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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.

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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.

Financial Advice for Prospective PhD Students

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In this episode, Emily shared the financial advice for prospective and rising graduate students that she collected from current graduate students and PhDs. This financial advice can be applied all the way from when you are reading a grad school offer letter to when you’re matriculating into your PhD program. The topics covered include evaluating cost of living, side hustling prior to or during grad school, saving up cash, purchasing a home, and investing.

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Teaser

00:00 Courtney: I really highly recommend using Emily’s savings bucket strategy throughout grad school to cover irregular expenses. About halfway through grad school, I started using the savings bucket strategy, which helped me feel a lot less stressed about money and my finances because when large expenses came up, I had a plan in place.

Introduction

00:25 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 5, and today I’m sharing with you the financial advice for prospective and rising graduate students that I have collected from current graduate students and PhDs. This financial advice can be applied all the way from when you are reading a grad school offer letter to when you’re matriculating into your PhD program. The topics covered include evaluating cost of living, side hustling prior to or during grad school, saving up cash, purchasing a home, and investing. This episode is kind of a sequel to Season 5 Episode 2, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Choose a PhD Program That Will Support Your Personal and Professional Development. That episode was also designed for prospective graduate students and included advice from invited contributors on finances, grad student unions, professional development, mental health, and work-life balance.

01:28 Emily: If you’re already in or beyond grad school, would you please share this episode and/or the previous one so that it can reach its target audience? I’m sure once you listen through it, you will agree with me that the advice is invaluable. If you planning to start a PhD program in 2022 and would like to learn even more about the financial side of this process, I invite you to attend a couple of upcoming free webinars, part of my series Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School. The March webinar is for prospective graduate students, and you can find more information at PFforPhDs.com/prospective/. The April webinar is for rising graduate students, and you can find more information at PFforPhDs.com/rising/. If you’re not sure what I mean by prospective vs. rising, listen through the remainder of this episode. I hope that you will join me for these webinars. I will show you how to start graduate school on the right financial foot.

Do You Even Need to Go to Grad School?

02:33 Emily: The advice in this section is for prospective PhD students, by which I mean people who have already applied to programs and perhaps received some acceptances and/or started interviewing, but who have not yet committed to a program. We’ll start with the advice collected from your fellow graduate students and PhDs.

02:53 Emily: Our first topic is do you even need to go to grad school? And this is the advice from Elyse K: “Figure out if a PhD is absolutely necessary to do what you want to do, and only go if it is absolutely necessary. It is worth delaying school to be absolutely sure–don’t get a PhD to figure out what you want to do! This is financial advice because there is a substantial opportunity cost to going to school full time for 4-6 years–even if you have a full stipend and tuition waiver you would probably make more working full time. If a PhD it isn’t going to serve you after you graduate, you’ll be financially better off without it.”

03:37 Emily: This advice from Elyse K is spot on, and it is something that you must listen to as a prospective PhD student, even if it’s unpleasant, because you’ve already committed a lot to this process of getting into a PhD program, I’m sure. Not just the application cycle, but the years leading up to that. But don’t be trapped by the sunk cost fallacy. It’s only going to get worse and worse if you enroll in graduate school and it’s not the right path for you. So as Elyse says, and I agree, be absolutely sure that the PhD is the right thing for your career, the right thing for your personal life and that this is the right time for it. Much better to bail now than halfway through a program or even all the way through your program if you realize that it wasn’t the right choice for you. If you want to hear more discussion of the financial opportunity cost of getting a PhD, please listen to my interview with Dr. Jen Polk from season seven, episode 14.

Reading Your Offer Letter

04:37 Emily: Our next topic is on reading your offer letter, your funding offer letter, from a graduate program, and Elyse K again says: “Don’t go into debt for a PhD. Find a program that will pay you or save up and cash flow school.” Again, I totally agree with Elyse. I am very hard pressed to think of a field in which you would get a PhD, but not be paid to it. Very difficult to come up with that. So of course, almost certainly you’re going to be receiving offers of funding along with your offers of admission. But to put a little bit more nuance on Elyse’s point, just because someone is offering you full funding, doesn’t mean you wouldn’t incur debt by going into that PhD program, because the offer of funding might not be high enough or consistent enough to keep you out of student loan debt, or alternatively having to side hustle. So I want you to really keep your eyes wide open when it comes to evaluating whether this program will actually keep you out of debt. Next up, we have a clip submitted from Shana.

05:42 Shana: Hello, Personal Finance for PhDs community. My name is Shana Slebioda, and I’m a staff member at a research university who works with graduate students. My advice for rising PhD students is to ask about summer financial support. Summer support packages may be different from during the academic year, especially if your support comes mainly from being a teaching assistant, also known as a TA. If your funding letter does not contain specifics about the summer months, be sure to ask. Talk to a faculty or staff member in your prospective program to get additional information. You can also talk to current students in the program to find out how they spend their summers. Do this early. Your first summer session will be there before you know it. And good luck.

06:36 Emily: This is absolutely vital advice from Shana. And again, I completely agree. Your offer letter, ideally, should tell you how you’ll be funded for the entire first 12 months of your program. So, if it doesn’t include details about your summer, as Shana said, you need to inquire about it. Both from, you know, the DGS [Director of Graduate Studies] or whoever’s offering you the funding package, and also with current graduate students to find out how funding typically works in the summer, or if it’s funded at all. But I want to extend this advice to say that it’s also very important to get an idea of your entire funding path through the PhD. Not just through the first summer, but your second year, your third year, fourth year, and all of the summers as well. Your program might or may not be able to give you super specifics about your situation. Maybe they can, maybe they can’t, but that’s where current graduate students come in very handy because they will tell you what from their experience and what they’ve observed among their peers about how people are funded or not throughout their time in the PhD program.

Evaluating Cost of Living

07:37 Emily: Our next topic is on evaluating cost of living for, I would say all of the programs that you are seriously considering attending. Julia’s advice is: “Ask current students about living expenses and estimate your budget. In some cities, to rent an apartment you might need to pay three to four months worth of rent upfront (first and last month of rent, broker fees, security deposit). You might need to consider having a roommate.” Again, the advice to talk to current graduate students is the best. They are going to be the people best positioned to give you the picture of how finances are working on the ground in this PhD program.

08:14 Emily: And I love the specificity of how much you might be asked to put up to rent an apartment. This is very, very city-dependent. I’m guessing Julia may live in Boston or New York. Certainly there may be other cities that operate the same way, but yes, it can be very expensive to get into your first apartment. In some cases, up to four months of expenses, in some cases less, it’s just going to be really city dependent. So it’s something you need to investigate possibly before you commit to a program, but definitely at the point that you do commit to a program.

08:44 Emily: We also have some advice from Ben: “You can pretty much have a successful research career anywhere you end up. So don’t let thoughts about potential research advisors overshadow comparisons of cost of living and stipend when considering programs.” I wish that I had heard this advice from Ben when I was in this phase of being a prospective PhD student, because I absolutely number one was picking my program based off of the potential research that I could do there. The advisor that I would have, the resources that the program had at its disposal, these kinds of things. So I was really not giving any thought to finances or other personal considerations that I now know are very, very important to have you know, in the mix in your decision-making.

09:29 Emily: And so I now definitely agree with Ben that yes, the research considerations are very important, but so is understanding what your lifestyle is going to be financially during your time in graduate school. And so are a lot of other things you might call personal factors. So they all should have a place. And don’t forget that your finances and these other personal factors will affect how successful you are in your program. So these are not, you know, disconnected from one another. If you are super stressed about money, or if you have to go into debt or side hustle, it’s going to affect how well you perform in your research career and potentially how long it takes you to graduate. So, as I said, all the factors should go into the mix.

Working Before or During Grad School

10:13 Emily: Our next topic is on working, either in this period of time between now and when you matriculate or after you matriculate. Our first piece of advice is from Gillian Hayes: “Work as much as you can in paid positions before returning to graduate school to save money to bridge the difficult times during the PhD. You may also make connections that will allow you to do side hustles or internships during your program.” Coming into graduate school with cash savings sets you up as best as possible to have a strong financial position. When I think about people who start graduate school without cash savings, or maybe even with, you know, incurring some credit card debt because of those moving expenses, you’re sort of thrown onto your back foot financially, like you’re off balance.

11:03 Emily: It’s not a strong position to start in. And of course it’s necessary in many cases, but I like Gillian’s advice. I agree with it. If at all possible, work before getting into that PhD program to generate cash savings so that you have money for moving, so that you have money for start up expenses. And so that you don’t have financial stress at the same time you’re trying to get started in your program. I also totally agree with her that working certain kinds of jobs will help you in your career that you’re trying to pursue during your PhD, and things like internships and side hustles can be part of that. If you’d like to hear more from Gillian, and I know you would, you can listen to her full interview in season six, episode six.

11:45 Emily: And here’s some advice from Nell: “Consider having another job. When I went to grad school, I went part-time with my previous full-time job. I’ve done it during school for 4 years now. I’ve noticed among my friends and colleagues that it’s the grad students who have second jobs who seem happier and mentally healthier, and have less trouble meeting their deadlines and keeping grad school anxiety in perspective. Obviously, you should keep monitoring yourself to see if it’s sustainable or the right choice for you. I have moments where I feel overwhelmed. But I have a lot less anxiety about grad school since it’s not my entire professional identity and I’m not taking a huge pay cut to be here. I see people who have never held another job applying for academic jobs and facing the possibility that they will not get anything permanent or well-compensated, even though they are excellent at what they do. They don’t know how to pivot and are doubting all their choices. It’s not their fault; it’s the market. But I see having a second job as a hedge against the kind of personal and financial crisis that comes in those circumstances.”

12:46 Emily: I think it’s really going to depend on your program and your field, whether holding a concurrent second part-time job is feasible, and also of course your personal responsibilities as well. So it seems to be working for Nell. And of course, she has great advice by saying keep monitoring yourself to see if it’s sustainable. So I don’t know if like a full like part-time job, like 20 hours a week or something is going to be right for everyone. But I do agree with her that it does lessen anxiety related to graduate school when it’s not, as she said, her whole professional identity or even identity generally. And so I do think it’s really healthy to have a side hustle or some kinds of side pursuits during your time in graduate school, because it does give you a break from all of your focus on your PhD.

13:33 Emily: It may give you another source of income, which can help with financial stability. So there are lots of positives to it. The drawbacks being of course, the time management aspects, the energy management aspects. So, you have to know yourself in this respect, but I do think it’s well worth considering. So if you have currently a full-time job that it’s possible to keep working for that employer part-time, either on still an employee basis or maybe a contractor basis, I think that’s worth having a conversation, it’s worth a tryout, of course, given that it would be allowed by your graduate program. Now, some graduate programs do bar outside work or outside work of a certain type or above a certain hourly commitment. So you have to be careful about that, but I do like the suggestion. And alternatively, if you’re not in a full-time job that you would, you know, consider taking with you in some capacity into graduate school, the next suggestion is to develop some kind of side hustle during these months between now and when you matriculate that you’ll be able to take with you into graduate school.

Emily’s Best Advice for Prospective PhD Students

14:28 Emily: My best advice for prospective PhD students is to 1) interrogate your offer letter, and 2) compare your actual salary to the local cost of living. What I mean by interrogate is that there’s a set of about a half-dozen financial questions that you need to have answers to regarding your funding package to fully understand what your finances will look like during your PhD program. One example is how much of what is listed as your stipend in your offer letter will you pay in tuition, fees, and/or your health insurance premium. You need to subtract those mandatory fees from your stipend to see what you’ll actually be paid before taxes. If your offer letter doesn’t provide all the answers, you’ll need to ask the questions of the program’s administrative staff.

15:12 Emily: However, the absolute stipend numbers are not the whole picture. Obviously, $30,000 is going to go a lot further in West Lafayette, Indiana than Seattle, Washington. You need a way to normalize the stipend to the local cost of living. The first-pass way that I suggest you do this is to use the numbers in the Living Wage Database from MIT at livingwage.mit.edu. You can divide each stipend by the local living wage to get an idea of how much purchasing power the stipend will actually provide.

15:48 Emily: I suggest making a spreadsheet to keep track of all these factors, and in fact I will provide such a spreadsheet in my upcoming Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School webinar for prospective graduate students. In this webinar, I’ll expand on what I stated above and cover additional timely topics, including one that is almost taboo in academia. The webinar is free and you can find more information and how to sign up at PFforPhDs.com/prospective/.

Commercial

16:19 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. It would be my pleasure to help you save you time and potentially money this tax season, so don’t hesitate to reach out. Now back to our interview.

Cash Savings for Rising PhD Students

17:35 Emily: The advice in this section is for rising PhD students, by which I mean, people who have committed to attending a particular PhD program, but have not yet matriculated. We’ll start with the advice collected from your fellow graduate students and PhDs. Our first topic is the necessity of cash savings. Our first piece of advice is from Elyse K: “Adjust your budget now to your stipend income and save up to make sure you have a substantial emergency fund (more on the 6 months of expenses side than 3 months). Many universities only offer students crappy or expensive healthcare plans. Hopefully, you are healthy over the next four-to-six years, but knowing you can cover a high insurance out-of-pocket maximum without additional debt is comforting.” This is definitely great advice, especially if you’re currently working and living on a salary that’s higher after adjusting for cost of living than the stipend that you will be on in just a few months. So, it’s great advice. Live on that future stipend and save everything you can in between now and then. I also love that she points out the importance of having an emergency fund and yeah, knowing your insurance benefits. So knowing what your deductible is, what your co-insurance responsibilities are. You can find out this information now to start preparing. Next, we have a clip from Courtney.

18:57 Courtney: Hi, my name is Courtney, and last year I graduated with my PhD in microbiology. My biggest piece of financial advice for grad school is to set up an automatic transfer after you get your stipend payment to a separate savings account for paying taxes if you do not get income taxes withheld from your paycheck, which I know many graduate fellowships do not. This way, the money is already allocated when it comes time to pay quarterly estimated taxes, or when you file taxes in the spring. And jumping off of that, I really highly recommend using Emily’s savings bucket strategy throughout grad school to cover irregular expenses, such as large purchases, maybe medical deductible payments, or friends’ weddings. Also, it’s important to save for an emergency fund, maybe a pet fund if you have a pet, and planning for fun thing as well, such as vacations. About halfway through grad school, I started using this savings bucket strategy, which helped me feel a lot less stressed about money and my finances because when large expenses came up, I had a plan in place. I used this strategy to save for a month’s worth of living expenses to cover a month gap in between when I finished my PhD and when I started my new position, and I also was able to save up for a vacation to celebrate my graduation and really treat myself after completing my PhD.”

20:34 Emily: I love that Courtney gave us these specific examples of how targeted savings buckets can be used. For her, it was paying her taxes and also saving up to cover an income lapse and saving up for a vacation. I love that she said it made her less stressed. If you’d like to learn more about this savings bucket strategy, I devoted a whole podcast episode to it. It’s season seven, episode 15: How to Solve the Problem of Irregular Expenses. It goes beyond just having an emergency fund to preparing through saving for other large irregular expenses like taxes, like having to buy flights, like having to replace your computer or buy furniture or any other large purchases you might have to make. Specifically on the topic of taxes, it’s very important for you to know sometime before you matriculate that it’s pretty likely that at some during graduate school, you are going to be funded through a source of what I call awarded income. It might be called a fellowship or a training grant or a scholarship or some other kind of award that pays your stipend.

21:38 Emily: And if that is the case, most universities will not withhold income tax on your behalf the way they do for employees. You may be an employee at other points in your graduate career, like having an assistantship. But if you’re ever not an employee, then that income tax withholding may not be offered to you. And if that is the case, you will be responsible for making your own tax payments manually, whether that’s up to four times per year through the estimated tax system, or in one lump sum when you file your tax return each spring. So as Courtney said, it’s really important to save up for those tax bills. I like to call it, setting up a system of self-withholding. So you’re sort of simulating the withholding that would be done by an employer if you had one by doing, as she said, these auto-transfers. Every time you receive a paycheck, set up an automatic transfer to go into your designated tax savings account for an appropriate amount of money. If you’d like more detail about how to do these calculations around taxes or the system of self-withholding, I have a whole workshop devoted to it, which you can find at PFforPhDs.com/QETax, that’s for quarterly estimated tax. And this is something that I wish every matriculating graduate student was told during orientation that estimated tax is your responsibility, potentially, if you are on one of these non-W-2, non-employee sources of income.

23:03 Emily: And our final piece of advice regarding cash savings is from Julia: “Try to save even a little bit and put the money away for savings and/or retirement investments. Learning about investing can be overwhelming, but you can start with passive investing in a couple of general ETFs (e.g., tracking S&P 500 and international stocks for diversification) and learn more as you go. To avoid overwhelm, allocate fixed time slots to learn about finance, e.g., 1 hour per week. Eventually, you’ll become more comfortable.” I mean, of course, I totally agree with this advice from Julia. It’s kind of everything I do in my business teaching about personal finance, and I especially love talking about investing with graduate students and postdocs. It’s very easy to get started with passive investing. It’s very easy to manage investments passively. So it’s something that can be completely compatible with your journey as a graduate student, as long as your finances are ready for it. I would say it’s more important to build up some of the emergency and buckets we’ve been talking about and pay off high priority debt, like credit cards, before getting involved with investing. But once your finances are ready for it, it does not have to be a big time suck for you. So that’s great advice from Julia.

Homeownership

24:17 Emily: Our next topic is homeownership. This is one of my favorite new topics to be talking about with graduate students and early-career PhDs. Here’s the advice from Nell: “Seriously consider home ownership EARLY in your program. Emily and her brother have covered this on the podcast, but you ideally need 3 years of funding remaining. I bought a place at the beginning of my second year. The second job and the 5 years of continuance made it easier to get a mortgage. Meanwhile, I have a friend in his 5th year, now in the process of buying a place, and he found out about the 3-year continuance rule very late, causing an extremely stressful family situation and problems with his department, who he had to beg for a letter promising him more funding. While there have certainly been stresses with my place (roof, plumbing) which I am privileged to be able to deal with, the fact that I can go away for research and rent it out rather than have to pay two rents or put all my stuff in storage means that I am able to be much more mobile and flexible as I design how I will spend my time researching and writing the dissertation. Again, this is about peace of mind and mental health as much as financial security.”

25:23 Emily: This advice from Nell is so valuable. Now, I have to say, first off, many graduate students are not in a position to buy. The vast majority of graduate students are not in a position to buy a home, because several factors have to come together kind of perfectly. You have to live in a housing market where the home prices are not very, very high. You have to have a stipend that is high enough to manage to, you know, qualify for a mortgage in that market. And you have to have some savings place for the down payment and the closing costs, moving costs, these kinds of things. And you have to have good credit. So these things all have to come together. But for some graduate students, it is possible.

25:58 Emily: And if you think you may be in that situation, you should definitely investigate it early on. I have done several podcast episodes with my brother, Sam Hogan. He is a mortgage originator with Prime Lending (Note: Sam now works at Movement Mortgage) who specializes in graduate students and PhDs. And he knows all the ins and outs of qualifying for a mortgage, even when you have non-employee income fellowship income, which for some lenders is unfamiliar. The podcast interviews that I’ve done with Sam in the past are season five, episode 17, How to Qualify for a Mortgage as a Graduate Student or PhD, Even with Non-W-2 Fellowship Income, and season eight, episode four, Turn Your Largest Liability into Your Largest Asset with House Hacking. Those are really exciting episodes to listen to, but I do want to tell you there have been some updates, especially to the content that Nell just talked about. So, we used to think there was this necessity to have three years of guaranteed funding when you had a non-W2 type position as a graduate student or postdoc, but Sam has actually found a way kind of around that in some cases.

27:00 Emily: So, I would say it’s very helpful to have three years of continuance, but not strictly necessary for everyone. So the best thing to do is to talk to a mortgage lender like Sam, or like someone else who’s familiar with PhDs and graduate students, and get their perspective on your income type and your whole like picture to see whether or not you would be able to qualify for a mortgage. Check out the Personal Finance for PhDs’ YouTube channel for some of those like short updates. I’ve been publishing clips from the live Q&A calls that I’ve been hosting with Sam for first-time home buyers. If you’d like to learn more about that, go to PFforPhds.com/mortgage to find out when the next live Q&A call will be. By the way, if you want to reach out to Sam directly, the best way is probably to text or call his phone number, which is (540) 478-5803. Or you can email him at sam.hogan@movement.com.

27:59 Emily: I really love Nell’s perspective in this advice of having it be an ease on her mind and her finances to own a home versus renting when she has to be away for research purposes. Like I never thought about that before. So I’m really glad to get Nell’s perspective on this. I’m really glad that it’s worked out for her. Elyse K also added this advice: “If you’ve been working full time and it is the right time for you, consider buying a home you can afford on your stipend before your full-time income is gone because it will be easier to get financing.” Again, you can hear a lot of concern about qualifying for a mortgage as a graduate student. It is an area of concern, but Sam can help you with this specifically if you want him to. But Elyce’s advice is really good. If you are going from a full-time job into graduate school, and especially if you’re not moving cities, getting that mortgage and the home purchase done before starting graduate school is a good idea. But as she said, make sure you can afford it on your stipend, not just your current salary.

Working During Your PhD

28:54 Emily: Our next topic is working while you’re pursuing your PhD. So, Gillian has this advice: “Intern. No matter what your field, there are internship opportunities. This will provide insight into non-academic career paths as well as extra money during your studies.” I could not agree with Gillian anymore about this. Internships are becoming much more widely available and acceptable to do during a PhD, which is wonderful. And they often pay more than the, you know, stipend that would be getting during that time anyway. Again, listen to that previous episode that I did with Gillian and also check out season seven, episode seven, where I interviewed a current PhD student who did a very well-paid summer internship with a tech company, and that worked out very nicely for her finances.

29:42 Emily: But really, Gillian’s point about gaining insight into non-academic career paths is the invaluable part of this. Like, yes, the money is nice, but while in graduate school, you are setting yourself up for your future career, and doing internships and other kinds of work opportunities do serve that goal just as much as your PhD studies do. And this advice is from Elyse K: “Consider finding or starting a side hustle within your university’s boundaries (many allow <20-hour per week part-time positions). Part-time income can make or break PhD students; I’ve seen some have to drop out because they need money.” Again, really solid advice. It should not be the case that graduate students need side hustles or need student loan debt to financially get them through graduate school. Yet this is the reality for a lot of people, or if not strictly necessary, sometimes side hustles can just enhance your lifestyle and make things a little bit better for you during graduate school. Whatever the reason, I think side hustling is a great idea, but of course you have to make sure that it’s not interfering with your progress towards your degree. That is primarily what you are in graduate school to do.

Financial Assistance as a Grad Student Parent

30:54 Emily: Next, I have some great comments from an anonymous contributor who is a graduate student parent. “Even if you think you do not qualify, consider applying for income assistance programs such as SNAP, Medicaid, and other DHS programs for needy families. Generally, students enrolled over half-time do not qualify for SNAP, but if you have any of these exemptions, there’s a chance you’ll qualify. Some exemptions include: Are under age 18 or are age 50 or older. Have a physical or mental disability. Work at least 20 hours a week in a paid, on-the-job training program. Work at least 20 hours a week in paid employment. Participate in a state or federally-financed work study program. Participate in an on-the-job training program. Care for a child under the age of 6. Care for a child age 6 to 11 and lack the necessary child care enabling you to attend school and work 20 hours a week or participate in work study. Are a single parent enrolled full-time in college and taking care of a child under 12.”

31:50 Emily: “With children you may also qualify for state funded childcare, children’s health insurance, and possibly even income supplementation. These are often wrapped into the same application at your state’s Department of Health and Human Services website, making it much simpler to apply for all at once. You never know until you apply, and you just might be surprised. Every dollar helps! Every so often you will need to reapply or get re-certified so you’ll be asked to update your information periodically, so always look for these very important mailings once you’re involved in any assistance programs or you could risk losing coverage for not responding in time.”

32:22 Emily: Super appreciative to anonymous for submitting these comments. This is not something I had personal experience with during graduate school, so I really appreciate, you know, the community member stepping up to speak to this situation. In season two, episode one, I published an episode with Lauri Reinhold [Lutes] who was a single parent during graduate school. And what came through in that interview was how intentional Lauri was in choosing her graduate program, choosing one that would be supportive of her needs as a graduate student parent, and then also applying for every single benefit she possibly could on behalf of herself and her daughter once in graduate school. So that’s another great interview to follow up with to learn more about this topic if you are a parent or are planning on becoming a parent.

Final Pieces of Advice

33:05 Emily: And for our last topic, we have a really quick piece of advice from Ben, which is: “Read The Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins!” So this advice is on investing again and how relatively accessible it is. I read The Simple Path to Wealth myself about a year ago, really enjoyed it. J. L. Collins is a really easy person to read and understand all about index fund investing, passive investing. So, highly, highly recommend that book as well. And thank you, Ben, for that advice.

33:34 Emily: My best advice for prospective PhD students echoes some of what you just heard, and it’s to work between now and when you matriculate to save up cash for your move, startup expenses, emergency fund, et cetera. If you’re already working a well-paid full-time job or have existing cash savings, that’s awesome, and you’re on a great track. If you are currently a college student or have a not-so-well-paid job, like I did before grad school, it’s time to think about how you can increase your income over the coming months so you can save. Can you do a paid internship? Can you get a full-time temporary position with a good pay rate? Can you start a side hustle, ideally one that you can take with you to graduate school? I love flexible self-employment side hustles for graduate students, such as consulting, freelancing or teaching, but it can take time to build up a client base, so start laying that groundwork now, or at least over the summer.

34:31 Emily: We’ll expand on this topic in my next Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School webinar for rising graduate students. We’ll also go deep on the financial decisions you’ll have to make this spring and summer that can literally make or break your finances during grad school. And I’ll give you some guidance on those. The webinar is free and you can find more information and how to sign up at PFforPhDs.com/rising. Thank you for listening through this episode, and a special thanks to those who contributed their best financial advice. Before you go, don’t forget to share this episode with a prospective PhD student, and if you want to join me for the upcoming webinars in my Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School series, you can find more information at PFforPhDs.com/prospective/ and PFforPhDs.com/rising.

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35:28 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? 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.

Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2021 Edition

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Emily published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the one hundred and fiftieth episode, and over the last three and a half years, the podcast has featured 134 unique voices in addition to Emily’s. The last episode in 2021 catches up with the guests from Seasons 4 through 6. The guests were invited to submit short audio updates on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of their interview. They also included their best financial advice for an early-career PhD if their answer has changed since the initial interview.

Link Mentioned in this Episode

Episode image of Dr. Emily Roberts with the title "Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2021 Edition" and the subtitle "Money Stories with Various Contributors"

Teaser

00:00 John: You know, life doesn’t wait and you can still be financially sound while in graduate school.

Introduction

00:10 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts.

00:19 Emily: This is Season 10, Episode 20, and today I am featuring many guest voices! I published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the one hundred and fiftieth episode, and over the last three and a half years, the podcast has featured 134 unique voices in addition to my own.

00:41 Emily: For our last episode in 2021, I thought it would be fun to catch up with the guests from Seasons 4 through 6, and a couple from earlier seasons as well. I invited them to submit short audio clips to update us on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of our interview, as well as to provide their best financial advice if that has changed since our initial interview.

01:03 Emily: The audio clips in this episode are ordered by when the original episode was published. If you’d like to circle back and listen to any of the previous interviews, you can do so in your podcatcher app or at my website, PFforPhDs.com/podcast. To keep up with future episodes, please hit subscribe on that podcatcher and/or join my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe.

01:28 Emily: You’ll hear an update from me first, followed by the rest of the guests. Happy listening, and I am wishing all good things for you in 2022!

Dr. Emily Roberts

01:43 Emily: Hi! This is Emily Roberts from Personal Finance for PhDs. I am of course the host of this podcast and you hear from me every week!

01:52 Emily: It seems strange to say, but 2021 was a banner year for me and my family.

01:59 Emily: On the personal side, my husband and I bought our first home, which I discussed in great detail in Season 8 Episode 18. We now live in the San Diego area, which has been our dream for over a decade. Our children are in kindergarten and preschool, and after being out of school for over a year due to the pandemic, it’s really wonderful for our family to be in a routine and for them to be around their peers. We are loving playing tourist in San Diego and enjoying the incredible weather and wealth of outdoor activities.

02:32 Emily: As for my business, Personal Finance for PhDs, I am so grateful that it has grown quite a lot in the last year. I’ve simplified my paid offerings so that I can focus on what seems to be in highest demand: 1) my personal finance seminars, both live and pre-recorded, which are hosted by universities; 2) my tax workshops, which can be purchased by individuals or in bulk by universities; and 3) the Personal Finance for PhDs Community, which individuals can join. To each of you who have joined the Community or one of my workshops in 2021 or recommended me within your university, you have my sincere thanks. The reason I can continue to create this podcast and all of my free resources is the revenue that I generate in these other areas.

03:20 Emily: I’m really looking forward to starting 2022 off strong with tax season and admissions season. If you know any PhDs-to-be who need help in either of those areas, please send them my way!

03:32 Emily: Thanks for listening to my update! If you want to get in touch, you can visit my website at PFforPhDs.com or find me on Twitter @PFforPhDs.

John Vsetecka

03:49 John: Hi everyone. It’s John Vsetecka from Season 2, Episode 2 on the personal finance for PhDs podcast. Several years ago, I got to talk with Dr. Emily Roberts about negotiating PhD offers and I wanted to just offer a quick update on how I think that has benefited me up until this day. So since that time, many things have happened. I got married during this time. I’ve moved and now I’m actually living outside of the US. I am currently in Kiev, Ukraine working on the last stages of my research for my dissertation, so I am now at the tail end of my graduate career.

04:29 John: When I last spoke to Dr. Roberts, we discussed how to go about negotiating PhD offers and I want to offer an update now about why I still think you should this. When I was applying to programs prior to 2017, I was able to successfully negotiate offers at several universities. This has really, I think benefited me to this day because I was able to choose the school, not only with a great funding package, but also great benefits that I’ll talk about in just to second. I know things have changed since the pandemic and many programs last year halted admissions, and this has made many programs and departments more competitive, and so you might be a little hesitant to negotiate an offer if you receive one, but I still think you should. If you receive a funded offer and you should absolutely make sure that any offer you receive is funded, this is really important, I think you should still ask if there’s anything else that that department or program can do for you.

05:29 John: Now, this can mean more money. This can mean insurance benefits. This can mean grant money, travel money, or any other resources that they have. See if there’s anything else that they can tack onto your package to help you be more successful in your program. And if you’re fortunate enough to have multiple offers, you should still negotiate these and see which one is the best one for you. And this might not be the one with the most money, but I think the ones that tend to offer the most money and the most incentives tend to be the best bet for your graduate career because life doesn’t wait and you can still be financially sound while in graduate school, if you can start by looking at what your department can offer you so you can plan ahead and make the best of your earning while you’re in graduate school.

06:18 John: So my advice remains the same. Again, if you receive multiple offers, don’t be afraid to ask. In some ways this is just like a job offer. It’s okay to negotiate. It’s okay to ask what else they can do for you. You’re going to do a lot for them. Don’t be afraid to reach out to the director of graduate studies or whoever’s in charge in your department and see what else they can do for you, if your package sort of insinuates that maybe there’s more that is available. I’ll leave you with that and of course, if you have any other questions about graduate school or negotiating offers, you can always get in touch with me on Twitter. My handle is @JohnVsetecka, or you can feel free to email me, it’s vsetecka@msu.edu. Best of luck to those of you who are applying and I hope you have successful negotiations.

Dr. Lourdes Bobbio Smith

07:22 Lourdes: Hi listeners. My name is Dr. Lourdes Bobbio Smith and I’ve been on a few episodes of the podcast. I was first on Season 3, Episode 11, where I gave a budget breakdown as an NDSEG fellowship recipient at Penn State University. I was also on Season 5, Bonus Episode 1, where I discussed my life as we entered social distancing in early 2020, and on Season 6, Episode 18, where I discussed some best practices as a side-hustling graduate school. Since those episodes, I have defended my PhD, started a business and gotten married.

07:55 Lourdes: In my first episode I spoke about how I use targeted savings accounts to save for various mid- and long-term financial savings goals, which hasn’t changed. My husband and I were able to fund our wedding with a combination of the wedding targeted savings fund I discussed in the episode, as well as savings my now husband had, and some generous gifts from our parents.

08:15 Lourdes: Since getting married and joining finances with my husband, we still use the target savings accounts, but we’ve modified what those different savings buckets are. Buying a house, which was previously a long term goal, has now become a more short to mid-term goal as we are looking to settle down in a house of our own. We also recently adopted a cat and my husband’s car is on the older side, so we are making sure to keep a pet fund and a car fund well funded as part of our monthly targeted savings. Investing is also a big priority in our household, and we’ve been able to max out our Roth IRA for 2021 and invest outside of the Roth in taxable brokerage accounts.

08:52 Lourdes: Post-PhD I’m working on a few different things. I have a job as a research associate at Penn State, I continue to work with Emily on this podcast, and I’ve also started a wedding stationery business this year. It’s been a fun adventure to learn both the management and financial sides of owning a business. I initially invested some of my own money, but it’s been self-sustaining for the last few months and I will even be turning a profit in my first year in business. 

09:17 Lourdes: I was asked to give my best financial advice for early-career PhDs and I would say, invest as early as you can, even if it doesn’t seem like you can contribute a lot. When I was first on the podcast, I was early in my own investing journey, only able to contribute a little each month, and it seemed like the progress was slow growing. But even in the two years since then, I’ve been able to see how powerful compound interest can be when it comes to growing your money.

09:44 Lourdes: If you’d like to connect online, you can find me on Twitter @lourdesb1012, that’s l o u r d e s b 1 0 1 2. You can also find my business on Instagram @cardsmithdesignstudio. Thanks for listening and have a good new year!

Jane CoomberSewell

10:08 Jane: Hi Emily! It’s Jane CoomberSewell of CoomberSewell Enterprises here, and we last chatted back in Season 2 (editors note: this should be Season 4), Episode 8, and we talked a lot about working on a budget, and self-sufficiency when you have a family and you’re doing a PhD and you’re also running a business. We talked a lot about menus, budgeting, gardening, both for practical reasons and for your mental health. And in terms of early career financial advice, none of that’s really changed except remember to have some fun. So occasionally after you’ve obviously dealt with all the bills, go and have a drink with friends, or have a meal out, or go and do what we did at the weekend, which was go and have a game of bowling, but only with adults, no children in tow. It was lovely.

11:03 Jane: Thanks so much for the timing of this as well. I finally got to my graduation yesterday. Within the business, Joyce, my other half has very much rebranded herself as an autism advocate and that’s going really well. And for me, I’m concentrating on research, but not in the academic sense. So at the moment I have two family biographies that I’m writing that people are paying me, have commissioned me to write, as well as attempting to turn my thesis into something slightly less theoretical for the commercial market. That’s my update. Everybody take good care and if you want to get in touch, it’s Jane@CoomberSewell.co.uk.

Abigail Dove

11:53 Abigail: My name Is Abigail Dove, and I was on Season 4, Episode 9, where Emily and I discussed the graduate Student Savings Act of 2019. I spearheaded the endorsement of this bill by the Federation of American Societies for the Advancement of Science, also known as FASAS, as part of a science policy fellowship. The graduate student savings act is a bi-partisan bill that allows graduate students and postdocs to be able to contribute income from a fellowship stipend to an individual retirement account or IRA. Previous IRS wording prevented contributions from fellowships as they were considered unearned income.

12:27 Abigail: Since we recorded that episode, I have a few big updates on the personal side. I have a daughter who is 18 months old, and I will be defending my PhD in a couple weeks and looking forward to the post-graduate student life.

12:40 Abigail: The big update in relation to the episode where I appeared on is that trainees can now contribute to IRAs while receiving fellowship stipends. The language from the Graduate Student Savings Act was added to an omnibus spending bill HR 1865, and was passed into law at the end of 2019. Emily did touch on this update after our interview to share the good news with everyone in a bonus episode in season four, for more information, be sure to check out that episode. But this is really fantastic news for anyone on fellowship stipends and wants a say for retirement.

13:11 Abigail: My updated financial advice has thus changed a result of the new laws. Since everyone is now allowed to contribute to an IRA, I highly recommend that if you have the financial ability to do so, do it. There’s a maximum contribution cap for IRA accounts and right now that cap is set at $6,000 for anyone under the age of 50. Additionally, there are income caps, but graduate student stipends are unfortunately well below those income caps so not something that we often have to worry about. That $6,000 cap may sound intimidating, so contribute what you can or put aside a fraction of your paycheck towards an IRA contribution. It’s never too early to start contributing to a retirement account, and it’s a good spending habit to start. And no amount is too little.

Commercial

13:57 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Are you a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career PhD considering buying your first home in the foreseeable future? If so, I invite you to join the Personal Finance for PhDs Community for a Book Club discussion of First-Time Home Buyer: The Complete Playbook to Avoiding Rookie Mistakes by Scott Trench and Mindy Jensen of BiggerPockets. I and all the Book Club participants will read the book and come together for a one-time live discussion in January 2022. This is perfect timing for anyone with an eye on the spring or summer 2022 peak buying season. Since it might be hard to find this book in a public library, I will give you a copy of the book after you join the Community. If you want to join the Book Club for First-Time Home Buyer, please fill out the survey, including your availability for the discussion, at PFforPhDs.com/BookClub/. That’s P F f o r P h D s dot com slash B o o k C l u b. Now back to our interview.

Patrice French

15:03 Patrice: Hi my name is Patrice French, I was interviewed on Personal Finance for PhDs on November 25th, 2019 Season 4, Episode 15. I am still a full-time employee and am near the end of my doctoral program. I will defend and graduate in spring 2022. Since then I have made some major financial changes. I’ve sold my house, given the strong seller’s market. I have paid off all of my debt except for my student loans and will be eligible for a student loan forgiveness in March of 2022. I plan to transition to a career outside of higher education, in industry, and will likely relocate. As far as the best financial advice I can give for early career PhD is really create some clear goals in mind and create a plan from which to meet those goals. But don’t put a lot of pressure on yourself if things come up. Save, save, save! I have multiple savings accounts for things so that it doesn’t really dip into my income. So if I have car repairs, I have a car repair savings account and things of that nature. And definitely don’t pay for an educational program if you don’t have to. I can be reach on Twitter at @FrenchieMSW. And that’s it.

Dr. Zach Taylor

16:44 Zach: Hey everyone. This is Zach Taylor. I was on Season 5, Episodes 10 and 11. I’d like to give a little bit of an update. I’ve taken a new position. I’m now the assistant director of admissions for communication at Texas State University. It’s the first institutional position that I’ve had after having my PhD because I graduated into the pandemic and that was a very tough job field. But I wanted to give a few updates about how I think a little bit of my advice has changed since COVID 19 has happened and has really changed the landscape, especially of graduate education in the social sciences.

17:27 Zach: I know a lot of the harder sciences like your chemistry or engineering requires graduate students to be in a lab, working with physical materials, but a lot of social sciences PhDs, things like higher education where I came from, sociology, psychology at times, does not require you to be physically in a classroom. And I think people aspiring to earn a PhD, people in graduate school right now need to think how important is the on campus, in the classroom environment? How important is that physicality? And can you save money by taking online classes or taking hybrid classes. Think to yourselves about how much time and money is spent on commuting, especially in urban areas, coming from an Austin perspective. If I was still going to school living where I live now, I would have at least an hour long commute, including a car ride, a bus ride, and a walk. And that hour could be used to make money, could be used to do academic work.

18:29 Zach: So I think that might really change my perspective on the advice that I would give for an early career PhD is really considering online options, in addition to everything else I spoke about — the cost of living in your area, what you’re willing to go without and how you can side hustle to make a little bit extra cash. If anyone has anything that they want to reach out to me, please do so. My email is ZT@UTexas.edu, just my initial ZT at U Texas dot edu. Thanks everyone.

Dr. Rachel Blackburn

19:08 Rachel: Hi, this is Rachel Blackburn and here is my update. So since I last recorded the episode of personal finance for PhDs (Season 5, Episode 12), I actually got thinking about finance quite a bit. I was in a tenure track position, teaching as a professor, but I decided that the thought of not getting tenure, and that forthcoming potential instability was a little bit much for me. And I also considered what if I do get tenure and then I’m committing to this place for the long term and is that what I really want? And the thought hit me, when’s the last time I got to choose where I lived? I also took a look at the finances because I was teaching at a public university, I was able to take a look at salaries and I could see that even by the time I might get full professor, if that was what was in the cards for me, that my salary would not go up by a whole lot. It occurred to me that I really wouldn’t reach my financial goals. So I decided to leave academia.

20:18 Rachel: I’m still researching and publishing and writing, but I have left teaching and I’m now a learning consultant for a public company. In leaving my position as a professor and moving on to this company, I gave myself a 70% raise. I’m now making more than I would be if I were a full professor at my previous university. Now I’m learning all kinds of things about employee stock purchase plans and things like that. So that’s actually where I’m at now. I’m saving more money than I ever thought I would. And I feel like I’m meeting my goals a lot faster, so it’s great. And I’m still teaching, I just do it now on behalf of developing training material for a company. That’s where I’m at and thank you again. Good luck everyone! Bye!

Courtney Danyel

21:19 Courtney: Hi! This is Courtney Danyel. I was on (Season 6) Episode 17 of Personal Finance for PhDs, and my topic was how freelancing can take your career from academia to affluence. And that’s my brand AcademiaToAffluence.com, where I teach other people with an academic background how they can learn to freelance and grow their online income like I did. We talked about how I actually only work maybe 15 or 20 hours a week, but I earn full-time income as a freelance writer. And the reason I’m able to do that is because I find writing gigs that are highly specialized in my niche and so I’m able to earn higher income for work that takes me less time to do.

22:04 Courtney: We also talked about how freelancing gave me the freedom to travel around the world and live wherever I want and so I’ve been spending the past seven years actually living in Africa, in Ethiopia. Since that episode, which was back in August, 2020, I’ve actually immigrated back to the United States, where I continue to freelance and I continue to work maybe 15 or 20 hours a week on that, but now actually have another part-time job here in the United States also. Another great thing about freelancing is that it gives you the flexibility if you wanna have multiple careers you can have them, and you can earn full-time wage as a part-time influencer and pursue a career in academia or elsewhere, which is really nice. That’s something that’s changed in life since I was first on the podcast.

22:53 Courtney: My best financial advice for any early career PhD is to diversify your income. Give yourself options. Be a freelancer, be an academic, have your own business, do something on the side, but never put all your eggs in one basket and always have options for yourself so that when life changes or you want to make a change, like I have recently, you can do that. If anyone has questions about applying your skills from academia to a freelance career like I have done, please do shoot me an email. You can contact me at courtney@academiatoaffluence.com. Thank you!

Meryem Ok

23:36 Meryem: Hi everyone, this is Meryem Ok recording on Friday, November 26, 2021. While I typically work behind the scenes as an editor for the podcast, I was featured in Season 6, Episode 18, along with fellow Virtual Assistant Lourdes Bobbio, for an episode about Best Practices in Side Hustling During Graduate School. As I mentioned in that episode, one of the reasons that I’m grateful for my side hustle is that the extra income provides me with a cushion for those occasional purchases that might happen outside of my usual spending habits. This really comes in handy especially around this time of year when there are a lot of birthdays in my family, in addition to the holiday season, so my spending on gifts and eating out tends to spike up a bit.

24:24 Meryem: This past semester, one of the financial adjustments that I made was when my university moved from paying fellowship recipients on a monthly basis to a once-per-term model. At first, I was pretty uneasy about the change, but after talking to Emily and sitting in on some town halls, I felt more prepared and ready to strategize. When that first lump sum arrived in August, I immediately contributed part of it to my Roth IRA and moved most of the remainder into a high-yield savings account. If you want to learn more strategies, check out Emily’s blog post, “How to Financially Manage a Once-Per-Term Fellowship Paycheck.”

25:06 Meryem: As a personal and professional update, I recently changed my Twitter username, so it’s now @Meryem_T_Ok, if anyone is curious to learn more about my MD-PhD journey and intestinal stem cell research. Shoutout to all my fellow grad students on the research grind – I’m rooting for you and hope you have some time to recharge in the coming weeks. 

Outtro

25:37 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 episodes’ show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved!

Emily: If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 4 ways you can help it grow: (1) Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. (2) Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with 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 effective budgeting. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. (4) Subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe/. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps!

Emily: 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.