwriter is similar to a loan officer. They’re a licensed employee of the company, and their license number is attached to every single loan that’s approved and closed. Okay. The underwriter basically can go either way with the income, right?

26:56 Sam: And a lot of times, a couple years ago, for me, I would always have to escalate my underwriter’s decision to their manager. Because the way the guidelines are written, they can be interpreted different ways, right? So let’s say this, actually, this is a real scenario that I got three weeks ago. Her name was Jane. She was buying in New York and she has exactly three years of continuance. Now the lender denied her because one month after the close date is when your mortgage starts and you paid in arrears. So you basically skip a month after closing. Well, when the payments start, she was under her three years continuance. So they said, I’m sorry, you don’t have enough time in your contract, right? So she got denied, found us online. I got her back on track. Her income’s been approved with Movement Mortgage, and she’s going to close on time without issue up in New York. As you get down to these layers, if you’re not working with the right people, you’re running into more and more issues. So what I’ve been able to develop is a way to present PhD income to an underwriter demonstrating historically where this student’s been, and where they’re gonna be going in the future. Technically speaking, the guidelines say the income must be likely to continue for three years. Okay? Now, if the underwriter can see that it’s not going for three years, they can say, I’m not budging. I can’t use this income. My license is attached to this. No. Right? Go get a co-borrower.

Interpreting the Word “Likely”

28:39 Emily: Because they’re interpreting the word likely in the way we would say guaranteed. They want to see a guarantee to think that it’s likely. But what you’re saying is, well, no, the word is not guaranteed. The word is likely. So how can we work with that word?

28:53 Sam: Right. I did a lot of due diligence before moving over to my previous employer Movement Mortgage, and I was able to get a guarantee from the whole entire company’s underwriting manager that I can take a PhD or postdoc with less than three years of continuance. Some less than one year. I can take them to a Freddie Mac product or a Fannie Mae product. This is advantageous to the PhD community, because there are other things that are so stressful about the home purchase. You know, putting a $20,000 deposit down can add a little, you might lose a half an hour sleep every night. I don’t want anybody losing sleep because they’re well qualified over income, like letters. It’s totally ridiculous.

29:42 Emily: This goes to that term that you mentioned earlier, common sense underwriting. Because I think the people listening to this podcast can clearly see from their own lived experience that graduate student income, whether it’s employee income or non-employee income, is pretty likely to continue. It’s certainly not more or less likely than some random job you might have, right? So like, we know as a community that this is very similar to another job. In fact, in some cases can even be more secure than a regular job. But the mortgage industry historically has not taken the same view until you, you know, went hard at work on this problem and started understanding the underwriter’s point of view, started understanding how you can present these packages, the language that they use. And like you said, with this most recent move, even prepping the underwriters at the company that you’ve recently moved to, Movement Mortgage, prepping them by saying, this is the type of, you know, letters and income verification that’s going to come your way. I need to know that you’re on board with this interpretation of the word likely and all the other factors that go into it.

30:42 Sam: Yeah. And one other thing about stipend income that was one of the main reasons I switched is universities will either pay their students on a 12-month pay cycle, or they will get paid semesters, right? So, where I was able to include someone’s fall and spring stipend, the summer stipend, because the pay changes, it’s a different pay rate. A previous underwriter at my old company was like, oh, we can’t use that income. It’s future income and it’s not guaranteed. And I debated with them. I said, the letter states that summer employment is often available for PhDs, but it’s not required. Meaning if you want to go to Europe, you’re allowed to go. But if you want to teach, here’s $6,000. That client of mine, he was able to get a co-borrower to solidify the $500 that they didn’t want to include monthly.

31:40 Sam: I took that same scenario and provided it to the underwriters at Movement. And they said, we see that he’s historically worked summers. And we see that he has this option to work as a teacher. And I was conservative. I did not include the higher income that I could have. He made, you know, $30,000 working for a different company the previous summer. I was like, I just went off the $6,000 that was within the letter. I would be able to close that here at Movement without the co-signer. And that just helps me get my PhDs closed with less friction. Because I see it as this is available income for next summer. So you get these layers, like what Fannie and Freddie will require, the lenders are a little more strict, and then the underwriter, you know, they’re on the edge of the fence. It could go one way or another. I couldn’t be happier working with PhDs. They’re responsive, understanding, usually very qualified, and they’re very, there’s no heavy lifting with doing these PhDs anymore. The back end, my team behind me, they’re the best community to work with. And it just doubles down of why they’re great people to approve for mortgages.

Reach Out to Sam at Movement Mortgage

32:54 Emily: Listeners, Sam does not just say these very complimentary things about you on the podcast. He says these things to me regularly about how happy he is to be working with you all. That you are such easy clients to work with, that you’re so responsive, that you’re so ready, that you’re so organized, you’re so responsive to email. Like you’re a great community for him to be working with. He’s really happy about this. Obviously, we have this personal connection that helps start it, but he’s off on his own now. Like he is clearly the industry leader in this area. So anyway, if it hasn’t already been clear through this conversation, Sam is working hard for you. Especially if you’re going to be buying a house in the near future, on your graduate student or postdoc income, his recent move to Movement Mortgage, he obviously did a lot of work on that. Making sure that things like inconsistent income throughout the 12 months will be included in your consideration for a mortgage.

33:44 Emily: So, all that to say, Sam, let’s wrap up here. I, of course, strongly encourage anybody listening or reading this transcript who is considering qualifying for a mortgage in the near future to at least get a quote from you. Doesn’t mean you can’t get quotes from other people, but at least get a quote from Sam. See what he can do for you. And he has probably the most experience working with this particular population of anyone in the U.S. I don’t know. Maybe there’s some random person in one random college town somewhere who also does this, but Sam works nationally. So, please go get a quote from him if this is on your radar at all to see what you could qualify for on your income and with the current interest rate. So, Sam let’s conclude one more time with your contact information.

34:23 Sam: Yes. My cell phone is the best way to reach me. It’s 5 4 0 4 7 8 5 8 0 3. And my new email address is Sam dot Hogan at Movement.com.

34:35 Emily: Well, Sam, it’s been a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. Thank you so much for the work that you do for this community and how much you care for them!

34:42 Sam: Thank you for having me!

Outtro

34:49 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 Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

Financial Advice for Newly Hired Academics and PhDs

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Inga Timmerman, an associate professor of finance and financial planning at Cal State Northridge and financial planner specializing in academics. Emily and Inga discuss in depth the financial transition from graduate school/postdoc to faculty member (or into anther type of post-PhD job), from maximizing benefits to optimizing taxes to budgeting for a new city. Inga shares excellent tactical advice and mindset shifts for someone experiencing a large income increase. She advises everyone to work with a financial planner and ballparks how much it will cost to get the right type and amount of advice for that stage.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

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Teaser

00:00 Inga: The best time to address those is before you get your first paycheck. Because somehow once you start getting money, that money disappears. And we used to live on so little money in the PhD, and somehow we survived. And now we make 3, 4, 5 times as much, and we still don’t have enough. So, you do have to make a few decisions.

Introduction

00:23 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. This is Season 12, Episode 3, and today my guest is Dr. Inga Timmerman, an associate professor of finance and financial planning at Cal State Northridge and financial planner specializing in academics. Inga and I discuss in depth the financial transition from graduate school/postdoc to faculty member (or into another type of post-PhD job), from maximizing benefits to optimizing taxes to budgeting for a new city. Inga shares excellent tactical advice and mindset shifts for someone experiencing a large income increase. She advises everyone to work with a financial planner and ballparks for us how much it will cost to get the right type and amount of advice for that stage.

01:42 Emily: As a listener to this podcast, I’m guessing that you listen to other podcasts as well, perhaps even other podcasts targeted to graduate students and PhDs. I’m a big podcast listener as well, and I’d love to hear your recommendations in that category. You can reach me over email, emily@PFforPhDs.com, or on Twitter, @PFforPhDs. In fact, if you would like to hear me interviewed on another podcast or another podcaster interviewed on my podcast, please set up an email or Twitter introduction for us! Thank you! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s12e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Inga Timmerman.

Would You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:37 Emily: I am so excited to share today’s interview with you. We have on the podcast today, Dr. Inga Timmerman. She is an associate professor of finance and financial planning at Cal State Northridge, and she is also a financial planner. And she has a PhD herself, so she’s like triply qualified to be on the podcast. So, Inga, it’s such a delight to have you! Would you please give the audience a little bit more background about yourself, your education, your career?

03:01 Inga: Very happy to be here, Emily. Thanks for having me here! So, I had a real job out of college at 22. I used to work 80, 90 hour weeks and discovered pretty fast that a career in corporate finance and investment banking is not really what I want to do in life long-term. I did for about five years. And then the school where I did my undergrad called me and said, “Hey, would you like to teach for us? Do you have an MBA?” Like, yeah, I do. “Okay. Come and teach a few classes.” And I really, really liked it, but I realized that to really make a living out of being a professor, I needed to get a PhD. So, when I was 27, I quit my job. I looked at all the PhD programs I got into, and it was 2008 financial crisis, 2009, everybody under the sun was going to get a PhD.

03:46 Inga: So, there’s a lot of competition. And I decided to go to the school that would get me out the fastest, because I was like, every year I’m not working, I’m losing like a whole bunch of money, so we’ve got to get out of here. So, I went to Florida Atlantic University in South Florida in Boca Raton, and I did my PhD there. And afterwards, my first placement was as an assistant professor at Oregon State University. My husband was working in Los Angeles at the time. The commute was too much. So, two years later, I moved as an assistant professor to Cal State Northridge, which is in the Los Angeles county. And I’ve been there since. So, it’s been about seven, eight years.

04:22 Emily: Wow. We’ve already learned a lot just from that background story. So many good financial insights that you just shared. Incredible! And tell me a little bit more about the being a financial planner side of things, not just being a professor.

04:34 Inga: So, about when I moved to Cal State Northridge, I was hired to do financial planning. It’s a very long story on the side about how finance and financial planning fight and what’s going on there. Not worth it now, but I ended up teaching in the finance department, financial planning. And one of the things I always wanted to do is practice financial planning. So, I decided to open my own firm back in 2016, and I’ve been running it for the last five, six years, and I specialize in financial planning for academics. So, a lot of my clients are current academic academics.

Financial Profile of Academic Clients

05:05 Emily: So perfect. And the reason that we met was that another podcast interviewee, Dr. Leslie Wang, you’re her financial planner, and she recommended that you also come on the podcast. So, I don’t know if that episode’s going to air before or after this one, but check that one out as well. So, that is how Inga and I were referred to one another. So, this is really, really exciting. I’m so pleased to learn that you, you know, specialize in academics. I say PhDs here a lot on the podcast, that that’s kind of my specialty area. So, when you’re working with academics, is there like a rough, like financial profile that you have discerned from the people who come to you, maybe versus like the average person who would seek out financial planning? Like how are academics and PhDs financially different?

05:48 Inga: Well, there are two different types of academics who will come to me. The ones who are about to graduate and are getting their first job. For some of them, they’re going from like $20,000 to $150,000. It’s a huge jump in income. And they’re like, what am I going to do with all this money? What do I do? So, that’s really a good point to come. The other ones are people who’ve been around for a while and they accumulate enough assets. So, they have a lot of complicated situations to solve and they’re just coming, “Okay, tell me, am I okay to retire? Am I okay here? What am I doing? So, those are the two big buckets, and you do want to go to somebody who actually understands your lifestyle and what’s going on. Because when you go from assistant to associate, there’ll be a bunch of money coming in.

06:26 Inga: There’ll be some decisions to be made. When you first get your job, a lot of the systems are still on the dual pension versus 403(b) type, and you have to make the decision. And once you miss it, there’s no going back in most cases. So, there are a few very specific things associated with academics. I think it’s important to find somebody who actually knows those. The second part of it is that I’m always willing to provide you all kinds of advice you didn’t ask me about outside finances. Like you should move to a different place because your life would be better and cheaper if you do that. So, I think it just, it’s easier for me to work with people just like me, which happens to be somebody who is in their forties, has a few kids, and just trying to go through the financial academic life path.

07:11 Emily: I love that you mentioned, in particular, those two sort of time points when it really makes sense to seek out financial planning. That like, I’m about to start my high-earning career and want to make sure I’m set up to go forward in the right way. But also you get to see people and the decisions they’ve made, right? And the accumulation of those decisions by that point. So, I’m sure that your younger clients are benefiting from you working with your older clients as well to sort of steer them in the right way.

Money Mindset During Academic Career Transition

07:37 Emily: So, you mentioned you yourself have been through like this massive income decrease to go to graduate school and then a massive, I hope, income increase coming out of graduate school, and that that’s something you advise, you know, PhDs and people entering academia as, you know, with a full-time job on. So like, when you’re looking at people in that transition from graduate student or postdoc into like a professorship, have you seen any like money mindset issues, commonly, in those people that you’d like to tell our audience more about like what they are and maybe how to address them?

08:08 Inga: There are a few things that come to mind immediately, and the best time to address those are before you get your first paycheck. Because somehow once you start getting money, that money disappears. And we used to live on so little money in the PhD, and somehow we survived and now we make 3, 4, 5 times as much, and we still don’t have enough. So, you do have to make a few decisions. And I think the one most important decision you can make is sit down and do a budget before you show up to work. You know how much you’re going to be making, you know, approximately, what’s going to happen. So, figure out how much money is left after all the bills are going to be paid and where that money is going to go. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the YNAB budgeting software, because they always tell you that every dollar has a job.

08:51 Inga: Like there should be no floating money there. Everything should be allocated before you start. If you do a really good budget and you stick to it, you should have a very comfortable lifestyle. All the decisions will be just fine. And if you do this for 25 years, you will be okay. That’s really the one big thing that I tell people. The other one that is really worth mentioning is the housing situation. We go into these jobs, not knowing are we going to get tenure? Are we not going to get tenure? What’s going to happen? Am I going to like it? And it really should be more about, is this a good cash flow house to buy or not, regardless what happens to me? If I go, like, when I went to Oregon, I didn’t know if I was going to be there for a long time.

09:30 Inga: I realized really fast I won’t, but I still bought a house because I knew that the duplex can rent for an extra thousand dollars over my mortgage. So even if I leave, it’s a good financial decision. When you show up in Los Angeles and the condo is a million dollars, not so much. So you really have to think about, is this a decision good for my long-term financial implications? Or am I just buying a house because now I have to buy a house, I moved somewhere else? Those are two big things that I would definitely consider before starting the job.

Personal Factors in Real Estate Decision-Making

09:58 Emily: I’d like to stay on this like real estate question a little bit more, because I’ve become much more interested in real estate since I bought my first house at the age of like, how old am I, at the age of 35, last year in the hype of the market craziness. We bought in a high cost of living area. So like, I’ve kind of been through this recently and it makes me very interested in this. So like, what I really like about what you said is that I read this book in the last year called First-Time Home Buyer: The Complete [Playbook] to Avoiding Rookie Mistakes. And in there they have this really interesting sort of way of approaching the decision about real estate, which is what you just mentioned is what are my exit strategies of this house or whatever kind of property?

10:35 Emily: And do they make financial sense? So like, yes, I’m going to live in this house. It’s going to be my primary residence. Or maybe we can even talk about house hacking, you know, but it’s probably going to be your primary residence. But when you are exiting this house, whether that’s you sell it or you keep it as a rental or that’s <laugh>, I guess that’s it, you know, you go to another area of the country or whatever, like, is it going to be an okay financial decision too, at that point? Does it still make sense? So, that’s a little bit like what you were saying, right? And I think that added element to what you were just saying is that, when you’re looking at your first like appointment and you’re going to be there for you don’t know how long. It could be a few years, it could be a lot of years. At what point, I guess if you decide that you do want to stay, like not for you, you left that first position relatively rapidly, but if you do want to stay like, “Oh yeah, I can see myself having my full career here.” Does it make sense to buy then? Even if like the cash flow is not going to be good?

11:29 Inga: Ooh. So, this goes outside of money and now into our personal things we have going on in our heads. Some people are totally fine being renters. And in some markets like a San Francisco, Los Angeles market, it is perfectly fine to be a tenant for the whole life. You can always go and buy another vacation home, an investment property somewhere else. You don’t have to just have one place. But other people cannot sleep at night when they know that I’m throwing money away into the wind and it’s rent. So for those people, it’s not really about the cash flow, but about, can I sleep at night? And it is okay, totally okay, to make decisions that are not based on dollars, as long as you are aware what you’re getting into. I personally tried to avoid that because like I was like, “Oh, I just wasted some money. I can just take that cash and I can put it, invest it and don’t do anything and make 9% somewhere else.” But if you’re going to buy a house and you really want this house, because that’s your dream, it is totally okay to buy it. Even if it doesn’t make sense.

12:28 Emily: Yeah. I definitely think you’re describing me with the house purchase that I just mentioned. I’m always saying like, this is more of a lifestyle decision than like a financial decision. Like yeah, it’s okay financially, but really it’s because I want like stability in my life. Like I want to know I have this house, I’m going to be living here. I know what school my kids are going to go to, that whole thing. So yeah, it’s much more of like a peace of mind and stability thing for me.

12:48 Inga: I mean, to give you a perspective, I have three houses now in three different places. The latest one I bought last week. So, you know, at the height of the height, because it made sense.

Spend Time on Your Benefits

12:59 Emily: Yeah. Congratulations on your new acquisition! Okay. Any other like mindset stuff you want to talk about in this, you know, transition into the first post-PhD full-time job?

13:11 Inga: Spend some time on your benefits, because when you go to a university job, it usually comes with a really good package. And some people tell me, yeah, I’ve made my choice in 30 minutes. 30 minutes? I spent 70 hours on my benefits, like trying to understand them, to see how to optimize them, what you can get to pay less in taxes. And if you are not really sure how to do it, find somebody who will do it for you for 500 bucks. Pay somebody two hours of work and do it because you’re going to make so much more money if you take advantage of what’s offered to you.

13:39 Emily: Can you give us a couple examples of some of those benefits that people might not be aware of?

13:43 Inga: Like even the choice of having a dependent care spending account, healthcare spending account. So, if you have kids and they go to daycare, you have some expenses for them. Like it should be a no-brainer. We are going to max out the $5,000 because we are going to probably save a third of that in taxes. But people are like, well, I don’t really have the cash to pay for it. You’re still paying for daycare. You just have to pay less if you do it through the dependent care spending account.

14:07 Emily: Yeah. Good example. And that applies for everybody, even outside of academia, if they have that kind of benefit through their work.

Financial Goals: Kids’ Education and Retirement

14:13 Emily: Okay. So, again, talking about this like point you’re like launching your career post-PhD. What are some financial goals that people at that stage might want to be considering? We already talked about real estate. We don’t have to go over that. What are some other financial goals?

14:26 Inga: Kids and kids’ education, if you have kids. And a lot of it comes with where they go to college, where they go to school, that’s also a decision that needs to be made. I would say that’s less important than your retirement. Retirement should go on top of that. And retirement is really a big decision because if you do it right and you do it from the very beginning, you’ll just have to work so much less when you’re 65 years old. What you can save at 35 to 45 is like saving 30 years later down the line. So, please make sure you’re not just saving a little bit, but trying to figure out how to max out that 403(b) or how to take advantage of your pension, how to make the optimal decision for that. That’s another one. And then the third one actually comes before you even get a job as you’re deciding. In some cases, obviously, you have one offer and a job is better than no job. But if you have a few different offers to decide, or if later in life you’re going to move to a different place, it’s not just about the base pay. There is so much more to think about in terms of where you live, the state income taxes, what else you can negotiate. That makes a huge difference in the financial package.

Maxing Out the 403(b)

15:32 Emily: I want to stay on the retirement goal for a second. Do you often end up saying to your clients, try to max out that 403(b)? Like, is that something that comes out of your mouth?

15:43 Inga: Yep. That is like the number one thing. There are a few exceptions. In some cases, obviously the emergency fund in general will come before, but with a few exceptions where people are not, they have other things going on where the 403(b) is irrelevant, I cannot think of a better thing both for taxes and retirement than maxing it out.

16:01 Emily: I was also thinking about like that goal of maxing out. So like for a personal example, when my husband and I first finished our PhDs and like our incomes are starting to increase, but they’re not like I don’t know as high as they are now, for example, multiple years later. We at first were not, even though we were like really good retirement savers, we were not trying to max out because we had like this real estate purchase goal and we had, you know, other things going on. And so we sort of set like a percentage of our income. It was 20% that we wanted to save. And then after we ended up buying our house, which I’ve already mentioned so many times, then we were like, okay, this is our year. We can finally max out. We can finally like all, you know, pull out all the stops, like try to max out as much as we can. So for us, we were trying to balance a few different goals, but yeah, so maxing out didn’t happen immediately. It was a few years down the line for us.

16:46 Inga: And you know, that’s very typical because once you want the house and you have kids, there’s a lot of competing priorities. So, not in every case, you’re going to max out. But even if you started at 5% this year and every year you go up by 1%, eventually max it out. Worst case when you become an associate professor, well, now you have this huge chunk of money coming in you don’t really need most likely, that can go to the maximization. And if you’re a professor, you actually potentially could have a double maximization between the 403(b) and the 457. So you could just go wild in there, if you had nothing better to do with the money and put in $40,000 aside.

17:21 Emily: Yeah. The amount that you can stash away when you have both a 403(b) and a 457 is like really a startling amount of money. It’s very impressive you can manage to do all of that.

Commercial

17:32 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as 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 2022-2023 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker 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 emily@PFforPhDs.com 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.

Choosing Where to Live

18:55 Emily: So, the third kind of decision that you mentioned is if you had, you know, competing offers, ideal scenario and you get to choose where to live. I end up talking about this a lot at like the grad student level with like, okay, you need to make sure that your stipend is going to actually like pay for your life in X, Y, Z city that you’ve never lived in before. Like how do you kind of assess that? So, are there any, like, what are the considerations for someone at that stage in deciding where to live? And I want to also like throw in something you told me before the interview, which is that you do not live in California, you have moved elsewhere and are working remotely. So like, what are the things that go into that decision when we’re talking about geographic arbitrage?

19:30 Inga: The two big things are cost of living, buying, or renting a place and the state income tax. So, it really comes down to that. So for example, when COVID hit and everything went online, I move from Los Angeles to Florida, and I’m still here commuting to LA once a week to teach my class because the price of the tickets and what I need to do is still so much lower than the cost of living I’m giving up. And some of the income being shielded from the California state income tax, which is very expensive. So as you’re making these two decisions, think about $1 in Los Angeles is like having $2 in Florida, and nobody’s going to double your salary to go to Los Angeles. So you really have to think about that and decide, “Okay. If I really don’t care that much about a specific location and I have a Boise, Idaho, and some North Carolina, like which one makes more financial sense when it comes to buying a house or renting plus the state income tax?”

20:22 Emily: Yeah, that’s really, really good to think about. We touched on this a little bit in a previous interview with Dr. Amanda back in, I don’t know, season one or season two. Listeners can look that up if they’re interested, but she said kind of the same thing. Like she was looking at multiple different academic offers and saying, “Wow, you know, they’re not adjusted that much based on the cost of living.” It made a lot more sense. She wanted to live in the Midwest anyway. So that made a lot of sense for her to like, accept that kind of offer, both lifestyle and financial decision in that case. So yeah, that’s really interesting to hear that your offers might not be too different. And it’s the same thing actually with grad students’ stipends. Like, yes, they generally will hopefully pay more in high cost of living areas, but it’s not as much as it would be to make up the real difference between those low cost of living and high cost of living areas.

Financial Tactics Beyond Budgeting

21:03 Emily: Let’s get down to a little bit more tactical stuff. What are some financial like tactics that you end up recommending to your clients? We already talked about budgeting a little bit. Is there anything that goes beyond that?

21:15 Inga: Tax planning is normally a big deal, but it comes later in life when you’re making more money. When you’re making 60, $70,000, let’s just say like immediately as a postdoc, tax planning is really not going to save you that much money. Once you’re making $200,000, you have two people making the same. It is a big deal. So you do want to figure out what is the least amount of tax I want to pay, whether it be from retirement, from where you live, from how you shield some of the benefits, it’s worth the consideration. And really making the decision, if you decide to go the 403(b), or one of those investment type accounts, 457, 401(k), you really have to make sure the investments you have make sense. Because sometimes you have multiple choices. Let’s say you have a 403(b), and now you have options between Fidelity and lawyer and somebody else, make the best decision based on the investment choices, and then make sure your portfolio building actually makes sense.

22:09 Inga: And it’s so crazy how nobody gives you this training. The only people you end up talking to are the reps from these companies, and their sole purpose is to get you into their hands. So, they’re not going to tell you, “Oh yeah, Fidelity is better than Vanguard,” or whatever it happens to be. You have to make the decision because I think at one point the calculation is like a $600,000 calculation if you max out your 403(b) for the next 40 years. It’s a huge difference what funds you choose, how you invest. And that is also a good place to probably look for some help if you don’t have the skills and knowledge.

22:43 Emily: I think some of my listeners, you know, they’ve probably heard me talking about like a Roth IRA ad nauseum, because a Roth IRA is like, kind of, well, the IRA is like the only game of town, pretty much for graduate students. And the Roth makes so much sense when they’re that young. But as you mentioned, you know, tax optimization and tax planning, as your income starts to increase, I’m learning that it makes a lot more sense of course, to use like traditional versions of these accounts in many cases. What I’m literally working with right now with my financial planner is on asset location. So, like what’s going to be in the traditional accounts, what’s going to be in the Roth accounts, what’s going to be in the taxable brokerage. She’s figuring all that stuff out for us because it can get pretty complicated at that point.

23:21 Inga: And in the end, you have to have all three. You have to have some rough money, you have to have some traditional, and some of the brokerage, if you want to, when you are old, try to take money out to make the most sense of it. So, I’m a big fan of the Roth IRA. If you can do it and you’re not maxed out and you have, yeah. Do it. But putting $6,000 in a Roth is not going to be enough for retirement. You’ll have to do more than that. And even at work, you have an option between a Roth versus traditional 403(b) for example, how do you make the choice? It needs to be thought through because that’s a huge implication down the line.

General Rules of Thumb

23:52 Emily: So, let’s assume that somebody listening is not going to work with you or another type of financial planner at this crucial point that we’re talking about when they’re deciding on their benefits. Can you give them any other like, pointers about how to make these decisions that are general rules of thumb or that most people would be able to apply?

24:08 Inga: Okay. So the first decision, if you have a pension versus a 403(b) type account, because a lot of the systems do, if you see yourself staying in the system and investing and being there for the long-term, take the pension. It’s normally a better deal. If you think this is a two-to-five year deal, take the 403(b), it comes down to that. And if you’re not sure, take the pension because you can always convert the money later on and take it with you. For the 403(b) type accounts, investment accounts, a Roth versus traditional. I mean, I have rules of thumb. Again, disclosure, they don’t always work, but if you are making less than $80,000, the Roth is the way to go. You are not getting killed by taxes. Most likely you’re going to end up with more taxes down the road. So, take the Roth.

24:50 Inga: Over $120K, and that’s for single, so double it for married, maybe traditional makes more sense depending how much you itemize, how much deductions you have. And between $80K and $120K is a very gray area. Once you are at the point where you make $250K plus, and you have plenty of money and you’re thinking, “Well, now I need to have a 403(b) and a 457. Then you can do a little bit of both. But in the beginning, if you’re making the typical 150 salary for a lot of the majors, the traditional 403(b) usually makes more sense.

25:23 Emily: Yes. Thank you so much for that general landscape of, you know, how one’s financial life may play out in this respect. Are there any financial challenges or financial opportunities that academics have that are not commonly discussed in personal finance circles? Like the wider personal finance community or financial planning community?

Financial Benefits of Job Changes

25:46 Inga: I think the job change is a little stickier or harder to change. Like a lot of the clients I work with who are not academics to them like, “Oh yeah, somebody offered me $15 more. I’m taking a new job. I’m jumping ship” because there’s always that kind of mentality. Academics don’t really think about money as much as they should. And I understand that some of them really never been exposed, who had never thought about this. And they may have a PhD that has nothing to do with money. But at the end of the day, I feel like it’s extremely important to think about this, because no matter what you do in life, you still have got to do all these things. You still have to buy a house. You still have to optimize your money. So, think about potentially changing your job, even though you might have tenure, even though life seems okay, can you make your situation better if you are to go somewhere else? Or if you got to go on the job market again? You’ll never get as much money as you do when you go in the job market again and again. Like your current job may offer you a match once or twice, may give you some more money, but the only real way to jump in pay once you’re full professor is to go somewhere else. So think about leaving or getting a new job, even though you’ve been here for maybe 15, 20 years.

26:57 Emily: Wow. I didn’t realize that academia was so I guess, similar to the private sector in that respect, in that you need to change employers to really make massive salary jumps. I have heard of the tactic of like getting another offer and then negotiating your current one with your hopeful intention is to stay. But it sounds like what you just said is that that, mm, it might work a little bit, but not as much.

27:19 Inga: Yeah. And I have clients who do that very successfully. Like somebody brought two different offers in the last five years and they matched the offer, but now they told her we’re done here. A third offer is not going to get matched and she can get so much more in the open market. So, depending where you are and how happy. And then again, if you are super happy and your life is awesome, who cares about the money? If you want to stay where you stay, you do not have to do it. But if you are okay with moving and thinking about money a little bit more, then there is nothing wrong giving up your tenure and starting somewhere else.

Finding a Financial Planner

27:50 Emily: Since we’ve been mentioning so much in this interview talking about like financial planners, sometimes people come to me with like, what is the type of financial planner or financial advisor I should seek out? And we’ve also talked about like the timing of seeking out that kind of advice. Can you give maybe people who are like finishing up grad school soon or finishing up their postdoc soon, some sort of reference point on like, how much is it going to cost them to work with someone like you like to make a comprehensive plan? Or how does the pricing work? Because I’m sure when they haven’t started that, you know, they haven’t gotten that first paycheck from the new job, they’re still counting their pennies. And this may be a concern and a barrier for them to working with someone at a crucial point in their career.

28:29 Inga: And so, this should not be a barrier. Find somebody who wants to help you, and then you can pay them a little bit later. There’s always arrangements to be made. So I would not stop myself for looking for one. There are different types of plans. Some planners charge even hourly, some do this quick start or focused plans. Like I do those, we focus on two, three big areas and I charge $1,500 for them. So, it’s a limited engagement for two, three months to get you through the most important things. A full financial plan will probably cost you between two and $5,000. I charge $300 a month for 12 months. So it’s a one year engagement. So we get through everything, but I’ve seen prices it’s typical between two and $5,000. I don’t know if it’s worth it for you to have a full financial plan to start with.

29:13 Inga: If you’ve been a PhD student and now you just have a few questions about the work benefits, a focused plan is probably the way to go. And those will range between $500 and $2,000, depending on who you go to. When you’re looking for a planner, XYPN is my favorite place to go because everybody there is a CFP, and everybody’s fee-only. And there’s a lot of debate about fiduciaries. No, not everybody’s a fiduciary who tells who they are. So fee-only is my requirement, which means that only the clients can pay you. Nobody else can pay you. And the CFP with probably five years of experience. Otherwise, these problems are pretty typical unless you have something very specialized that needs to be discussed, almost everybody there can help you.

29:57 Emily: I’m really glad you mentioned that. So, I just independently, you know, Inga and I did not plan this, but I also went through XY Planning Network to find my planner.

30:04 Inga: Oh, really?

30:05 Emily: Yes, absolutely. Because I know that everybody in the Network is a CFP. My planner, I made sure that she’s not being compensated by anybody else. You know, we have the, you know, fee model where like we paid upfront a little bit for like an accelerated plan. And then we also have like a monthly subscription. So it’s sort of a combo of those two to work together for one year. So like, yes. So I totally like cosign what Inga just said. And this is a great place to find someone who is willing to work with you and is going to be competent to do so. What I like about the XY planning network is that you can search for all kinds of different, like special scenarios that you might be encountering.

30:36 Emily: So, I really wanted someone who was going to help me specifically on tax planning and tax advising as like our main like focus. So that’s what I kind of look for. And also people who are familiar with like self-employment and all that stuff, because that’s what I am. But if you had other things going on in your life, you know, you’re an academic or you’re in the military or you’re receiving an inheritance or whatever, there’s a lot of different, you know, types of people who specialize in different things. You can easily find them through the search tools in that network, which I really like.

31:00 Inga: And they have over a thousand advisors now. So I mean, you can find advisors who like the color purple. I mean there are so many possibilities, and they’re all virtual. So you don’t need to have somebody local. It is really the best place to find somebody who’s unbiased and a CFP.

How to Connect with Inga

31:14 Emily: Love it. Inga, if listeners want to follow up you, learn more about you and your work, where’s the best place for them to go?

31:21 Inga: Probably on my website, attainablewealthfp.com. And I’m not taking any new clients for the next six months at least. But if you have questions, like you went to XYPN and narrowed it down to two people and you don’t know who to choose, I’ll be very happy to provide someone unsolicited advice from what I know. So, feel free to reach out. If you have questions, maybe I can just send you like a copy of a book. I teach personal finance, so I have a very short book I wrote for the students. I can just send you a copy and try to help in any way possible.

Best Financial Advice for Current Graduate Students

31:49 Emily: Oh, that’s a wonderful offer. Thank you, Inga. That’s very generous. Okay. We’re going to end with the question that I ask all of my interviewees, which is what is your best financial advice for current graduate students? So we’re thinking a little bit earlier than the population we’ve been talking about up to this point. It could be something that we’ve mentioned already in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

32:09 Inga: I want to say get a financial plan at this point, but that’s a given. So, the other thing is get a budget. If you do not have a tight rein on your budget when you’re making 20,000, it’s only going to get worse once you make $120K. So, sit down and figure out how you can get a budget and have a percent go into savings, no matter how little you make right now.

32:31 Emily: I love that advice. I say this a lot about kind of graduate students in that phase of life, like you’re sort of building up your muscles in terms of like your financial practices, the money management, the, you know, the knowledge that you have and you’re really going to apply them. And it’s going to make a big difference once you have that big paycheck coming in. But right now is the time to like practice so that as you said, you don’t get to the big paycheck and say, “Whoa, all the money disappeared. <Laugh>. What do I do about that?” So, I love that advice. Well, Inga, it’s been wonderful to talk with you. Thank you so much for volunteering to come onto the podcast. And I’m really glad to have met you.

33:04 Inga: Same here.

Outtro

33:11 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? I have 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 Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

The Gardener and Rose Approach for Childfree PhD Couples

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jay Zigmont, who holds both a PhD in Adult Education and Certified Financial Planner designation. Jay has focused his financial planning practice, Live Learn Plan, on the childfree community, and his book, Portraits of Childfree Wealth, will be published on June 1, 2022. Emily and Jay discuss the stories and interview excerpts from the book and Jay’s observations about the relationship between being childfree and finances. Jay holds up the model of the Gardener and Rose as a potentially useful one for dual-PhD couples, which is what he and his wife practice.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Teaser

00:00 Jay: And I was amazed that people would share this. I mean, to be frank, people would rather talk about their sex life than their finances. But people were sharing it all, and it’s just amazing to see.

Introduction

00:15 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season 12, episode one, and today my guest is Dr. Jay Zigmont, who holds both a PhD in Adult Education and the Certified Financial Planner designation. Jay has focused his financial planning practice, Live Learn Plan, on the childfree community, and his book, Portraits of Childfree Wealth will be published on June 1st, 2022. We discuss the stories and interview excerpts from Jay’s book and his observations about the relationship between being childfree and finances. Jay holds up the model of the gardener and rose as a potentially useful one for dual PhD couples, which is what he and his wife practice.

01:10 Emily: If you’ve been getting value from this podcast, would you please do me a favor? This is a perfect time of year to recommend me and my work to an appropriate host or sponsor at your university or Alma mater. In case you didn’t know, I offer numerous personal finance seminars and workshops on topics like taxes, investing, budgeting, and debt repayment, all tailored for graduate students, postdocs, and/or prospective graduate students. If you think that you and your peers would benefit from my teaching, please recommend me to your graduate school graduate student association or post office. These recommendations help me get my foot in the door with new clients or remind past clients of the need for this material. If you choose to recommend me over email, please Cc me, emily@PFforPhDs.com so that I can pick up the conversation. It’s only possible for me to create free-to-you content like this podcast if I have paying clients for my speaking engagements and prerecorded workshops. Thank you in advance for recommending me. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP.

Would You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:29 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Jay Zigmont. He is a CFP whose practice is called Live Learn Plan. And he’s also a PhD. His PhD is in Adult Learning from Yukon, and we’re going to be talking today about his kind of specialty within his financial planning practice, which is in childfree people. So, that’s kind of the topic, and specifically how like his career has progressed and how he and his wife together have progressed in their careers and trade offs in their childfree life. So, Jay, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for volunteering! And would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?

03:06 Jay: Absolutely. Emily. So what I do for my day job is I help people understand their dreams and figure out their life and financial planning. I specifically work with childfree folks, which is a interesting area, because in finances it’s completely ignored. There’s no mention in the entire certified financial planning training of being childfree. So I try to bring a little bit of my own life and my research into the practice.

03:30 Emily: Yeah, that’s really, I just think it’s really exciting to learn people’s niches and like why they chose them. Obviously, I have a very specific niche in my like financial education stuff. So, that’s awesome that you’re kind of overlapping your own life choices with what you focus on in your profession. So, it’s a little bit of an unusual path, right? To get a PhD and then get a CFP later on. That’s a certified financial planner by the way, for those who aren’t familiar with the acronym. So, can you tell us how your career took that path?

04:00 Jay: Yeah, so I spent a lot of time in healthcare and academia and you know, everybody listening, there are probably some people who have done both those careers. And it’s always good, bad, and ugly. And across that time, the thing that was common was I was doing coaching. So, whether it’s executive coaching, career coaching, life coaching, academic coaching, whatever it is. And the reality is people are more willing to pay for financial coaching than they are for some of the other. And as soon as you do that, you need to start working on a CFP, become an investment advisor, all the other ones to cross the T’s dot the I’s. And what I’ve found is that I can combine life coaching or life planning with financial coaching and financial planning, because I don’t know if you can separate your life and your finances, but at least that’s the way I look at it, they’re all together.

04:45 Emily: I have the exact same viewpoint. It’s one of the things that has always like excited me about personal finance is that it is so intertwined with just your life holistically. It’s impossible to separate. And I think you really can like get to know people really well, what their values are, what excites them through how they are using their money or how they would like to use their money in the future. So, I totally agree. That’s really, really fun.

05:08 Jay: So, I’m also advice-only. So, I’m an advice-only CFP. I don’t do investment management for people. So, my work is around teaching people to do it themselves. So, that matches where I come from. But it’s also, frankly, different in the financial world, because I’m not charging an AUM fee or anything like that. I meet with people on a regular basis. I actually meet with them monthly and we work through their life finances and it just helps people grow.

05:31 Emily: I totally agree. This is a really new, like exciting model within financial planning. I don’t know if the listeners will be familiar with the AUM or assets-under-management model, but that’s where you hear like a, you know, an advisor’s charging you 1% or some other fee similar to that, to do all your investment management for you, but your model is completely different. And a lot of, I think younger planners are moving towards this fee-only model where, like you said, you’re paying kind of for someone’s time and expertise, but it’s a teaching relationship. It’s a coaching and guiding relationship. I’m working with a financial advisor as well who’s a CFP who works under that same model of a subscription model instead of this like AUM model. So yeah, I really, I love that.

Portraits of Childfree Wealth

06:10 Emily: So, in preparing for this interview, you sent me a book. Can you tell us about the book and the study that you did that leads into it?

06:20 Jay: Yeah. So, I actually started off with a different plan than my book. And, you know, when you dive into research, you have this idea of what you’re gonna look at and then it goes somewhere else. And I’m a qualitative researcher by nature. So, I really wanted to look at the question of what is it like to be childfree, and how does that impact your life and your finances and your wealth? And I’d done a bunch, you know, got a bunch of surveys, got a bunch of data, started going through it. But I was doing these interviews with these people, and these amazing stories came out of what their life was like. And I said, okay, I have to kind of pause some of the analytical work I’m doing and just share these life stories because they don’t exist. You know, and the childfree, they’re about 11% of the U.S over 55 are childfree. And a recent study in Michigan found that 27% of adults are childfree, but there’s no stories about kind of like, well, what does that mean? How does that work? What is that life like? And I was like, how is it possible that such a large group, I mean, we’re talking millions and millions of people, don’t have something, and in the financial literature it’s completely ignored? So, I’m sharing the stories, and hopefully people can go, “Oh, that’s me,” or, “Wow, I didn’t realize that was a way of life.”

07:28 Emily: Can you say the name of your book and when it’s coming out?

07:31 Jay: So Portraits of Childfree Wealth comes out June 1st.

07:35 Emily: Okay. So, I read this in preparation for the interview, and what I found fascinating is that it feels very honest. It feels very unfiltered, especially about a topic like finances, which is so sensitive. And a lot of people are not willing to speak openly about it. So, it is really exciting that you could, you know, compile these interviews and really share, like you just said, like exactly what life is like for these, you know, selected people that you included in the book. So, it was really a fascinating read. Disheartening at times, honestly, but also very encouraging at times. Because obviously different people have different kinds of stories.

08:10 Jay: So, you’re right on it. And I think one of the most shocking things to people is, being childfree doesn’t mean you’re rich. There are people in there literally talking about living on an air mattress. You know, I’m like, the way I look at it is, you know, if they had a kid they’d drown, you know, they just barely keep, and I was amazed that people would share this. I mean, to be frank, people would rather talk about their sex life than their finances, but people were sharing it all. And it’s just amazing to see.

08:37 Emily: Yeah, and I don’t know if this is one of maybe the threads that you pulled out of this set of interviews, but definitely in a number of them, finances were not necessarily like a motivation for making a choice to be childfree, but it helped a lot on that front. Like you said, some of people interviewed would not, I think, be able to financially support a child without some additional like outside assistance, the way they were earning and living like at the moment. And so, it seems like a practical choice as well.

09:10 Jay: Yeah. And I think, so because we’re talking to researchers, this is always a fun one. There’s a relationship, I’m being technical on that, between growing up in poverty or poor and choosing childfree. I don’t have enough data to look at correlation/causation, but there is something there, you know? I didn’t come up with it. I don’t have the money. And then I’ve made that choice. And I think that’s one of those that we’re going to have to dive deeper in to understand, but there are also people that have chosen, well, I’m not having kids because of climate or medical issues or all different reasons. So, I mean, they’re just as varied as the people themselves.

FIRE versus FILE

09:47 Emily: Yeah. And I’m sure this is probably typically a multivariate decision, right? It’s not just one overriding reason for making the choice to be childfree, but it’s, it’s a few things that all kind of come together. Besides the relationship between growing up in poverty and choosing to be childfree, what were some other like key observations or other relationships that you saw?

10:06 Jay: So, I think some of the interesting ones, I was surprised the amount of childfree folks that say they don’t really want to retire. So, there’s a lot of work right now on the FIRE movement, Financial Independence, Retire Early. And there are a couple people that are FIREd and some people like inadvertently FIREd and all that. But most people are going, I’d rather do what I call FILE, Financial Independence, Live Early. It’s kind of dimmed the work. You know, Ryan shares his story in the book of, he works 25 hours a week, never on Fridays, never before 10:00 AM. And like he could take his laptop and go to Palm Springs and do work from anywhere. And that’s really interesting because I think that might be a unique thing to the childfree community that you can get up and go and have that mobile life. But it’s also, if your goal is not retirement, it completely changes your financial plan.

10:54 Emily: I really like that you had that acronym that you explained a few times throughout the book, the FILE. And it reminded me of some of these other like flavors of FIRE, like barista FIRE and Coast FI and all of those. Yeah, super interesting.

11:09 Jay: Some of the people in the FIRE community will argue with me and say, well, Choose FI or Slow FI, the same as FILE. And I go, well, here’s the question? The question is, are you retiring at the end? And what you hear is a lot of FIRE people go, “No, I don’t really want to retire.” Well then you’re not FIRE-ing. You are doing something else. And I think the point I was trying to work through is if I’m not retiring, then my financial plan shouldn’t reflect retiring. And people go, well, what does that change? Well, it changes a lot of your assumptions, and it changes what are your goals, and how does that fit?

11:41 Emily: Yeah. That’s a really exciting concept. Were there any other observations or relationships that you’d like to pull out from the study?

The Gardener and the Rose

11:48 Jay: Yeah, I think the other one I mentioned in there comes out of me and my wife to an extent is this concept of the gardener and the rose. So, my wife and I were both PhDs, and anyone that has a family with two PhDs, you know how hard it is to get a career with two PhDs. Does that make sense, Emily?

12:04 Emily: I know it very well. My husband has a PhD, too.

12:07 Jay: Yeah. So, we get this trailing spouse thing, and it just, it’s a nightmare. My personal belief is it’s almost impossible to get two careers at exactly the same level at exactly the same time for two PhDs. It is possible, but I mean, it’s like you won the lotto. And what I heard from the childfree folks was people were looking at, Hmm, what are the options? And what my wife and I did is we look at it as the gardener or the rose. Somebody’s the rose growing, and somebody’s the gardener providing the support. And I have to clear, you know, that is not gendered roles or anything like that. It’s just expectations, because somebody has to provide support, and somebody has to grow. And my wife and I, we actually have made a conscious effort that we’re going take turns, you know, and that allows the rose to kind of grow and do its own thing.

12:54 Jay: And what you heard is people in this book saying, “Well, you know, we have two incomes. We don’t need both. One of us is not happy.” And I’m like, “So, quit.” And they’re like, “Wait, what?” I’m like, “Well, take turns growing and you can work this gardener and the rose approach. And I’ve got people in there that one’s creating his own video games and he’s doing indie game design and they’re living in an RV. He’s the rose right now, and his wife works in healthcare. It’s this thing that can happen where you can take these turns. Does that make any sense?

13:24 Emily: It absolutely makes sense to me. And as I was reflecting on this concept, I was trying to sort of apply it to like my relationship with my husband and how our careers have progressed. It doesn’t fit, I think, quite as cleanly for us as it does for you and your wife. But I see elements of it at different times and in different ways.

Commercial

13:43 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Basically, the Community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to pfforphds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success! Now back to the interview.

Taking Turns

14:49 Emily: The examples in the book, as far as I remember of gardener and rose, were like the one that you decided of like, well, one person’s going to like take a break from earning or like earn less than they maybe could because the other person is financially able to provide. But from what I can tell for you and your wife, that’s not the case. You’re both working, you both have income, but it’s more about whose career is driving some other decisions in your life. Is that right? How does that work?

15:12 Jay: Yeah, so my wife is in the academic path. And as everybody here knows, when you get the right tenure track position, you just go <laugh>. So, we actually recently moved 1200 miles for her career, and you’re right. It’s not about income, but it’s about that support. So, if somebody’s going to be on that tenure-track path, there’s a whole lot of other stuff that needs to get taken care of. I mean literally like the gardening and the house and the landscaping and the, whatever it is and paying the bills and whatever it is. It’s not about money, but it’s about that support that you need to do that. Because if my wife had to stop and do all that while she was on this tenure-track fun, it would hurt her career. So, we take those turns. Now, mind you, my turn as a rose, I’ve told her 15 years I’m retiring completely and we’re going to get in a boat and travel the world. That’s it. And that’s what I want to do. And she knows that, but that puts a limit, frankly, on her career. But also, it’s a fairness of taking turns.

16:14 Emily: Do you think that the turn-taking aspect is like essential to the concept of gardener and rose? Or is it okay for a couple to choose permanent roles as one or the other?

16:24 Jay: Yeah. So, it’s a rough question. I believe that if people pick one role or the other, it’s way too easy for someone to be neglected or not appreciated or have concerns, let’s call it that. What I think happens is, there are some great stories in there of people that have tried to do the type of gardener and rose without the swap, but then the person that’s in the rose position feels guilty. You know? Well, I’m taking advantage of, well, no, if we know we each have our own turns, I can be selfish for my turn. You can be selfish for yours, and that’s okay. I think if one person decides, “Hey, I want to be this role forever,” and that’s their conscious choice, maybe. But especially when you’re talking about like two PhDs, that’s hard, you know? Fortunately, I can do my finance work from anywhere, but there are other career options I could follow if I was being the rose. So, I think there’s just a balancing act. Does that make sense to you?

17:24 Emily: It does. And I’m actually thinking back to, I’m not going to be able to like cite research on this, but it’s something that I think I read maybe during our premarital counseling that my husband and I went through about how it was maybe about like life satisfaction or something with, we’ll just say married couples, where they had an agreement about whose role was whose. Like maybe there was a working spouse and a non-working spouse. As long as they both were in agreement about what their roles should be, they had a pretty decent level of happiness, even if their circumstances caused them to be flipped. So, let’s say, you know, more traditional, let’s say the husband’s supposed to be the one working, let’s say the wife’s supposed to be the one taking care of the home. Well, the husband becomes disabled, and the wife is the one who has to go into the workforce. Couples who were in agreement about like what their roles should be were happier, even if they couldn’t actually live out those roles, but just having the agreement between them was satisfactory to them. So, it reminds me a little bit about this. Like how do you negotiate, you know, who should be the gardener and who should be the rose at any given time. As long as you’re in agreement, I feel like it’s going to help, even if maybe life circumstances end up playing out a little bit differently.

18:31 Jay: Yeah. And I think there’s some of that that nature does to it. You know, like just your life, your career, there are times in your career. There’s a great example, somebody in the book who just needed to take a 90-day sabbatical, just needed to like get her brain back, you know? And we’re seeing some of this with the great resignation where people aren’t really quitting jobs forever. They’re like, I just need to stop and do something else. And that might be just for a period of time. And I think you’re right. It is the clarity on the roles. But I think with childfree couples, one of the challenges is you have the time, money, and the wealth, the freedom to do what you want. And that actually can cause a little bit of analysis paralysis routine of having too many choices. So, by taking these turns in the roles, you go, “Okay, you’re the rose. Follow your dream. I’ll do like the day in, day out work and vice versa.” And it’s almost like it’s just a little anchor between the two of you. And it also gives people to think through that chance, like you’re talking on the marital counseling of, well, what are our roles? What do we want to do? And a lot of couples have never had that discussion. It’s just implied. And that can cause issues.

19:35 Emily: Yeah. I mean, I’m just trying to think about like two people trying to be the rose at the same time. And if you both want to be the rose, then you’re both also going to have to be the gardener in some ways. There’s going to have to be some kind of negotiation and agreement there. It’s a little bit more clean if it’s like, okay, clearly one person’s a rose, one person’s a gardener. But maybe there are ways you can work out, you know, different aspects of your life or something like that where it could play out a little bit where both of you sort of get to feel like the rose, maybe. This is maybe a little bit how I was applying it to the course that my husband and I have had with our careers. Because, like you and your wife, we moved in 2015 for my husband’s job.

20:15 Emily: So, his first like post-PhD job in industry. We moved across the country. And I was okay with that. I was starting my business. And so I was like, you know, I had a location freedom within my job, but I wasn’t making nearly as much money as I could have had I taken a traditional job after my PhD. And so, in a way, you could interpret that as he’s the rose, because we’re moving for his job. Our location where we’re living is determined by his work. I also see it as my husband was providing financially for both of us, to a large degree, so that I could grow my business, which has flourished over time. And so, I see it like kind of both ways in different ways, right? Location on the one hand, and actual like finances on the other hand. So yeah, I just, there are different ways, I think, that you could imply this framework, but I think it works.

Outsourcing the Gardener

21:03 Jay: Yeah. And I think the gardening roles can be a whole bunch of things. And frankly, if you make enough money, you can pay somebody to do all the gardening roles. Literally. I mean, you can pay somebody to do all that. And then you can have two roses. But as long as location doesn’t mess with it. Some people do look at it as the financial support and the other. But if we go back in time, and I hate to say these old gender roles, but the idea was somebody was doing their primary job and somebody was providing support at home. And I don’t think we realized how much work it is to provide support at home, with or without kids, there’s just a lot of stuff. You know, we need a new roof on our house. Well, that’s a giant project, you know? So, you’ve got to have somebody with the flexibility to do that. Or, you have to be able to pay somebody to manage these projects for you. And I think that’s overlooked because if we’re both at the top of our careers, then we’re going home and have to figure how to mow the lawn. Like, our brain just explodes. Money is not important. What money gets you is important. So, if you’re just working to make the dollars, and it’s not making your life better, change something,

22:16 Emily: I’m feeling this like so strongly right now because my husband and I purchased our first home, which is like a single-family like house a year ago. And so, we went from like apartment living as renters to this managing an entire house situation. And it is a lot of work. I was not quite prepared for this. So yeah, and we’re trying to figure out ways, like how much should we be outsourcing? How much should we keep, you know, us to do the work. But it is a lot, a lot, a lot of work that it takes to run a household. Yeah. And I definitely did not appreciate this a few years ago back when I was still a renter.

22:51 Jay: Let me give you a number on that one. I’ll actually give you the answer on what you should outsource. The question is what do you make per hour, and would you rather work an hour than do the work? So my wife and I, we have somebody come in to help clean. I’ll work an extra hour of work and not have to clean the toilets. I mean, that’s the math behind it. If you enjoy mowing the lawn, do it. If you don’t, <laugh> figure out your hourly and, you know, pick up an extra, you know, class or whatever it is to cover that.

Communication is Key

23:18 Emily: Yeah, this is like airing my dirty laundry on the podcast, but like literally my husband and I are talking about this right now with respect to a house cleaner. I am very confident that we both made more per hour, and that a house cleaner could do a better job and faster than we could do it. But he still has this like, idea that like, you should do it yourself or something. We’re working on that. That’s something we have to agree on together. So yeah, we’re sort of in negotiations about that right now. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this like gardener and rose concept?

23:51 Jay: I think the big thing is communication. I mean, that’s the bottom line of all of it. And I think, when it comes to finances, unfortunately, even couples don’t talk about it, you know? And here’s what I’ve found, with my clients, I talk about this type of concept all the time. The person who needs to be the rose, the person who’s burnt out of their career or whatever, the other spouse is perfectly fine with. It’s the rose that has trouble taking it, you know? Of saying, okay, I will step down or I will change, or I will do whatever. The other person always supports it. So, I think it’s that communication. And I think the other part of it is, what I’m seeing at least in the great resignation world is it’s not about money. It’s changing jobs for either meaning or, you know, whatever that feeling is for the soul, not about the dollars and cents. Hey, I want to make more in my career.

LifeScriptTM Deviation

24:46 Emily: Kind of tying into that. One of the big patterns that I saw reading through the stories in your book was this concept that childfree people, and the people are sort of speaking about their own experience, they have this sense that they can make changes in their lives without maybe considering how it would affect a child or maybe other people in their lives. And that they, in theory, have like a freedom to do that. Did you have that observation as well? But what I also observed is that they weren’t always acting on it. They thought they had the freedom, but they weren’t using it.

25:22 Jay: So, I have this moment frequently and it was in the book and also with just everyday people. And I look at their numbers, I go, “You’re fine. You can do that. You can make that.” And then you get this look in their face, like, “No, no I can’t.” And I’m like, “I’m looking at it financially, you can.” And there’s like this tension. And it happens with people that could cut back on work or retire or change their careers. And I think, you know, I just had a good conversation with somebody that’s this concept of like the middle class work ethic or the Protestant work ethic, which is kind of what you’re talking about with your husband, where I’ve got do this. No, you don’t. Like, so for childfree folks, our goal is not to pass generational wealth. It’s to pay for our bills on the way out. So, adding more zeros to a bank account doesn’t help. So, there’s a point where you’re like, well, I want to go on that, you know, trip of a lifetime or whatever. Well, then do it. And people are like, “Oh, I can’t. I still got…” I’m like, why? And I think it’s just this cultural component. It’s why your husband won’t let somebody else clean the toilets.

26:28 Emily: Yeah, I totally agree. That Protestant work ethic thing <laugh> how people are brought up. And I guess what we see in the book is like people, you used the term LifeScriptTM in the book. And how people who have made a conscious choice to be childfree have deviated from the LifeScriptTM. But it sounds like even though they’ve made that step, some of them are still being held back by this like cultural conditioning around making radical changes or really experiencing the freedom that they have earned through their finances and through their career.

27:02 Jay: Absolutely. So, the LifeScriptTM goes this way. You go to school, high school, you graduate, you go to college, by the way, most people don’t even like pick where they go to college. Their parents put something on them. So, that’s part of the script. You go to college, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, you get old, you retire. That’s kind of like the standard script. So, childfree people threw out the middle of it. Like, nah, I’m not doing the kids. And also, interestingly enough, 32.1% of childless people, this is per census, will never get married. So, they even threw away the married part. So, they threw that all out. Cool. Throw away the part about job and career and like, it just locks up because, well then what do I do? And they’re like, well, I don’t like where I live.

27:50 Jay: Well, then move. And they’re like, well, but you know? So, another great example is people go, well, I have to buy a house. You don’t. If you’re childfree and you’re going to move every two years, there’s no reason to buy a house. But then people go, well, but how do I, you know, make money without a house? That’s fine. We can do reeds. We can do some other stuff with it, but it’s just like this, it locks them in. And I have to spend a lot of time going well, there are other options and working it step by step.

28:18 Emily: This is just that observation you just made is why I’m so pleased that you chose this as your niche, because some of those elements you just said, you know, the FIRE movement is kind of working on people’s psychology around this, but I love that you have that further spin on it of focusing just on the childfree community. Because they, as you said, you know, at the beginning they have different financial lives than other people who do have children. And they deserve to be served specifically with their finances. And so, I’m so glad that you chose that as your niche and connected that personal element of your life to your professional life. I’m just so excited for your business. Tell us where people can find the book and where they can contact you if they’d like to learn more?

29:02 Jay: Sure. Portraits of Childfree Wealth is sold everywhere books are sold. If you want to go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, whatever works for you. And I can be found at childfreewealth.com.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

29:13 Emily: Well, Jay, thank you so much for giving this interview. I conclude all my interviews by asking 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.

29:27 Jay: Let me give you something that’s a life advice, if that’s okay. One of our colleagues taught us this and I wish others knew it. He said him and his wife both were MDs, had made a deal that they don’t have to go to each other’s corporate events. You know, the Christmas events, all that. So, my wife and I early on adopted this and we don’t go to each other’s events, because frankly, we don’t know anybody. And it’s been the best thing for our life because we don’t have to have that awkward conversation and the other. And people go, well, that’s not financial. No, it’s a life thing. You know, I don’t need to have that convo. And by the way, it’s easy to explain to people go, yep, we have this deal. This is how we do it. We have separate careers. And it works. And it sounds silly, but if you try it, you’ll like it.

30:12 Emily: Okay. Very interesting. Well thank you, Jay, for this fascinating interview. Thank you so much for coming on!

30:17 Jay: Happy to be here!

Outtro

30:24 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? I have 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 Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

Semester-Proof Your Academic Side Business with Digital Products

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Toyin Alli, a lecturer at the University of Georgia and founder of The Academic Society. Through the Academic Society, Toyin teaches graduate students about productivity and time management. After experimenting with many different offerings, both Toyin and Emily have added digital products to their businesses to generate passive, scalable income. Toyin explains what a digital product is and how it can help a graduate student or academic “semester-proof” their business so that income flows in no matter how busy you are with other things. She also shares how to find your “zone of alignment” within your business, which might or might not relate to your academic work.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

S11E8 Semester-Proof Your Academic Side Business with Digital Products

Teaser

00:00 Toyin: And so, for me, one way that I feel fulfilled in my life and I found purpose is through my business. And so it doesn’t have to be through your business, but I do encourage everyone to think about like, what’s something outside of academia that brings me joy and brings me fulfillment?

Introduction

00:19 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 11, Episode 8, and today my guest is Dr. Toyin Alli, a lecturer at the University of Georgia and founder of The Academic Society. Through The Academic Society, Toyin teaches graduate students about productivity and time management. After experimenting with many different offerings, both Toyin and I have added digital products to our businesses to generate passive, scalable income. Toyin explains what a digital product is and how it can help a graduate student or academic “semester-proof” their business so that income flows in no matter how busy you are with other things. She also shares how to find your “zone of alignment” within your business, which might or might not relate to your academic work. I warn you that Toyin and I jump right into biz-talk at the start of this interview, so it might be helpful to go back and listen to her earlier interview, which was Season 3 Episode 12.

01:28 Emily: I need to warm you up a little bit right now for this conversation. Ask yourself: Do you want to make money on the side of your current position? Are you limited in how much time you can spend on your side hustle and does it have to be flexible? Are you subject to a draconian no-side-jobs clause in your contract? Toyin and I discuss in detail one particular type of business that could be a great fit for a graduate student or PhD: A digital products business. We discuss the pros in-depth and also some of the cons, plus how you can get started even if right now you don’t know what you want to offer or to whom. Don’t be put off by our use of the term business, either. You have a business even if it’s just you and one product or one service. Toyin has an excellent short, free video course on digital product businesses for academics, which you can join at theacademicsociety.com/weekend. I took this course prior to our interview and highly recommend it if you’re interested in this type of business.

02:32 Emily: I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you where you can find my main digital products, which I mention a few times in the interview. You can find my annual tax return workshop, How to Complete Your Grad Student Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), at PFforPhDs.com/taxworkshop/. You can find my estimated tax workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients, at PFforPhDs.com/QETax/. I also share why I’ve transitioned all my tax education work from live speaking engagements to these workshops, which comprise pre-recorded videos, worksheets, and live Q&A calls. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Toyin Alli.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:21 Emily: I am overjoyed to have back on the podcast today Dr. Toyin Alli. She was first on the podcast in season three, episode 12, where we talked about side hustling and finding a good side hustle fit while you’re a graduate student. And today, several years later, we’re having an evolution of that conversation. So, Toyin is, as she was before, a lecturer, she has a PhD, and she’s a business owner. And her business has, you know, moved on in the past three years and she’s learned a ton and she’s going to share a lot of what she’s learned today with us. And I’m so excited about that. So Toyin, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. And will you please introduce yourself further for the listener?

03:59 Toyin: Yes. Thank you so much, Emily. I’m excited to be back to share with your listeners. Especially, it’ll be interesting to hear the previous episode and think about like the evolution that has occurred. But yes, I’m Dr. Toyin Alli. I got my PhD in math from the University of Alabama back in 2016. And immediately after getting my PhD, I landed, which is basically my dream job, as a lecturer at the University of Georgia. And I’ve been there for almost six years now. And last year I was actually promoted to senior lecturer. So that is very exciting. And I won a teaching award, which is amazing. I actually won two teaching awards. And I also run The Academic Society, which is my business where I help academics and grad students with time management and productivity.

04:52 Emily: Yeah. And Toyin and I have actually collaborated in the past because she’s incorporated some of my financial teaching into her programs through The Academic Society, which we’re going to learn a lot more about in a few minutes. But Toyin, like right up front, why don’t you say if people want to learn more about the subject that we’re talking about today, which is digital products and a semester-proof business, where can they go to find out more from you?

05:14 Toyin: Yes. So I’ve been talking a lot more about business on my personal Instagram account, which is @drtoyinalli, but you can also check out some videos on my YouTube channel called The Academic Society with Toyin Alli. I have a special playlist called Academic Dream Life where I talk about my life and business.

What is a Digital Product?

05:34 Emily: Oh, wow. That’s so inspirational! I need to check that out. Okay. So, I just mentioned the term digital product. This may be unfamiliar to people, although probably they’ve used a digital product, but they may not know that’s what it’s called. So what is a digital product?

05:48 Toyin: I love digital products. So a digital product is something that you can sell online without having to be involved in really any steps of the process. The whole like transaction happens with systems online. And so it’s how people do passive income online. It’s how people say they made money while they slept. And that actually happened to me. But a digital product can be, I like to classify it into three categories. You can think of it as like an ebook or any type of PDF that someone can download, a digital course where you’re teaching something and people can get access to that, or a template where people can get a link to a template that you’ve created and fill it out for themselves. So this is something that someone can go to your website, sign up for it, purchase it, and consume it without you having any interaction with them.

06:43 Emily: So, the analogy is, okay, let’s say some things that contrast to this. So a digital product contrasted to a physical product: there’s some manufacturing process there. There’s some delivery process there. In addition to, of course, the design and the creation, which you would do for a digital product as well as for a physical product. And then there’s also services. So, you can sell a service, which is sort of selling your time or your expertise, your talent for money. And that’s a great way to have a side hustle, but it’s very different from having a digital product. Like you just said, the delivery, once you’ve made the thing, the delivery is completely hands off. And so, digital products are a way that you can scale your income much beyond what you probably would be able to do with something like a service-based business. And so why do you think that digital products, that kind of business, is a good fit for an academic?

Digital Products and Academics

07:34 Toyin: Yes. So I believe that digital products are perfect for academics, which let’s back up and say, I have a business consultancy. So if you’re a consultant, a coach, or you do speaking, I think those are great side hustles. However, when the semester starts to get hectic and really busy, it can be really hard to deliver or have time to do those types of services. And so, a digital product is really nice because you can have a digital product and have your business be running during the busiest and most draining times in your semester. So for example, all of 2021 was very difficult for me. I just felt very drained from teaching my classes, and I wasn’t able to work in my business as much as I usually did. I wasn’t able to create as much content. I wasn’t able to do like the selling that I normally would. However, I actually made more in my business than I ever had before, because I had digital products. And so people were purchasing my products without me having to do any additional work than I had already done. So, that was really nice. So, I think it’s perfect for academics, for academics who have a business already, but they kind of fall off on working in their business during the semester when it gets really busy.

08:53 Emily: Yeah. So this makes a lot of sense to me if your, I guess, various roles in whatever you are as an academic, whether it’s a grad student, postdoc, faculty member, lecturer like you are, if they sort of ebb and flow with the semester, which so many people’s do with their teaching schedule, you know, summer could look quite different from during the academic year. Even breaks, like your winter break could be, I don’t know, three weeks or a month-long. And you know, maybe you have some grading to do, but then your schedule’s very different than what it is at other times. And so, yeah, I love the idea of being able to sort of consistently deliver the product and make the sales no matter how crazy your life is or is not at that time.

09:29 Emily: And I also really want to add, like, not only is this kind of business I think a good fit for an academic, but I’ll speak, I’m not an academic anymore, but I am a parent. And so listeners, this is actually the third time that Toyin and I have tried to record this interview. And the first two times I had to cancel because of complicated stuff going on with my children. For example, my child’s preschool closed during the Omicron wave. So, things like that can come up for lots of people, not just academics, like parents and so forth. And so having a business like mine is to some extent now that can deliver these products without you having to be on a call or in a room is very, very helpful when your life goes a little bit off the rails.

10:11 Toyin: Exactly. And that’s exactly what happened to me last year in 2021. Probably fall of 2021 was probably the worst semester I’ve ever had. And it was just so draining. And I had all of these intentions on like going live, creating videos, working on my business. And I just wasn’t up to it.

A Semester-Proof Business

10:32 Emily: So Toyin, when we were discussing this episode, you had this term that you used that I love so much that reflects what you were just talking about. Can you share what that is?

10:40 Toyin: Yeah. So I call it a semester-proof business, which means no matter how busy your semester gets, your business is semester-proof. Therefore, you can still make sales. Your business can still run without you working on it every single day. And I think the key to having a semester-proof business is to have digital products as part of your business strategy.

11:05 Emily: You know, this has really been kind of where my business has gone over the, I’ve been doing this for like seven years now. And when I first started the business, I really envisioned myself as a public speaker. That was like the thing that I did. And that was because I loved doing it. I loved speaking publicly, I loved being able to interact with people and like that format, answer questions. That’s awesome. But, I realized over the years that like, it wasn’t scalable in the way that I needed it to be. And you were just mentioning how hard fall 2021 was for you. For me, spring 2021 was also hard, but in a different way, which is that I was really, really busy. I was delivering a lot of webinars. This was during tax season, lots and lots of tax webinars for lots of different universities.

11:49 Emily: And it wasn’t like I was doing that every hour of the day, but it took a lot of energy, and I was really feeling like, kind of getting a bit like burned out on that situation. And so, what I decided to do was transition my tax material, in particular, from doing live speaking engagements for universities to offering a digital product to them, which I had already been offering to individuals, but I just decided to sell it to universities as well. And it’s been going fantastic. We’re in tax season for tax year 2021 now. And I love this delivery model. It’s so much easier on me. And, here’s the other thing. I think it’s higher quality for the recipient too. Like in comparison with the live stuff that I was doing otherwise, in a live speaking engagement, I’m not going to say things perfectly. I might flub up something versus my digital product is a hundred percent scripted. I’ve checked it over multiple times. I know it’s correct. I can expand in all the right places. So I think it’s a better product overall. This is for my business, right? That comparison. But just to illustrate to the listener, like how beneficial it can be. Maybe if you have different, you know, suites of different things that you offer, to have this as one of the things that you do that can help you scale and deliver what you want to teach or what you want to share.

12:57 Toyin: I think this is a great point, because I was talking about how beneficial a digital product could be for the academic, the business owner. But it’s also more accessible to the consumer. The consumer can consume whenever they want, they can consume it as many times as they want, and it just fits into their schedule. They can take the time to digest the material. They can repeat the material. And I think it’s just a great experience. So, it’s nice to have other offers that may be live or in-person, but to have digital products for your audience as well can only help them.

Evolution of The Academic Society

13:34 Emily: So, you and I have both experimented a lot. We’ve been doing business stuff in this space for academics for several years, we’ve tried out different things, we’ve evolved what we offer. How would you describe what you offer? Like, has something clicked for you along the way about what you should be offering, who you should be serving? How did you get to that point, and what was like, not quite there yet? Like what was not quite clicking yet?

14:00 Toyin: Yeah. So in my business, The Academic Society, I help grad students mainly with time management and productivity. And it took me a while to get to like the core digital products that I sell in that business. It took me a while to figure out what actually sell. So there was a lot of trial and error. So, the very first digital product I created was called The Grad School Toolkit. And this was, I would categorize it as a template where I made a Trello template to help graduate students organize their lives, keep track of like their degree, all of the things. And I was like, oh my goodness, I wish I had this when I was in grad school. So I made it for grad students. And I tried to sell it and it just would not sell, but I realized I didn’t really have the tools.

14:49 Toyin: I didn’t really know how to sell. This is the first thing I ever created. And so I kind of chickened out, which I wish I didn’t, but I chickened out and I decided to give it away for free. And what happened, no one even downloaded it, even though it was free. I had to learn how to talk about what I was offering. And in order to talk about what I was offering in a way that people would actually want it and purchase it, I had to get to know my audience even more. So, something that was really helpful for me was my YouTube channel and always asking people to share in the comments and ask their questions in the comments. And so, based on the comments of my YouTube channel and the posts in my Facebook group, I was able to learn more and more about what grad students really needed and what they actually wanted.

15:38 Toyin: And that led me to my two main offers. So, there was a collection of students who were excited about starting grad school and they didn’t know what to expect. So, I created a program just for them called Grad School Prep, which is for incoming graduate students. And then I also had this group of grad students who were like struggling to get their work done and struggling with time management. And they just did not know how to motivate themselves to get their work done. So, I created a program called Focus for them. And so those are my two main products. And I would say it took me about two to three years to actually like get those, like actually in the format that they are in today. So it takes a while it takes a bit of improvement, but I think the best advice I can give is just start, put something out there, see how it’s received, and then go from there.

Commercial

16:32 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Taxes are weirdly, unexpectedly difficult for funded grad students and fellowship recipients at any level of PhD training. Your university might send you strange tax forms or no tax forms at all. They might not withhold income tax from your paychecks, even though you owe it. It’s a mess. I’ve created a ton of free resources to assist you with understanding and preparing your 2021 tax return, which are available at PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I hope you will check them out to ease much of the stress of tax season. If you want to go deeper with the material or have a question for me, please join one of my tax workshops, which are linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I offer one workshop on preparing your annual tax return for graduate students and one workshop on calculating your quarterly estimated tax for fellowship and training grant recipients. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that tax day is fast approaching on April 18th, 2022. That’s the deadline by which you must file your annual tax return and also make your quarter one estimated tax payment, if applicable. The 2022 quarter one live Q&A call for my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients, is today, Monday, April 11th in the evening. It would be my pleasure to help you save time and potentially money this tax season. So, don’t hesitate to reach out. Now back to our interview.

Knowing Your Audience

18:18 Emily: For someone just starting out thinking, I would love to have a side income, even though I’m an academic and I have a busy semester, and I think this digital product thing could work really well for me. You’ve mentioned a couple times like getting to know your audience and discovering what they really want and need. And I’ve done this too, but how does someone who has no audience figure out how they can serve other people and make money doing it?

18:45 Toyin: Yes. So even if you don’t have an audience of like people to buy from you, you know, people, your friends, your family. And so when I was starting, I like made a little list of things like what do people come and ask me about? Like, what do people get advice from me about? What do I feel like I do better than others? What comes easy for me? And that was a way to get started. A way to figure out how I could help someone else. And then once I figured out who I wanted to help, I actually started asking people who fits this description? What are your questions about this topic? And so I started creating content about the topic. So for me, it was grad students with time management. I started creating content and that started to build my audience. And so, that gave me more people to ask marketing questions too.

19:37 Emily: I think this aspect of the audience is a really important element of selling digital products. And it’s something that, so I said earlier, like you could also sell services. Selling services is a really fast way to make money. Selling a digital product is maybe more scalable, but it’s more of a long-term play because you have to find the audience, you have to figure out what they want. You have to develop the product, you have to tinker around with different things like we’ve been talking about. And so I know like something that you do now is that you create content regularly for your YouTube channel, probably other places as well. And that, you know, brings people into your orbit, they’re interested in what you’re saying, and ultimately, maybe they decide they want to buy this digital product from you because they know it’s going to help them even further than what you’ve been doing for free. Is that the general model that this should follow? I guess someone could get really lucky and put something out there and suddenly people find it and love it, but that’s not typically how things go, right?

20:29 Toyin: Yes. I’m so glad you mentioned that. I would say that having a digital products business and making your business semester-proof, it’s a slow burn. It’s kind of like a snowball that kind of just like builds and builds, but it takes a while. I also agree that having a service like a consultancy or coaching or speaking, that is a much quicker way to make money, but the nice thing about a digital products business is, once you set it up, it’s good to go. So would you rather wait until you have a huge audience for people to buy to set it up, or would you rather set it up now and just start attracting people little by little? And the more you talk about what you do, the more people will learn about it, and that’s, what’s going to build that snowball effect.

Sales on Autopilot

21:16 Toyin: And there are of course things you can do to like kickstart your digital product. So, it doesn’t have to be completely passive at the very beginning. So for example, I created a workshop recently called Sales on Autopilot to help other academics. And I could have just launched it as a digital product that people could watch on their own, but I knew it was new. And so, I needed to build a little bit of hype around it. So I decided to offer it live for the first round, and that is a way to get people excited. And so if you are unsure or if you do want to have a digital product and you don’t really want to wait around to see if it catches on, try to do some type of live event around it and it can get people excited about it.

22:05 Emily: I am literally right now experimenting with this in my business because I’m super interested in reaching out more and more to prospective graduate students. Like you said, that you had a cohort of people who are like preparing for graduate school and trying to figure out all the stuff about how they’re going to succeed in graduate school. I have that same group that I’m interested in from their financial perspective. And so there are different ways that I’ve been doing this over the years, but right now I’m experimenting with delivering some content live for the first time that will ultimately be refined and live as an evergreen digital product. So like, this is something that for some aspect of your business, you may be able to do it once and then, you know, set it on autopilot. But every time you sort of have a new idea, you have to go through the same sort of iterative process on this. So, that’s really, really exciting.

22:51 Toyin: It’s also really fun to do like a live event because when you do something live, you get to hear people’s feedback real-time. And it can tell you how you may want to tweak what you’re offering, or maybe how to reposition it in a way that’s more exciting for your prospective client or customer.

23:10 Emily: I just wanted to share another aspect of my journey on this point that you were just making of, you know, make the product and also grow your audience. And it’s there for them whenever they want it. And as your audience grows more and more, hopefully more people will be finding it and buying it and so forth for me. Like I started teaching the tax material that I do in my business way back from the beginning, because it was one of those multiple personal finance subjects that people really needed to know about. So it had sort of, it was on the level of the other things. And then a while after that I created the digital product version, like my prerecorded tax workshop, but I was only selling it to individuals and I wasn’t selling it to universities yet. I was doing the live stuff for universities. And then like I was saying earlier, when I got so busy that I couldn’t really support the live aspect of it anymore, that product was there. And I could already tell my university clients I’ve been selling this for three years to individuals. It gets great reviews. People love it. And that was a great selling point for me. So like, my audience grew and shifted and so forth, but I was really glad that I had started experimenting with that product like years and years earlier.

24:11 Toyin: Yes. I love that. And I love like how you could scale that one offer. You’re talking about the same thing, but you’re offering it in different ways and in different capacities. That’s actually how I came up with my Grad School Prep course. I wrote a book called #GRADBOSS: A Grad School Survival Guide. And I wanted to expand on that book and go a little deeper. So, that book is available as a digital product or you can buy the physical copy, but if you want something more in-depth, something more interactive, there’s my course. I turned it into a bigger, better thing into a course. And then as you mentioned, we collaborated, and I invited Emily in on my course to help the students in there with the finance. And then that same topic, I actually scaled it up even more. I have a program for if anyone’s heard of the McNair Scholars Program, it’s for first-generation underrepresented undergraduate students. I was actually a McNair scholar, and the goal is to teach them about grad school and have them earn a terminal degree. And I was like, wow, my Grad School Prep stuff would actually be really helpful for McNair scholars. And so I scaled that product again, but tweaked it so that it was personalized for McNair scholars. So, I just feel like there are endless possibilities with digital products.

Find Your Zone of Alignment

25:33 Emily: I’m so glad you brought up the example of working with the McNair programs, which you and I are now doing, and it’s fantastic and it’s so much fun and I feel like we’re making a huge impact and it’s amazing. I think that you now call that your like zone of alignment, right? That you have the material that you’re teaching, you have the audience that you’re teaching it to. Can you expand on what that means?

25:51 Toyin: Yes. I finally discovered my zone of alignment, which is where I can position myself where I can just be myself and just really succeed. So, a lot of people talk about their zone of excellence, which is just things that you’re really, really good at. And then there’s your zone of genius where it’s like, not just the things that you’re good at that may be like draining on you, but the things that you’re good at that feels good to you. But if you take it one step further and add in your background and who you are, you can achieve your zone of alignment. So for me, I am really good at time management, and I am really good at helping graduate students with time management and productivity. That’s what I’ve built my business on. But my McNair program, it is so special to me because I was a McNair scholar.

26:44 Toyin: I achieved the goal of the McNair program of getting my PhD, and I help other graduate students. And now I’m able to help other McNair students actually achieve their goal. And so when I talk to McNair directors about my program, it’s like a no-brainer for them like, oh yeah, we teach our students about grad school. But also, they’re going to be able to learn from someone who was in the exact position as they were. And I just feel like all of the stars aligned when I created that program, and it just brings me so much joy and I feel that I’m working out of my zone of alignment. And I believe everyone has a zone of alignment. So like, if you think back to where you came from and what you’re good at, is there a way that you could help people who were just like you? And if you can find a way to do that, it tends to become almost effortless.

27:38 Emily: I can think of actually a couple recent podcast interviews that I’ve published. One with Dr. Lubos Brieda, and one with Dr. Nelson Zounlome, who were both graduate students who, I think, you know, according to your framework, like discovered their zone of alignment while in graduate school, and then launched businesses out of that zone of alignment. In Lubos’ case, he has a consulting company now. And in Nelson’s case, he’s still in academia like you are, but he has this side business that relates to his research and also his passion. And it just, it all just like feeds into one another in this like beautiful way. And I think that’s like something that our academic audience, you know, your zone of alignment might be something related to the subject matter that you’re studying in graduate school or that you did study during your PhD. You and I took kind of a step side to that of just like, how do you succeed as like a graduate student or PhD in these different areas, but it could literally be related to your research or the population that you are interested in or something like that. Like, there’s probably something about your experience as a graduate student or PhD that will help you figure out your zone of alignment

28:46 Toyin: One hundred percent, one hundred percent. And this is something I actually work on with my clients. So, I have a business consultancy where I help academic entrepreneurs figure out like how do they manage both being an academic and an entrepreneur. And academic work can be pretty draining. And so, you don’t want your business to also be draining if you already have a job that’s draining. So it’s really important to build a business, you know, from your zone of genius, but also really find that alignment so that everything just like falls into place and it becomes way more easy and more joyful and more fulfilling to work in your business when you’re working out of alignment or in alignment, rather.

Seeking Joy and Fulfillment

29:31 Emily: Toyin, I’ve just loved this conversation. Is there anything else that you want to share with us regarding digital products businesses, or zones of alignment, or anything else that we’ve touched on?

29:42 Toyin: As academics, we spend a lot of time becoming who we are and like building to our career. It takes a lot of work, and when we actually finish and make it through the program, we should feel good about that. And we should start to enjoy our lives. And so something that I really hate seeing is an academic who’s gone through the whole process of getting their degree and they get stuck in that grind of academia and their life just becomes academics, and they don’t really find a fulfilling purpose. And so for me, one way that I feel fulfilled in my life and I found purpose is through my business. And so, it doesn’t have to be through your business, but I do encourage everyone to think about like what’s something outside of academia that brings me joy and brings me fulfillment? And so, yeah, that’s just what I wanted to mention.

30:36 Emily: That’s beautiful. Toyin, where can people learn more about this subject of digital products and so forth?

30:44 Toyin: Yes. So I’ve created a free video series, which is a digital product, but it’s called Plan Your Semester-Proof Business in a Weekend. And so, it’s a multi-part video series where I walk you through the process of creating your own semester-proof business, as well as share my complete business journeys, failures, and successes. And so if you’re interested in that, you can check it out at theacademicsociety.com/weekend.

31:14 Emily: And I went through this digital product a couple of weeks ago, and I found it really, really illuminating. Even though I’ve already been in this space for like several years, I still learned several things from this series. Something I really, really liked was that you go through, as you briefly mentioned earlier, just a bunch of different examples of different digital products, but in a little bit more detail in these videos, and it can really spark ideas and just show people also like a digital product doesn’t have to be some like massive thing. Like my tax workshop, for example, which has taken years to create and hours and hours and blah, blah, blah. It does not have to be that big, it can be a small thing. That’s okay. Start somewhere and get your sort of systems up and running. I love the systems focus that you have in that series, because this is a weak part of my business. So that’s where I learned something. So anyway, it’s a free course, y’all. If anybody’s interested in creating digital products, just go and take it. It’s going to be great.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

32:02 Emily: Okay. So Toyin, last question that I ask of all my interviewees is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it can be something that we have talked about already in the interview, or it can be something completely new.

32:16 Toyin: Yes. So my best piece of advice would probably be to not underestimate the power of having savings. I am someone who always struggled with having savings. I think just since graduate school when I was applying for jobs or going to conferences, just the way that things are set up, it’s like you pay your own money and then you have to be reimbursed. And so I was often like using a credit card and then being reimbursed, but also have to use the money for other things. And so I got into a pretty deep debt. And so I was never able to build my savings. But thank goodness I have my business and I was able to get out of debt using earnings from my business. But I am really focused now on building a savings account. I think that’s really important. Like this past summer, my air conditioner broke, so I had to buy a new air conditioner. Luckily, I actually had savings this time, and I was able to do that. But yeah, I think that was something I underestimated before, but I never will again.

33:19 Emily: That’s great. That’s great. I think when you’re in a cycle of like living to paycheck to paycheck or like depending on credit cards, it’s kind of about like getting by, and you think you are. You’re doing okay, using the tools available to you. Yes, that’s true. But once you are not in that position anymore and you have the savings, like you did not even know the peace of mind that was available to you by that savings existing until you got to that point. So, definitely cosign as best you can, as soon as you can get some savings in place. And the thing that’s great, we didn’t even talk about this before, about a digital product business is that it’s so low overhead. So, you can start one without sinking a bunch of money into whatever systems and inventory and blah, blah, blah, blah. You can do it very easily. It’s going to cost you your time, but probably not much more than that. And yeah, so you can make money without having a whole lot on the expense side.

34:12 Toyin: Yes. I love that you said this. So I do this workshop called Sales on Autopilot, and you can literally set up a digital products business for $9 a month. That is it. Like it is probably the cheapest business that you could ever create.

34:29 Emily: Yeah, no kidding. Well Toyin, we’ve gotten so many insights from this interview. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast again, it’s been wonderful to talk with you!

34:37 Toyin: Thank you so much for having me, this was great!

Outtro

34:45 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? I have 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/. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 3 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and increasing cash flow. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

The Financial Upside to Leaving Academia

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Chris Caterine, the author of Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide. Chris holds a PhD in classics and worked as a visiting assistant professor before transitioning into a career in the private sector. Leaving Academia addresses the necessary identity shift and practical steps that accompany this process and grew out of the informational interviews Chris conducted. Emily and Chris discuss the financial pressures that motivated Chris to shift to a non-academic career and how to financially prepare for that change. They also discuss the role side hustles and volunteer experiences can play in helping you land a non-academic job. This episode is a must-listen for anyone currently in PhD training or working in academia!

Links Mentioned in the Episode

financial upside to leaving academia

Teaser

00:00 Chris: And when I really stared down that fact it became very, very hard for me to cling to this idea that it’s okay to accept a certain degree of poverty or lack of wealth in being an academic. And to really say, you know what, like actually, I want to have some nice things and I’m not sure I’m willing to be ashamed of that anymore.

Introduction

00:27 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 10, Episode 7, and today my guest is Dr. Chris Caterine, the author of Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide, which was published one year ago. Chris holds a PhD in classics and worked as a visiting assistant professor before transitioning into a career in the private sector. Leaving Academia addresses the necessary identity shift and practical steps that accompany this process and grew out of the informational interviews Chris conducted. Chris and I discuss the financial pressures that motivated Chris to shift to a non-academic career and how to financially prepare for that challenge. We also discuss the role side hustles and volunteer experiences can play in helping you land a non-academic job. This episode is a must-listen for anyone currently in PhD training or working in academia!

01:29 Emily: Did you know that I run a couple of database websites for collecting stipend and salary information for PhD trainees? The domains are PhD Stipends dot com and Postdoc Salaries dot com. If you haven’t done it yet, would you please take a minute to: 1. Fill out the survey to report your 2021-2022 stipend or salary to the appropriate website? The databases consist of crowd-sourced information, so they rely on the willingness of PhD trainees like you to self-report their income. 2. Share the site with your peers over a social network, a listserv, or a forum website? These websites are super useful for prospective PhD students and postdocs, but they are also often used for advocacy efforts to bolster the case for raising stipends and salaries. Thank you so much for participating in these efforts! Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Chris Caterine.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:32 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Chris Caterine. He is the author of the new book, Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide, and I’m super delighted to have him on because we’re going to be talking about career changes, graduate students, and PhDs and academics who are leaving academia and how personal finance relates to that process. So I’m super excited. Chris, will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

02:56 Chris: Of course. Thank you so much for having me, Emily. Again, I’m Chris Caterine, I’m a communication strategist and proposal writer for a global consulting firm. My academic career was actually in classics, which is Greek and Roman literature history and all that stuff. I got my PhD in 2014 from the University of Virginia. And as Emily said, last year I had a book published called Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide with Princeton University Press.

03:20 Emily: Fabulous. And in the book, it talks a lot about your own journey, as well as what you learned from others. And there were lots and lots of interviews which went into the book, which was fascinating. Can you just tell us like quick synopsis, what’s the book about, what do you want the reader to do with it?

03:34 Chris: The book is really designed to do two things. The first thing is that I’ll go to the practical side, which is to say, if you are in academia and you realize that you don’t have a career, a future in academia, which, you know, 93% of entering social sciences and humanities graduate students don’t, then the book gives you practical steps, just put one foot in front of the other and figure out what you need to do to find a new career. Even if you have no idea what that’s going to be. And that practical side of the book again, is good for everybody, not just humanities and social sciences, but STEM folks as well. The other side of the book is almost more psychological or identity-driven. And that’s really trying to get into the mindset of people who can’t imagine having any career besides a professorship. And what sort of, how do you approach what is ultimately an identity crisis, not just knowing what you will do, but not knowing who you will be if you leave the academy. I think those tend to drive more towards the humanities and social sciences side because there’s always been more industry outs for people in STEM. But really it applies to anybody who views academia as vocation and feels called into that line of work and realized since then, that might not be their future.

04:50 Emily: I love the way you described that. And I also loved, I don’t remember if it’s the introduction or something, but you sort of positioned what your book adds to the field already, because I don’t know if I read some of the exact same books you’re referencing, but I read the kind of book that you’re referencing, which is like a lot of like personal essays or like individual stories around careers that people have after they, you know, get out of graduate school or finish their PhD. And that’s wonderful to see examples of what’s going on, but your book is more about, okay, what is the actual like logistically, like, what is the process here? Like what do I actually do to get to that end point that I see as possible? And I really appreciated that. And of course I love, and I’m sure everybody loves that these six chapters have alliteration for all the titles to them.

Motivation for Leaving Academia

05:32 Emily: So there’s, I’ll just read them out because I have the book here. Dread, discern, discover, decipher, develop, and deploy. And I actually found I thought my favorite parts of it were actually in decipher when you were talking about, I don’t know if you use this term, but the translatable skills that you develop in academia and how they actually relate to other jobs you could do later. And I know I’d always heard that in graduate school, you have translatable skills, you can use them later, but like your explanation was just more detailed than anything I’d read before, which I found really delightful, it made me feel a little bit better about the things that I learned while I was in academia. So thank you for that. So, delightful book, and as I said it’s, it was driven by all these informational interviews that you did. And you did more in-depth interviews for the book. But I wanted to know about sort of your motivation for leaving academia. And it’s apparent from the book that finance has played at least some role in that. So would you please elaborate on that?

06:32 Chris: Yeah, really, for me, I think I began accepting that I was going to be leaving academia around age 30. It sounds a little bit cliché, but it was a big transition point, even if I didn’t want to admit it. And I was getting to that stage of life where you know, my wife and I had been married for a few years. We were thinking that we probably wanted to start a family at some point. I just remember looking at all of these jobs I was applying to, you know, I was making $40,000 a year teaching a 3/3 as a visiting assistant professor. And I was applying for jobs like that, that were apart from my wife and I was saying, well, first of all, how do we have kids if we’re living apart, that’s really work. But also like just doing the math and the salary and trying to think, okay, if we’re trying to live in two places, that’s two households, 40, 50, even $60,000 a year like this, just like the math doesn’t work.

07:22 Chris: And on top of that, even if we lived in the same place somehow, you know, solved the two-body problem, because my wife is also an academic, or still is an academic. Even if we solve that, I looked at it and said, you know, I don’t know that my wife and I would be able to give any child or children in the future, anything resembling the quality of life that our parents gave us. And when I really stared down that fact, it became very, very hard for me to cling to this idea that it’s okay to accept a certain degree of poverty or lack of wealth in being an academic. And to really say, you know what, like brass tacks, actually, I want to have some nice things, and I’m not sure I’m willing to be ashamed of that anymore.

08:07 Emily: So interesting. I mean, really what you’re talking about here is a realization of your own values as you grew, you know, towards age 30 and so forth, and realizing that the career, which is one of your values, I’m sure that aligned in some way with your values was in conflict with these other values of what is the standard of living that I want? What is the kind of family that I want? And you resolved, I assume, this conflict by having a career outside of academia that still, again I’m assuming, fulfills many of your values and so forth, but this book is about the process of finding that and landing that career. I’m just wondering, because we’ve heard the story before, a similar story before on the podcast. I’ll refer listeners to the episode with Dr. Scott Kennedy, who similar to you, came into academia, aspiring to the professoriate.

Financial Framework in Grad School

08:51 Emily: And during graduate school got married and actually had, I think, two or three children during graduate school, and realized that it was just not tenable financially and exited academia and found fulfillment elsewhere. So that was a wonderful example, but I want to know. Okay. You just mentioned, you know, as a visiting assistant professor, the $40K salary. Did you know, like back when you were in graduate school, that that was your financial future, if you stayed in academia? Or did you have like a rosier picture? Like what did you think was going to happen?

09:18 Chris: Well, in grad school, I was living on an $18,000 a year stipend. So I figured anything more than that would make me rich. I mean, I literally just thought it’s double the buying power and of course that isn’t actually the case, you know, taxes increase. If you’re living with a partner, like maybe you have two incomes, but you need more space for the two of you. The costs do not kind of move up in a linear way. And so I sort of expected that as my salary went up, you know, in a linear way that the costs would track and they just don’t actually in a lot of ways. And so, I really worked hard to live on that, that $18K a year. You know, it’s funny, I was looking at my pandemic hair, which is getting all too long in the back and I was like, man it hasn’t been this long since graduate school.

10:03 Chris: And I’m like, oh yeah. Like I got one haircut a fiscal quarter for $12 at a place, you know, a 20-minute drive away because I wanted to not put money into that and save it for drinks out, whatever it was. And so I think I just assumed that like my spending was so low that anything that I brought in would let me do infinitely more. And part of that was I was living in a low cost area. And part of that was, I just didn’t understand how those costs scaled, and part of it was that, you know, at age 22 the prospect of kids was a long way off. And then you start thinking about it, you say, oh, I have 18 years to save, you know, $350,000 for college. That’s that’s not going to work right on $40 a year. The math just doesn’t track. So yeah, I think my thinking definitely changed later on. But in graduate school I just assumed that it would be okay.

Financial Strain as a Common Motivator

11:03 Emily: And I think that, you know, you said earlier, oh, it’s cliché approaching my 30th birthday, I had all these, you know, realizations or whatever. But I think that your story, again, is common that as we age, we realize that we want a higher standard of living than what we were enduring during graduate school. And the other thing, you mention this, I think, somewhere in your book that during graduate school, I don’t believe that you were contributing to your retirement. That was something you were able to do only once you had your full-time job and so forth. And so there’s also this like sort of deferred cost, like you’re pushing off responsibility to the future for yourself. And so, yeah, maybe $40K is not actually double $18 K because you have XYZ taxes and retirement and all these other things. Maybe a house, maybe a family, all these other things you want to do. So I totally understand. And it’s the same, you know, experience that I have as well. Do you find that financial strain in academia is a common motivator for leaving academia for other people?

11:59 Chris: Yeah. A lot of people that I’ve spoken with do raise that issue. And I would say that the stories vary a lot. These are some people who say I have a ton of debt, I have nothing in savings. And you know, I’m done with graduate school in three months. Can you help me. And that’s a big ask. You know, I can give advice. I can tell you maybe how to prioritize that three months that you have, but that’s a challenging situation. For other people they see it a little bit earlier on, and maybe they realize that things won’t work out financially, for other people, especially in the U.S., healthcare becomes an issue as well. I would say that that is a big motivating factor for a lot of people. And I think as you do get closer to completing, and as you start applying for jobs and thinking about you know, incurring the cost to move for a jobs that pays you $30,000 like that’s going to cost you a few thousand anyway, you’re kind of burning negative on that deal.

13:06 Chris: I think when people start actually thinking about that or trying it out a few times and seeing how it works out, yeah, the finances do become a big issue. And especially looking at salaries outside of the academy, it’s just wild. I mean, I felt rich when I went from my $18,000 to $40,000 as a visiting assistant professor. And I didn’t realize just how small a salary that was until I began looking outside.

Personal Finance Strain on Contingent Faculty

13:36 Emily: Yeah, my husband’s also PhD and he and I went through a similar thing going from like graduate student to postdoc salary, but then realizing, oh, wait, we’re paying FICA now. Okay. It doesn’t go that far. So I’m actually wondering, so, you know, you mentioned near the start of the interview that only maybe 7% ish of people who start a PhD program will actually end up in a tenure-track job. And I think one of the issues that maybe is not discussed head-on, but certainly indirectly in your book is the problem of contingent faculty, right? So if you get the tenure-track job, then maybe you are on a decent salary path. I mean, I don’t know about your field necessarily, but I have certainly run across many citations of professors making over $100K a year and even $150K or more, but that’s not at the contingent level, the visiting level, the adjunct level. Can you talk a little bit about sort of the strain on the personal finances of contingent faculty, as they’re maybe holding out hope of this, you know this ultimate dream job?

14:38 Chris: Oh, this one really breaks my heart. And one of the things that actually precipitated my move outside of academia was working on contingent faculty issues for my professional society. So that was the first time I really started to look at what life could be like. And when you start hearing figures that something like, it’s like 54% of adjuncts qualify for food stamps you know, like I can’t remember all the statistics off the top of my head now, but I mean, the numbers are really bleak, and you start realizing like, oh my God, this is severe. And as a society, we’re essentially subsidizing these universities that don’t pay people. Like, what, why do we do this? Why do we put up for it? I think the thing that really crushes me so much now, when I talk to people in contingent roles who say, well, you know, I want to try one or two more times is that, you know, they are missing out on the opportunity cost of the situation as well.

15:42 Chris: And it’s like, well, yeah, okay. You can try to get an academic job one or two more times, and maybe you have a, you know, three to 5% chance of getting one, but all the time that you spend on those applications, all the money you spent flying to the conference interview for the job, whatever it is, all of that time and money could be put into other things that could be preparing you for a career that actually makes you happier than being an academic and gets you out from under the thumb of the system that is fundamentally broken. And convincing people that if they’ve bought into the idea that their identity is tied up in being a professor is very, very hard. And there’s sort of only so much that you can do to get people to move past that. And I hope, you know, the early chapters of my book, “Dread,” I give this dire name, title, because I’m trying to shake that sense into some people who maybe are resistant to it. But really, you know, for some people, it is just a matter of coming up and seeing what that’s like. But I would encourage all your listeners to really go out and read some stories of what contingent life is actually like financially. It’s not a good situation.

Commercial

16:53 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Our next live discussion and Q&A call is on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021. Basically, the community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to pfforphds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success! Now, back to the interview.

Changing Money Mindsets

18:06 Emily: Chris, I know we could stay on the subject for quite a while, and I wish we could, but let’s talk a little bit more about money mindset, specifically for you. So, you know, what was your attitude towards money, practice of personal finance when you were in graduate school, versus did it change later on as you became a visiting assistant professor, as you moved into your non-academic job?

18:26 Chris: So growing up, both my parents were trained as CPAs. I had like a pretty decent financial literacy growing up in that, you know, I knew how to balance a checkbook. I knew how to make at least a basic budget and make sure that there was more money coming in and going out and use that to sort of set my discretionary spending accordingly. So I’d been doing that sort of all the way through graduate school and had adapted pretty well to a very modest standard of living. And I was proud of doing it, and I still am that I did it, but, you know, as time went on, I think, especially with my move to New Orleans. You know, I grew up in Boston, went to school in Virginia. When I ended up in new Orleans, I saw a very different mode of life and people here definitely embrace the better things in life.

19:14 Chris: There’s good music, good food, good drink. And I started saying, wait a minute, like, why am I deferring all of that like a hundred percent? And so my wife and I had made a choice to live in a smaller apartment so that we could afford to dine out in New Orleans thinking we’d only be here for one year. Well, eight years later, here we are. So you know, geography sort of changed my outlook on what I actually wanted to be doing with my money. Not just squirreling it away in the bank, but using it to enjoy life. And I think I also ended up going from being extremely risk averse in graduate school. Just because there wasn’t that much, so if I lost any of it I felt it more, to over time just becoming a little bit more comfortable with risk.

20:01 Chris: And for me, leaving academia was actually a process of embracing risk and embracing financial risk in a way that I hadn’t before. So I had one year left on my visiting assistant professor contract and my wife and I had decided that we wanted to stay in New Orleans no matter what. And we decided to buy a house. And I was terrified of that decision, because we could afford the monthly payments for the next year, but I had no idea what was coming after. I hadn’t really built a good network. I didn’t have good leads on jobs. It was a big question mark, and I actually used that life event to sort of put my back against a wall and say like, if there’s the prospect of losing this house if I don’t figure something out, then I better figure something out. And that was a huge motivator to me. Again I was in a privileged position to be able to do that, but that was sort of the rationale was using sort of a financial tool to push me into a space where I was uncomfortable.

21:09 Emily: I think I’ve heard this referred to as like a commitment device. Like there’s going to be some real big downside if I do not follow through on my goal of X, Y, Z. I’ve heard it in a lower stakes situation than home ownership, but I think this qualifies as well. And, you know, I think what you said earlier about the opportunity cost of that particular example, the opportunity costs of staying in a contingent faculty position, doing 1, 2, 3 more cycles on the job market. There’s also a major opportunity cost to graduate school. There’s also a major opportunity cost at staying at these lower salary levels. So you said, you know, I had to think about risk in a different way. I had to be willing to take on more risk. There was implicit risk in what you were already doing, but it probably wasn’t forefront in your mind, right? Like the risk of spending years and years and years pursuing this career that was not working out financially, was never going to work out financially. But it’s so hard to see that. It’s hard to see graduate school as opportunity cost.

22:11 Chris: It is. And I think the biggest challenge with the PhD right now is really that if you want to be a professor, it is a credential that you need to get. So if you want to keep the professorship open as a possibility for your future, that is the only path you have to do it. And yet, the vast, vast majority of people who get a PhD, can’t become professors. And I think because of that tension, people do get sucked into this mentality that you just need to forge ahead. And anything that you do that deviates from your scholarship or your teaching is ultimately going to be lessening your odds of that thing that you’re working towards. So it feels like a risk-averse position to be overly narrow, when actually it’s not.

Preparing Finances for Leaving Academia

23:00 Emily: Very well phrased. You mentioned earlier an example of, you know, someone coming to you for advice who has three months until they’re not being paid anymore and they have a lot of debt and so forth. And you’re saying, oh, it’s a short timeframe. We can do something here, but let’s say that, you know, some listeners have a longer timeframe, a year or more before they’re thinking about exiting academia. What can that person do to help prepare their finances for this process of leaving academia?

23:30 Chris: I would say, you know, save every penny that you can because at a certain point, you can actually buy time. And what I mean by that is that if you have, you know, three months of expenses in the bank, then even after your last paycheck hits, you will not necessarily need to take the first job that comes your way. And if you are making a major career change, you know, from a planned academic path to something totally different, it is likely that the first offer that you get is not going to be a job you want. And, you know, I cite these examples in the book, but I was interviewing for jobs to pour samples of beer at the grocery store. I was offered a job to sell life insurance, which seemed like a really good idea going through the interview process until I stopped to think about it and then said, wait a minute, like actually this whole thing, the financial arrangement that they put before me was a scam.

24:32 Chris: And I had, you know, friends and family fortunately say like, yes, we didn’t want to be discouraging, but that would be a bad idea. And because I had some savings in the bank because I had a partner with a stable income, you know, we’d looked at the numbers and said, okay, I can probably wait three to six months after that last paycheck. And then at that point I’ll need to shift my mindset into another, take anything that’s available or, you know, begin looking outside of New Orleans and consider potentially having to uproot. But the more you can save, the more flexibility you will have to make a sort of a positive choice at that end game, instead of being backed into something that you’re not totally happy with.

Benefits of Pursuing a Side Hustle for Skill-Building

25:16 Emily: I am in total agreement. And if someone were to follow this process in your book, it’s very deliberate and it takes a good amount of time, not just like the number of hours, but sort of longitudinally for you to be able to process and understand what’s going on and make the networking connections and so forth. It takes quite a bit of time. So to give yourself that runway, it’s the same thing with entrepreneurship, give yourself a runway before your paycheck ends, or, you know, if you can give yourself runway with savings, the more you can, the less of a desperate situation you will end up in eventually. And hopefully, as you said, you can make a positive career choice. And so I really enjoyed that you talked about in the chapter “Develop” how a side hustle can further this whole process. And I think in that chapter, you were specifically citing side hustles as a way for you to sort of add to your resume, add more experiences, demonstrate your skills, that sort of thing. But I think that side hustles could probably be helpful in multiple stages of this process of leaving academia. Can you talk about the benefits that you’ve seen of pursuing a side hustle?

26:18 Chris: For me, what I will say first of all, is that in graduate school, the only side hustle I had was tutoring, which was great because it got me some extra money, but it was also a really foolish thing to do because it didn’t get me anything besides that money. Like it didn’t actually make me a better teacher. It didn’t develop any new skills. It just sort of deepened my presence in a space that I was already in. So if you’re thinking of doing that and like, you just need a little bit of extra cash. Okay, fine. But again, think about opportunity cost. How could you spend that time? Could you get, you know, more than $15 or $20 an hour tutoring to do something else? You know, in that regard, I got lucky. I had a neighbor and a close friend who had a small business.

26:59 Chris: It was him and one other developer. And he just needed somebody to help with website development and like maintaining his books and like doing all this stuff that I had no idea how to do. And I knew him well enough that he said, well, I can pay you. I think he gave me 15 bucks an hour, and he said, “you know, I know that like me giving you $15 an hour to do it is going to free up time for me to bill my clients. And it’s going to let you learn some skills. And it’s probably, you’re going to figure it out faster than somebody I’d pay $35. So I’m good.” Now I got lucky with that situation, but it was great because I brought in a little bit of extra money, but I also began thinking about, okay, how do you sell a business service to a buyer who is probably resistant to incurring that expense in the first place?

27:50 Chris: Where do you go to advertise to small and mature businesses for kind of a small salesforce.com development group. So I began thinking in all these different ways, and it turned out that all that practice talking about technology services for maybe skeptical business audiences really paved the way for the stuff I’m doing now, where most of the time I’m working on proposals for big technology for the patient. I had no idea that would pan out, but that’s sort of how it did. So I think, you know, to get back the core of the question, how can side hustles really help? You don’t know how they could help. But I think you want to use them as a way to simultaneously build new skills and make some extra money. And if you let them do double duty, then that’s great.

28:47 Chris: My wife has a saying now which is like, she doesn’t do anything that doesn’t count twice. And if she can’t kind of apply it in two places, it’s not worth doing because the time investment is just too high. So I think that’s a really good attitude to take as you’re exploring new careers, as you’re trying to, you know, make extra money in graduate school or even beyond graduate school. You know, tutoring, you know, working in a restaurant, all that stuff can, yes, get you money, but is it going to be advancing those other career objectives that you have? If the answer is no, then you might want to think again about how to balance that equation.

Career-Advancing Side Hustles

29:24 Emily: Yeah, you’re absolutely speaking my language here. I have an interview with Dr. Gaius Augustus, which we’ll link in the show notes, where we talk through this framework that I have thinking about how valuable a side hustle will be to you. My favorite side hustle, I call career-advancing side hustles. Double-duty, as you said, it brings in money and also helps you demonstrate a skill, learn a new skill, have another line for your CV, expand your network, anything like that. And I think what was interesting about your example of, you know, keeping the books for your friend’s business is that you didn’t know how that experience was going to advance your career. And it turned out it did, in retrospect. And I think that just speaks to the benefit of like trying something new. And as you said, instead of staying in the same space that you already know tutoring, you know, it’s in your wheelhouse already, try to stretch yourself a little bit and it’ll spark new thoughts and it’ll spark new perspectives.

30:13 Emily: And so, yeah, just give some new things, a chance. And I noticed from that chapter of your book, it seemed like you were pursuing this side hustle, maybe, you know, some other volunteer experience and so forth over a fairly short period of time. And you got a lot out of it over just like a few months, six-month period or something. And so it doesn’t have to be like, oh, I have to set this up and do it the entire time I’m in graduate school. No, just try something. You know, see if you benefit from it. If it’s good pay and you do, keep doing it. Or if not, try something else. Just experiment with it.

30:40 Chris: Yeah. In software development, they have this concept of failing fast. And the idea is that it’s good to experiment and try little things. And like the sooner you find out something doesn’t work, the sooner you can stop spending time doing that thing. And so, I think that sort of agile and iterative approach to trying new stuff to build career skills is absolutely the right path.

31:01 Emily: I think the other benefit is that, you know, working for your friend’s business for a bit, it gave you some language probably that you didn’t have before. Not just the skills, but just that practice, as you said, of speaking with people you weren’t speaking with already inside academia and just that diversity of experience helped you, ultimately, you know, get the job that you have, because I know you said in the book that it took practice to change the kind of language that you use the kind of speech that you used from what you were used to in academia to what was acceptable in the business world, and that exposure can help a person, you know, along with that process.

31:33 Chris: Yeah. It’s maybe expected that a communications strategists would say that like career changes ultimately come down to communication. But in this case, I really do think that that’s the biggest challenge, is just that academics speak their own language, their own jargon. We have ways of interacting with people that are different from the world outside. And until you go out there and learn how other people speak and behave, the like trying to translate is a fool’s errand. It’d be like me trying to translate Latin into Mandarin. I can’t do it until I know Mandarin.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

32:06 Emily: Chris, this has been such a wonderful conversation. I’m so glad you came on the podcast. I know we’re leaving the listeners wanting more. So where can they find you and where can they find your book?

32:15 Chris: So I’m available on Twitter @clcaterine, also on LinkedIn, Christopher L. Caterine. My book is available from Princeton University Press on Amazon and also at local independent bookstores.

32:27 Emily: Very good. And by the way, hat tip to Dr. Brandon Renfro who connected us, and you can listen to his episode, we will link that in the show notes as well. So Chris, the question that I ask all my guests at the end of our interviews is what is your financial advice for another early-career PhD? So would you please share that with us?

32:44 Chris: You know, we looped this earlier and I think budgeting is a really valuable tool and you should absolutely do it, but sort of don’t be tricked by thinking that the budget that you set for yourself as a graduate student is going to scale up. And yeah, you know run models, figure out what you might need to have the sort of life you want to live, and use that to figure out what kind of income you would need from a job to live that life. And if you have real data that backs it up, you can be really targeted in the jobs you pursue, both inside and outside of the academy, and find a career that works for your life.

33:21 Emily: Yeah. And I think that’s a wonderful exercise to couple with all the exercises that you lay out in your book. So thank you so much again for joining me on the podcast today!

33:29 Chris: Thanks so much for having me!

Outtro

33:37 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhds.com/Podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast. On that page are links to all the episode show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to voluntee to be interviewed on the podcast. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list listserv, or as a link from your website. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in like investing, debt repayment, and effective budgeting. I also license prerecorded workshops on taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhds.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps! The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio, and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.