financial security

Are PhDs in a Financial Emergency?

April 7, 2025 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily shares her thoughts on whether PhDs are in a financial emergency. It’s possible that you are facing a financial emergency because you’ve been laid off or your grants have been terminated or interrupted or there’s some risk of that happening in the future. In this episode, Emily explores 1) what she learned from attending the National Postdoctoral Association’s Annual Conference in March, 2) what steps she recommends that you take in your personal finances and your career if you are in a financial emergency, and 3) what she’s giving away this spring to help you in this turbulent time.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Introduction

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

This is Season 20, Episode 7, and today you’re getting my thoughts on whether PhDs are in a financial emergency. It’s possible that you are facing a financial emergency because you’ve been laid off or your grants have been terminated or interrupted or there’s some risk of that happening in the future. In this episode, I’m going to share with you 1) what I learned from attending the National Postdoctoral Association’s Annual Conference in March, 2) what steps I recommend that you take in your personal finances and your career if you are in a financial emergency, and 3) what I’m giving away this spring to help you as best I can.

The tax year 2024 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. I do license these workshops to universities, but in the case that yours declines your request for sponsorship, you can purchase the appropriate version as an individual. Go to PFforPhDs.com/taxreturnworkshop/ to read more details and purchase the workshop. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s20e7/. Without further ado, here’s my episode on whether PhDs are in a financial emergency.

I attended the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference in March, and it was quite valuable for me to get to speak with postdocs and postdoc office personnel about what’s happening on their university campuses and with their jobs. Everything has been so chaotic this spring in terms of the actions of the new administration and the responses from the judicial and legislative branches, it’s really hard to keep up with. Thankfully, some of the presenters pivoted their planned sessions to address what’s been happening and academia’s response, and the conference helped me to clarify a few of my thoughts, which I’ll share with you in this episode. Part 1 is what I took away from the NPA conference. Part 2 is what you can do in your personal finances to best weather the present storm, and I’m going to include specific advice for different stages of PhD training and employment. Part 3 is what I’m giving to you over the next couple of months and why and how you can access everything.

Part 1: My Take-Aways from the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference

This was my first time attending NPA, and I attended as a sponsor, and I thought it was a wonderful conference. I attend conferences both for networking with potential clients and my own professional development, and in this case the timing was really good for me to get a sense of how universities are responding to the funding cuts and so forth. Because this conference was focused on postdocs, I didn’t hear much specifically about graduate education, but I’m sure I will learn more when I attend other similar conferences later this year. At this conference, I especially appreciated the talks from Tom Kibis from the NPA and Nicholas Dirks from the New York Academy of Sciences, the session co-led by Meagan Heirwegh from Caltech, Sofie Kleppner from Stanford, Julia Parrish from the University of Washington, and Zoe Fonseca-Kelly from Harvard, and my conversation with Alberto Roca of Diverse Scholar, as they most directly addressed the current situation.

My overall take-away from the conference is that everyone is bracing for a tough time economically. The tough time has already started but will get worse in the next fiscal year, which typically starts in July, if we continue on the track we’re on. Some universities have instituted hiring freezes, which may or may not extend to postdocs and graduate students. I’m sure we’ve all seen reports of graduate programs rescinding offers and just generally admitting fewer graduate students than has been typical in recent years. Positions that are funded by soft money, which means external grants and contracts, are most at risk of being eliminated.

Tom Kimbis, the CEO of the NPA, referred to the results of a survey of NPA members conducted in February; the survey results and an op-ed by Tom are linked in the show notes. The headline numbers from that survey are that 43% of postdocs say their job or position is threatened and 35% say that their research is delayed or otherwise in jeopardy.

The overall climate of the conference was of great concern for the postdoc workforce, particularly international postdocs. If we don’t see major pushback from Congress or via the judiciary, there will be a lot fewer postdoc positions available next year. Again, we’ve already seen the reduction in PhD program offers, and this is honestly the responsible step for PIs to take as they face uncertainty regarding their grants. So the postdoc itself as a training step is in jeopardy. And, broadening beyond this specific conference, the research enterprise as a whole in the US is under threat.

A lot of current postdocs will need to find new positions in the near future. Again, the highest level of concern is for international postdocs if temporary visas are harder to come by and fewer jobs are available overall. Will those positions be in academia or the federal government? We all know how few people were being hired as tenure-track faculty members before this attack on research, and that market is only going to get tighter, and I think hiring for non-tenure track academic and governmental jobs is also going to be quite limited. Understandably, institutions feel most responsible for their current employees and probably won’t want to extend themselves too much in hiring.

I don’t mean to give the impression that the conference attendees were throwing up their hands in defeat. There was plenty of talk about what people generally and postdocs offices specifically can do to meet the moment, and I heard some creative ideas about how to keep people on payroll to at least give them more time to find another job.

However, from what I heard, most of the discussion was around helping PhDs prepare for and land jobs in “industry.” What I didn’t hear enough discussion about was the likely upcoming recession and how that is already affecting hiring in the private sector. While the pain might be less acute in the private sector in comparison with government and academia, again, if we continue on this route, there will be an overall contraction in the labor market. PhDs typically have a very low unemployment rate, but I am definitely skeptical of industry’s ability to provide jobs to a glut of PhDs exiting the federal government and academia in the coming months. Some private companies are already conducting layoffs, even when not directly or substantially funded by the federal government. Of course, this will be worse in some sectors and not so bad in others, and I expect the most pain will be felt by PhDs in areas of research that are more dependent on funding from the federal government.

So the conclusion is: A lot of PhDs are going to lose their jobs, whether that’s called a layoff or a firing or a contract not being renewed. I suspect the unemployment rate or at least underemployment rate among PhDs is going to go higher than we’ve seen in recent recessions because academia is being targeted, and that PhDs are going to land in jobs that are different from their previous career aspirations. Many PhDs on temporary visas will have to exit the country, even if they would like to stay, because they can’t find an appropriate position fast enough when their current one ends. I’m not much one for prognostication and it really pains me to report such a grim outlook, but that is how I see it.

Part 2: Financial Steps You Should Take Right Now

I want everyone who works in academia or research to consider that they may now or soon be in a financial emergency and to take appropriate steps. Since the main threat at the moment is loss of income, rather than being underpaid or experiencing rapidly rising expenses, the steps are to serve both your finances and your career.

First, I’ll share some steps I think everyone should take, and then I’ll share some stage-specific suggestions. To begin with, please assess your finances holistically. What are your assets: bank account balances, investments, property, etc.? What are your liabilities: credit card debt, buy now pay later debt, student loans, a car loan, a mortgage, medical debt, IRS debt, etc.? What is your current income? What are your current expenses? Specifically, I want you to focus on one type of asset and one type of debt. What I’m sharing next is an abbreviated form of the financial framework that I teach in my live workshops.

The asset is your emergency fund. The best practice is to have a separate, named high-yield savings account for your emergency fund so that you can be super clear about the money available to you in the case of an emergency vs. the money available to spend on a monthly basis on regular expenses or annual basis on irregular expenses. Based on your current expenses, for how many months could your emergency fund support you if you were to lose your primary income? If your answer is that you don’t have an emergency fund or it’s smaller than three months of expenses, please make it your top financial priority to build the fund to that level. This is a slightly larger recommendation than I have made in the past specifically because of the unique threat we are under. You should consider yourself to be in a financial emergency until you reach this goal—more on this in a bit.

The debt is credit card debt. The best practice is to carry no balances on your credit cards, and in fact to use your credit cards as if they are debit cards, only making a purchase if you could pay for it right then with the money already in your bank account. If you could not immediately pay off all your credit cards and switch to using only debit cards, you are in credit card debt—even if you never pay interest. Following the creation of your 3-month emergency fund, your next financial goal should be to clear this credit card debt. However, I recommend that you keep the credit cards open as long as they don’t have an annual fee; you may need these lines of credit in the future if you do lose your income or incur a large, unexpected expense such as a move. Holding debt of this kind also puts you in a financial emergency.

If you’re a little further along in your financial journey, I want you to increase your emergency fund size to six months of expenses. That would be if you have no credit card or other high-interest debt, have other savings for near-term expenses, and have started investing. If all those elements are in place, you’re not in a financial emergency, but you should put some extra financial effort into building your emergency fund to six months of expenses. Once you’ve achieved that goal, you’re in a very strong financial position and don’t have to be quite so intense about keeping a high savings rate.

The next step is to assess your job security and career security. If you haven’t yet, this is the time to talk with your advisor or boss about the source or sources of your paycheck and the group, office, or company’s overall funding. You may learn that the source of your income is entirely or largely independent of federal funding, such as from a private foundation or tuition. You may learn that the source of your income is federal, but there are currently no concerns about its continuity. Or you may learn that the source of your funding is federal and is tenuous. We’ve already seen many grants cancelled or temporarily paused, and so you would probably know if you were in that group because you’ve either already lost your job or you’ve been switched to some kind of emergency or temporary funding. Or perhaps your advisor is currently funded but not optimistic about securing more grants due to the shifted funding priorities of the new administration. In those latter cases, assuming your emergency fund meets the levels I just outlined, throw your efforts into preparing for a job or career transition.

Now let’s get to some practical steps. We’ll do the financial first and then the career. If you’ve self-diagnosed that you’re in a financial emergency or have a financial goal that you should strenuously work toward, how should you do so? Let’s look first at expenses. Normally, when I teach about reducing expenses, I do so with a focus on long-term sustainability, so I talk a lot about right-sizing housing and transportation and other large, fixed expenses. Right now, I’m not so concerned about sustainability, because you have a short-term, highly urgent goal of increasing your emergency fund or paying off high-priority debt. That means slashing your discretionary expenses, essentially engaging in a limited-term fast from anything you can possibly spare.

The question you should ask yourself is: If I had no income right now, would I spend money on this? If the answer is no, don’t spend on it and put all the money you can free up toward your financial goal. I suggest that you stop spending entirely or as close as you can get on discretionary expenses such as restaurants, takeout, and delivery; entertainment; going out; travel; and shopping aside from the bare minimum. The exceptions are for expenses for your job search or career pivot, such as expenses related to interviewing or professional development. Delay every expense that you can delay, even what you might consider necessary expenses. Take a hard look at your subscriptions and cancel everything that you would cancel if you didn’t have an income. You can always restart them when you’ve reached your goal.

For me personally, it would be really hard, but if I didn’t have a fully funded emergency fund right now, I would cancel my gym membership, take my kids out of their pay-by-the-month extracurricular activities, cancel all our streaming services including Amazon Prime, skip my next haircut, and put off some much-desired-but-not-strictly-urgent home repairs.

You can also try to increase your income to reach your urgent financial goals. Normally, when teaching on increasing income, I say to focus on income-generating activities that also advance your career goals. That’s still great work if you can get it, but with our top-of-mind objective of adding to your emergency fund or paying off debt, you can pursue other types of work as well. Whatever gives you the best pay rate-to-time or pay rate-to-energy ratio is worthwhile. In fact, diversifying your income sources so that you are less directly or indirectly dependent on the federal government is a great idea in the short term.

Finally, I suggest planning where you would turn should you lose your income and deplete your emergency fund. If you would turn to debt, think through what is the least toxic type of debt available to you. Credit cards are an easy option, which is why I want you to pay them down but not close them, but as they come at such a high interest rate, they might not be your best option. If you have good credit, you might be able to get another type of loan like a personal loan or a home equity line of credit, but it’s going to be more difficult if you wait until after you’ve lost your income. If things got really dire, would it be possible for you to move in with a family member or friend until you get back on your feet?

Turning our focus back to your job or career, I suggest devoting serious time to professional development, and that goes whether you perceive your job to be at risk or not. Of course, the more unstable your job or career is, the more important it is to engage with this. If you don’t know already, you need to figure out, as I heard one person at NPA put it, your career plans B, C, and D and start setting yourself up to pursue them. If you are affiliated with a university, this means patronizing professional development events and the career center. Check if there are recordings of past events that you can catch up on as a full suite of topics is probably covered over the course of 12 to 24 months.

Networking is vital right now, and again that goes whether you anticipate a near-term job search or not. Yes, use LinkedIn and attend local meet-ups, but also make an effort to connect individually with people you know from past degrees or past jobs. It’s always great to catch up with an old friend or colleague, and it doesn’t have to be like “Can you offer me a job?” Just ask what they’re up to and if their industry has been impacted by the new policies. Then if you do need to come around again with a serious request, it won’t be so out of the blue.

By the way, when you’re networking, keep two things in mind: 1) What can you offer the person you’re speaking with? It could be continued friendship or information or access to your own network. 2) By keeping up with your network, you might very well be able to help a friend or colleague. So do this not just for yourself, but to help the people you know find great-fit jobs and careers. We should all increase our networking activities right now, not just if we have an urgent need.

So far I’ve only mentioned networking with peers and colleagues, but don’t forget that people outside of your profession can be part of your network and prove very helpful, especially if you are considering changing industries. To that end, speak openly about your career aspirations and industry concerns with people you know socially. In fact, it will be a great boon to your mental health if you lean into in person social groups and gatherings in this difficult time. Remember that you are much more than just a researcher; you are a well-rounded human being with unique hobbies, interests, beliefs, etc.

Commercial

Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

Financial Advice for Each Stage of Your Academic Career

We’ve spoken in general terms to this point about assessing your finances and your career stability and some steps you can take to prepare for a loss of income. Nothing I’ve said so far is extreme, and you will improve your finances and career by following the advice, even if you never lose your income. Now let’s delve into some stage-specific advice for those who have lost their income or whose income is at higher risk. We’ll start with people earlier in the PhD career track and move to later.

A) Prospective graduate students: If you’re still interested in graduate school after all this, more power to you. Go ahead and apply next fall or whenever is appropriate for you. But please apply for jobs as well in case admission or funding doesn’t work out. Seriously consider whether a master’s or PhD is more appropriate for your career goals and whether it might be worth paying for a master’s, even if your original plan was to pursue a funded PhD. I can’t yet tell how the landscape will shift between those two types of graduate programs. It might be worth taking a couple of years to work before you head back to graduate school; you will have more clarity about your career goals and what academia can offer you and will also be in a stronger financial position to start graduate school if you use your income intentionally. When you apply to graduate school, please apply widely for fellowships. Consider programs abroad as well as in the US. Also, listen to my advice for rising and current graduate students.

B) Rising graduate students: Some of you have gotten a really raw deal, and I’m sorry. The fact that this attack went down literally during admissions season was the worst possible timing for you. If you’re still headed to graduate school, take a really critical eye to the stability of your funding, and do your best to build financial and career security if you do perceive your funding to be tenuous. More on that next in the section for current graduate students. Also, as you start graduate school, do your best to keep your large, fixed expenses like housing and transportation as low as is comfortable for you so that you can maintain a savings rate. Your emergency fund, etc. could become a lifeline if things go south.

C) Current graduate students: If your funding does not seem to be secure, layer in financial and career stability in other ways. 1) Apply widely for funding opportunities, focusing outside the federal government. 2) Establish at least one side stream of income, if that’s legally and morally permissible for you. Ideally, this would be from a career-advancing activity. 3) Treat every year of graduate school like it might be your last, because it very well might be if your funding evaporates. What I mean by this is that you should have at least one big accomplishment to point to within the last 12 months that will translate well to your resume. That could be completing practical classes, mastering skills, finishing your master’s degree, publishing or patenting, etc. You should also be ready on very short notice to conduct a job search, so stay up-to-date on your professional development, career exploration, and networking. This especially goes for international graduate students, who have a very small window of time available to find another position before they would have to leave the country. 4) Submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. I certainly hope it doesn’t come to this, but if a small student loan will bridge you to the end of your degree which itself would vastly improve your job prospects, it may be worthwhile. 5) Do your research now on the social supports that would be available to you if you did lose your funding or have to leave grad school abruptly. For example, does your department, school, or university offer any kind of bridge employment or funding? Do graduate students qualify for unemployment in your state, and if so under what circumstances? Does your university offer emergency loans or grants to graduate students? Are there programs through your city that would help you pay for rent or groceries if you lost your income?

D) Current postdocs: Much of the same advice for graduate students applies for you as well, although thankfully you have the security of your finished PhD. Take those steps to shore up your financial and career resources, especially if you are an international postdoc. You should also check into whether you would qualify for unemployment in your state should your position end; don’t assume you will, especially if you are a non-employee.

E) PhDs in government, academia, and nonprofits: You know your situation best, but stay frosty. Like everyone else, you should understand how your position is funded to ascertain its potential instability and be ready to transition out at any time. If you haven’t already, I suggest starting the process of separating your personal identity from that of your job. These can become especially intertwined for tenured or tenure-track faculty. If you do have to separate, it will probably be super painful. I suggest listening to the new podcast Academics and Their Money by former podcast guest, Dr. Inga Timmerman.

F) PhDs in the private sector: Your job is probably the most secure of any that we’ve discussed so far, which is not at all the case in normal times. You will be everyone’s best friend right now if you devote some of your time to networking, doubly so if your company is hiring. It may benefit you in the future, but it will almost certainly benefit your friends and peers.

I have a couple of concluding thoughts, and for these I need to thank the most recent episode of the new podcast Optimist Economy, titled Is This a Recession or Not?, and the financial independence movement.

First thought: During a recession, if you manage to keep your job and assuming you didn’t expect to retire super soon, you are going to be financially fine. You might have some anxiety, and perhaps I’ve fed into that today, but you will come through it in good shape. The pain of recessions is felt mostly by people who lose their jobs, and typically, it’s not so much the losing of the job that’s the worst, it’s the time it takes to get another job, which is lengthened during recessions. That’s why I’ve focused so much time today speaking about how you can prepare yourself for the loss of your income. It’s a low-probability but high-risk event.

However, we have the added wrinkle in the PhD community of being super specialized in our research or skills and perhaps even the sector in which we expect to perform that research or use those skills. For PhDs in academia and government and nonprofit research settings especially, losing your job is so much more than a temporary disruption in income. It’s a rupture of your identity because of how much of yourself you had to put into breaking into that career path. In another time, you might have been able to get a similar job, but that just might not be the case right now if your whole field is contracting. Losing your job might feel like the end of your career. It’s not, it doesn’t have to be, but if you feel that way, it’s going to take some serious inner work to decouple your career from your identity and move on. In this, we can take some inspiration from the financial independence movement. Many early retirees have modeled this process of finding yourself outside of your career. It will look different for someone who is still working, but it is a good example.

Second thought: One of the scariest aspects of losing your job in the good old U S of A is that you likely lose your health insurance as well. That part of it is almost as horrible as losing your income, especially if you are chronically ill or have dependents. There are solutions, however, and again these have been well explored by the financial independence community. It may help you alleviate some anxiety to think through what you would do specifically about health insurance if you were to lose your position.

You might be able to hop onto your spouse or partner’s insurance or your parent’s insurance, depending on your specific eligibility and the cost of doing so. Some insurance plans offer a program known as COBRA, in which you can continue with your same coverage for up to 18 months after you lose your job. Your workplace likely offers COBRA, but your student health insurance plan probably doesn’t qualify. If you are eligible for COBRA, you have up to 60 days to enroll in the program and it covers you retroactively, so you could wait up to 60 days to see if you actually need insurance before starting to pay any premiums. The premiums are going to feel high because you have to pay the portion that your employer was paying previously in addition to the portion you paid before. Another good option is to purchase a health insurance plan through the ACA marketplace in your state. This is the fallback plan for most early retirees who stay in the US, and it is a good one, especially since you likely will just be on the plan in the short term. Finally, another type of plan that’s popular with early retirees is a health care sharing ministry, which is not proper health insurance but serves some of the same functions as health insurance. People like it because it’s less expensive than proper health insurance. I will leave it to you to look into further and decide whether this is a viable or preferable option for you should you lose your job.

Part 3: What I’m Offering You for Free

A few weeks ago, I was feeling really despondent and powerless in the face of all these terrible changes, so I decided to embark on what I’m calling Giveaway Spring. I finished all my scheduled speaking engagements by the end of February, so I have an unusual amount of free time between now and the end of the academic year, and I’ve decided to give away a lot of it.

If you aren’t already on my mailing list and you want to sign up for any of these giveaways, please register through PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/. You’ll receive an email with all the current giveaways being offered, and I’ll update my mailing list periodically as I add items. I’m planning on expanding the content I’ve shared in this episode into a full webinar, for example, and I’ll give a pilot of that webinar away to a limited number of people on my mailing list after I put it together.

Here are some of the items on offer as part of Giveaway Spring:

1) I’m offering free 60-minute Q&A calls to cross-institutional groups. This would be perfect for a professional society or interest group that has a lot of PhDs and PhDs-to-be. You don’t even have to be on my list to schedule one of those, just email me at [email protected].

2) I’m offering free 30-minute coaching sessions, four per week between now and early June. These are going fast so once you get the link, keep checking back as availability opens up on a rolling basis.

3) I’ve collected all my best free templates and downloadables into one easy folder.

4) I’m hosting a free AMA with Sam Hogan, a mortgage originator specializing in graduate students and PhDs, on April 8, 2025. You can register via PFforPhDs.com/mortgage/.

5) I’m giving away other people’s books! The first giveaway is for The Entrepreneurial Scholar: A New Mindset for Success in Academia and Beyond by Ilana Horwitz. I will keep cycling through my favorite personal finance and academia books throughout the spring. You can sign up for the book giveaway directly at PFforPhDs.com/BookGiveaway/.

6) I’m sharing free opportunities hosted by other groups or people as I find out about them. For example, Princeton’s GradFUTURES conference from a couple of weeks ago went out to my list, and right now via PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/ you can sign up for an upcoming free webinar from AccessLex titled “Navigating Recent Updates to Student Loan Repayment and Forgiveness.” If you are hosting or know of free events or resources that are related to PhD personal finance or careers that you think I should pass along, please notify me—I would be happy to do so!

Again, the link to find out about all the current giveaways is PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/. I would really appreciate you sharing that link with your peers. I’m trying to get two things out of these efforts: 1) goodwill within our community and 2) new mailing list subscribers. So you can really help me out with both of those goals by sharing PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/ or any of the other links I’ve mentioned in this section.

I would be very happy to hear your reactions to the content of this episode if you would like to share them with me. Perhaps you’re hearing different messaging from your university or employer or you think I missed a good piece of advice. Please share any comments with me at [email protected]. Good luck this spring, this year, and this four years. I’m rooting for you.

Outro

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

How This Grad Student Navigated a Broken Engagement in a High Cost-of-Living City

July 6, 2020 by Lourdes Bobbio

In this episode, Emily interviews Tina Del Carpio, a third-year PhD student at the University of California at Los Angeles in ecology and evolutionary biology. Tina chose their PhD program in Los Angeles in no small part because their fiance’s career was tied to the city. However, when they moved in with him and started planning the wedding, cracks began to form in the relationship. When they broke up, Tina had to figure out how to extricate themself from their shared apartment and yours-mine-and-ours financial system. Fortunately, Tina landed on their feet with the help of their NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, understanding advisor, and network of supportive friends. At the beginning and end of the episode, Tina and Emily also discuss the power of self-advocacy in graduate school.

Links Mentioned

Find Tina Del Carpio on Twitter and on their blog
Related episode: Making Ends Meet on a Graduate Student Stipend in Los Angeles
Personal Finance for PhDs: Tax Center
Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to the mailing list

Teaser

00:00 Tina: Thankfully, we also talked about what would happen if we broke up, even before I moved out here. I was very adamant about having my own support network and knowing that I’d be able to survive without, if things just didn’t work or we’d gotten divorced or something.

Introduction

00:21 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast to higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season six, episode ten, and today my guest is Tina Del Carpio a third year PhD student at UCLA in ecology and environmental biology. Tina chose their PhD program in Los Angeles in no small part because their fiance’s career was tied to the city. However, when they moved in with him and started planning, the wedding, cracks began to form in the relationship. When they broke up, Tina had to figure out how to extricate themself from their shared apartment and “yours, mine and ours” financial system. Listen through the end of the interview to hear how Tina handles their finances these days, and they’re excellent advice for other early career PhDs on advocating for yourself. By the way we recorded this interview in September, 2019. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Tina Del Carpio.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further

01:19 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today. Tina Del Carpio, who is a graduate student at UCLA, and we’re discussing a little bit of a tough topic today, which is Tina’s breakup from about a year and a half ago. They had a little bit of financial commingling before the breakup and had to disentangle themselves from one another afterwards, which was a challenging thing to do in the midst of graduate school. Tina, I’m so delighted to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. And will you please tell us a little bit more about yourself?

01:47 Tina: Of course. Thanks for having me on Emily. My name’s Tina Del Carpio, my preferred pronouns are they/them or she/her. I’m a second year PhD student at UCLA, or I guess about to be a third year PhD student at UCLA. My focus is on genetics and epigenetics of canids, specifically dogs and foxes.

Getting Engaged, Starting Grad School and Moving to LA

02:10 Emily: Okay, so we need to take this story back to when you started graduate school. How did you make the decision to go to UCLA? What factors were you?

02:19 Tina: Yeah, so this is actually really entangled with my relationship because at the time, my partner and I had been long distance for about five years and he was working in the film industry, so his life and his job were very tied out to LA. I geographically restricted my search to universities near Los Angeles, or ideally in Los Angeles. I was very fortunate to make a connection with a postdoc from the lab that I currently I’m a student in. I talked to her about her experience in the lab and the project that she was sort of leaving behind as she was graduating. I got really interested in that project and was looking to pick it up and met with her and the advisor, my now advisor, Bob Wayne, and we talked about the project and they helped me put together an application for the NSF GRFP. I ended up being awarded that fellowship. This all happened kind of very quickly. We actually had this conversation, decided for me to apply for the NSF, like a week before it was due. I actually only applied to UCLA in that case and figured “oh it’s a crap shoot. I probably won’t get in, and I’ll just stay on track with my other plan to just apply to a bunch of schools the following year.” But it worked out, I got funding and it was in my ideal city, and with an advisor was happy to work with.

03:49 Emily: That is an incredible story, not even the one that we’re focused on today, but I love hearing about sort of non-traditional ways of finding your way into a PhD lab. You networked your way basically into this, right? You said you first connected with a postdoc who was leaving the lab, then that connection led you to the advisor and put together this NSF application, which by the way in a week, that was successful. That is incredible! Good job on that. How did you first make that connection with that postdoc?

04:22 Tina: Yeah, so it’s funny. I literally was thinking about, okay, I changed jobs, I was working as a lab tech gaining more research experience to apply to grad school, and I had just sort of wistfully bookmarked a bunch of labs that I was interested in applying to in about a year. Then my boss announced that we’re getting a new postdoc. It happened that she was coming from one of the labs that I had bookmarkedm and when she came out to look for housing and to make some plans to settle in, in North Carolina, I kind of cornered her and was like, “Hey, so I’m interested in applying to the Wayne lab, can you tell me about the Wayne lab.” Also, it happened to line up with, I was about to be in LA visiting my ex, and so I was like, “Hey, I’m going to be there next week, can we meet up in person, and can you give me a face to face introduction with Bob?”

05:15 Emily: That is incredible. I mean, this is how networking works. It’s not like you were in some unrelated lab, right? You were already on the course to be studying something related to what you would ultimately do in graduate school. Of course there are related labs and people know each other and you run into people. That’s a wonderful story. It’s actually not that dissimilar from how I got into my graduate school, which is that my husband started — we graduate from college at the same time, but he started graduate school at Duke immediately, whereas I did a postbac year. And so, because I was regularly visiting him in Durham, I was especially interested in getting into Duke, and I basically used one of my visits to see him as like, “Hey, various professors that I’m interested in, why don’t I set up my own interview with you?” all prior to admission season even starting and made a few connections there. Ultimately applied to Duke and various other places and went through kind of the normal admissions route after that point, but then ultimately circle back around, and one of the people who I had created my own interview with ultimately, you know, offered me a position and he was my advisor during graduate school. These things, if you have the motivation, sometimes they do work out. I’m really glad that we have that story upfront.

06:28 Emily: Okay, so you were awarded the NSF GRF, that’s awesome, and you’re starting at UCLA and you’re finally living in the same city as your partner. What was going on with you guys like logistically and financially at that time?

06:40 Tina: Yeah. Things are getting a little bit more commingled and complicated at that point. When I actually got the NSF and got accepted to UCLA, because actually I initially wasn’t accepted and wasn’t even invited on the official interview weekend, but suddenly having your own funding for three years opens doors.

07:01 Emily: No kidding.

07:02 Tina: Yeah. So I got the NSF award and then shortly afterwards we got engaged, and then planned a wedding, made a lot of wedding deposits, and then I moved out into LA. Part of the navigating how to do our finances together, we basically decided we’d each keeps some of our money separate, but we opened together a checking account, a savings account, and a credit card, so we could both funnel some money into that and use that to build up a little bit of shared savings and also to pay off any expenses, groceries, rent, things related to the wedding, et cetera.

07:43 Emily: I want to ask a little bit more about that because this is becoming a very popular model, whereas maybe a few decades ago, a vast majority of couples were using fully joint finances. Some minority were using fully separate finances. Now this “yours, mine and ours” model is becoming very, very popular. As you said, most people use it for shared expenses like rent, like you were just saying, you had the wedding that you were putting down deposits for all that kind of thing. How did you decide on the split? Were you guys contributing equal amounts of money to your joint accounts? Or was it maybe by a percentage of income or how did you navigate that?

08:23 Tina: Yeah, so I guess the tricky part we were navigating was housing costs because my ex made about double what I was making, even on an NSF salary or stipend. We ended up deciding for housing that we would pay housing proportional, so he paid two thirds of our rent and I paid one third, especially moving from Durham, my rent went from $400 for my half of a two bed, two bath to we had a like $2,400, one bed, one and a half bathroom apartment. So my rent was changing significantly and also I was eating up a bunch of moving costs. So housing, we decided to do proportionately, but everything else we decided to just split 50/50.

09:10 Emily: At least it was the conversation that you had. That is a great point that you’re at least coming to a firm decision and have a strategy for addressing it. So the place that you were living, which was out of your price range, it sounds like, or I guess was it actually, so like, would you have made a different housing decision had you been moving there as a single person or maybe looking to find a roommate or like what would have been different and how much do you think you would have been paying?

09:35 Tina: Yeah, so I would have definitely looked for something different because it was…well, there was also a lot of uncertainty for me of like, what are my housing costs going to be? Even coming to LA my car insurance went up significantly and that’s actually a thing that I also commingled with my ex. He had USAA, which has a great insurance discount. I added my car onto his, onto his insurance, and so it took me a little while to navigate that and figure that out. But initially the budget I had set for myself was $800 for my rent. And then eventually, you know, I had to reconcile that when we were breaking up.

10:16 Tina: Thankfully we also talked about what would happen if we broke up, even before I moved out here, because my mom got divorced after like 20 years of marriage and I saw the financial struggles my mom went through because she had stopped working to take care of her three kids and the house and things. Then my dad lost his job and all these other problems. And of course, issues between my parents that led to them being divorced. I just watched my mom struggle a lot with her finances without my father to help support her anymore, so I was very adamant about having my own support network and knowing that I’d be able to survive without, if things just didn’t work out or if we’d gotten divorced or something. I feel like I I kinda lost the thread there, what were we talking about?

11:06 Emily: What different housing decisions might you have made? This rolls into what housing decision did you make once you guys decided to split up. Have we concluded talking about all the intermingling that was going on prior to the breakup? Is that about what the full picture was?

11:24 Tina: Yeah, I think so. I think the point I was trying to get to earlier that I lost was we talked about if we broke up and especially when we actually did break up, there was like a couple of months of us discussing it before it actually happened. But we reaffirmed that if we broke up, we would continue paying for the apartment that same way. That I would still just be paying a third and that he would continue paying two thirds, and he ended up moving out since he had family and places to go here, and my nearest family members are in Florida. I stayed living in the apartment for a couple of months until the lease was resolved and he continued to pay that two thirds of the apartment. Thankfully that was something we had discussed and agreed upon long before the breakup.

Financial Ramifications of Breaking of The Engagement

12:08 Emily: Yeah. I think we can move into kind of talking about that second phase now. It sounds like it was a long conversation. You guys had a long relationship, you were on the track to getting married, this is not something to be undertaken lightly. So you were having these conversations over a relatively long period of time. And of course, one of your concerns was how do I provide for myself in this transition to not being in this partnership any longer? So one of the things that you discussed and agreed on was the rent split. What else did you have to do once you guys decided that this breakup is official, the engagement is off? What other things had to happen to fully separate from one another?

12:46 Tina: I think the housing was the biggest thing because we broke up before our lease expired. It was like this big burden and I talked to the landlord and he told us that if we could rent the apartment to somebody else, he’d be willing to terminate our lease. Actually, I got into like kind of a sticky situation that I didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with, but where he was like, okay, I’ll advertise the apartment, but I need you guys to show the apartment. Even after we had actually moved our stuff out and we’re no longer living there, he was still like, no, you guys have to show it, I’m not gonna drive over and show it. I was still devoting time and energy to that, and it ended up still being worth it. It took a couple months to rent the apartment to somebody else, but we managed to end the lease at least a month early. For me getting back that $800 was huge.

13:43 Emily: Yeah. So the housing situation was the main one. It sounds like your ex was pretty generous, or maybe you would say reasonable, right? He was okay with continuing to pay your agreed upon portions of the rent for the amount of time necessary, but you were still doing what you needed to do to get out of it as soon as possible.

Commercial

14:03 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude, the deadline for filing your federal tax return and making your quarters one and two estimated tax payments was extended to July 15th, 2020. I never expected to still be talking about taxes into the summer, but here we are. Post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows still need major help in this area because of their unique situation. I provide tons of support to PhD trainees preparing their tax returns and calculating their estimated tax. Go to PFforPhDs.com/tax to read my free articles and find out if one of my tax workshops is right for you. I have one workshop on how to prepare your annual tax return and one how to determine if you owe quarterly estimated tax. Both workshops include videos, supplemental documents, and live Q&A calls with me go to P F F O R P H D S.com/T A X. Don’t struggle through tax season on your own. Visit my website for the exact information you need in the most efficient form available. Now back to the interview.

Making Budget Adjustments

15:19 Emily: So where did you move to and how did you find that next housing situation?

15:24 Tina: Yeah. So for me, I like living with other people. Actually I describe myself as painfully extroverted, so the first move was to find another roommate or find a roommate, I guess. A person in my cohort I had been spending some time with and was taking a class with and felt comfortable discussing some of my relationship stuff with, I mentioned to her like, yeah, I might be moving and looking for a new roommate soon. She was also in a housing situation, in grad student housing housing, which is really expensive here. I know Adriana, you interviewed awhile ago was living in like the family housing that’s highly subsidized, but my roommate was in the regular housing that’s like $1,300 per person per month, so not nearly as subsidized. Anyways, I found the person to live with, and then I was sort of waiting for her to finish up her paperwork to get released from her housing contract. And based on the new information I had of how much it was actually costing me to live in LA, I set a new budget of $1,100 a month for rent, and we found a two bedroom, two bathroom near campus, but far enough away that it was in our price range, and most importantly, for us, it had to be near a bus stop, so it was easy to get to campus.

16:44 Emily: Yeah. A couple of points I want to follow up within that. One is yes, I had that interview with Adriana and she was living in family housing for UCLA. I have another interview that’s been recorded, but not released as of the moment that we’re doing this interview, with Dr. Travis Seifman, and he is specifically talking about grad student housing. He’s lived in like a couple of different of the UC grad student housing, different universities. And then he’s also lived in graduate student housing at some other universities, including overseas. We have an extensive discussion around this, and one of the things that we talk about is his consternation around the price difference between family housing and single but roommates housing, and why is it that there’s such a price difference there. And so anyway, for any listeners who are particularly interested in that discussion, I’ll recommend that other interview. TBD when it will actually be published. Thanks for bringing that up.

17:39 Emily: One of the things I really like about the story is that, once you had been in LA, at UCLA for a year, you were able to, well, one, probably be more realistic about the amount of money you were able to pay in rent. Your budget went from $800 up to $1,100 per month. And then also, you found a person you wanted to live with and you guys probably had more at that point familiarity with the area and were able to do a housing search a little bit better than you could have from a distance. Of course that’s the case. My message, what I want to emphasize to listeners is that it’s a really good idea to reevaluate your housing, maybe after your first year of graduate school, whenever you’re thinking about housing in that second year, because you probably know a lot more about the area that you’ve moved to in that second iteration of the housing search. So how did that new higher rent fit in with your budget? What adjustments did you make to make that happen?

18:03 Tina: Yeah, I mean, I think I actually just had room for it. I had over budgeted other items. It took us a while to figure out the car insurance, and initially I was planning for my car insurance to double and instead it only gone up $30 and even then, it went up again when I had to separate my car insurance from my ex’s, but not as much as I was anticipating, so that was helpful. I think I ended up having to put a little bit less into savings, I think that’s where most of the difference came from. A couple of things that I have over head over budgeted initially, before I knew anything out here and then also pulling a little bit out of what I was contributing to my savings.

19:15 Emily: Another thing you did really well, there is to be sort of conservative in your estimates of your spending, in that you think you’re going to spend more than maybe you actually do, so you have that wiggle room for later adjustments within your budget.

Financial Life after the Break-up

19:27 Emily: Okay, we’ve gone through the breakup process and the separation from your ex, how are things looking in your finances today?

19:35 Tina: They’re looking okay. I just made a big purchase recently. I had a car that was a lease and I recently bought out my lease, and so that took a big chunk of my money. Basically, my car to buy out was like $12,000 with taxes and fees, and if I had been buying it from a used car dealership would have been closer to like $16,000, so it seemed like a pretty good deal. Especially since I could buy it out right, I’m not paying any interest on it. And the way I did that, is I had a considerable savings, just like paying out of my savings account. And so I paid for a third of the car, my father was able to contribute a third, and then another family member was able to lend me a third. So I did still take out a loan for my car, but from a family member who is lending it to me without any interest, of course.

20:27 Emily: Yeah. So that was a big chunk out of your funding, but that’s nice to not have that monthly expense. I mean, it’s still a monthly expense because you’re repaying the loan, but a much, much smaller one.

20:36 Tina: Yeah.

20:37 Emily: That is a great reduction in the rest of your spending. That’s great. It sounds like you and your ex were really thoughtful in this process. You had seen your parents get divorced and so you were keeping in your mind, this is a possibility. You’re going to move to LA, you’re going to live together, start commingling your finances. Maybe things won’t work out, you’re not married yet, and even after that, it still could not work out. It sounds like you did things pretty intelligently and carefully through this process, and so I think that you have like a positive example here of how this can happen, but is there anything that you, looking back, wish that you had done differently?

21:14 Tina: I think most of it was pretty settled. I wish I’d been a little bit more thoughtful about how we divided up and dealt with paying the wedding deposits, because that was a little bit of a thorn in my side when we were splitting up. And arguably my ex paid significantly more in the wedding deposits than I did, but he essentially, at the end of the day was the one who asked to call the wedding off, and so I requested that he pay me back for the wedding deposits that I had paid, which amounted to about a thousand dollars, which, again on a grad student income is a pretty significant chunk of money. And the message I got was, well, let’s see how long it takes you to move out of the apartment, and how much money is spent on the apartment, and then we can make this decision.

22:11 Tina: Then even though we saved more than that by moving out of the apartment early, then there was like some thorny issues about the engagement ring. So the engagement ring had been less than $2,000 and under the law in California, if the giver breaks off the engagement, the receiver legally owns the ring. Also my ex had told me, “oh, the ring is yours, it’s a gift to keep no matter what” and basically when I brought up the issue of my lost money on the wedding deposits, was told, “well, I let you keep the engagement ring, you should be able to sell that and recoup some of this money.” Then it turned out that he had super overpaid for the engagement ring and the money I can recoup from that is very little. I wish I had been a little bit more thoughtful about that sort of spending before we like commingled and talked a little bit more about what we would do in the situation where things broke off, but at the end of the day, I decided it wasn’t worth the emotional turmoil to be like, “well, this ring doesn’t actually cover my expenses, why don’t you take it back and you sell it and do this emotional labor and just give me my thousand dollars back.”

Navigating the Emotional Aspect of the Break-up

23:25 Emily: Yeah. I do want to come back to that point in a moment about the emotions of all of this, but I guess this is just kind of a point around splitting up in general is like, once you’re married, as you were just saying, there’s, there’s state laws that govern how relationships, how marriages separate, in terms of what’s done with the property. Sometimes it has to be figured out in court ultimately, and a lot of money can be spent on lawyers, but the really tricky thing is once you, if you’re not having that legal contract of marriage in place, and you guys were moving towards that, but not quite there yet, breaking out becomes a lot more murky. It’s something that becomes very individual and hard to navigate and something that takes a lot of energy. I just wanted to ask you, how did you manage to continue moving forward in your graduate program? Or did you? Obviously, you have ultimately, but did things stall a little bit as you’re going through this enormous personal upheaval?

24:22 Tina: I think there were two major things that helped me. There definitely was a little bit of a stalling point, but most directly related to grad school was talking to my advisor and telling him, “Hey, this is what’s going on. I’ve been a little mentally checked out because I’m trying to see whether or not my engagement is going to fall apart,” and thankfully, my advisor was very supportive of that. Around that time, actually, I had to turn in a 10 to 15 page written proposal as part of my first year requirements to slowly move towards eventually advancing to candidacy. So I talked to my advisor about it and basically just requested from my committee and extension and said, “Hey, here’s, what’s going on, can I have an extra month to turn this in?” And everybody on my committee was very supportive of that. That was number one.

25:13 Tina: Then number two was also just reaching out to friends and it took me a while to feel comfortable telling some of my lab mates and other people in grad school and just other friends I had met in the city, because at the time I had only been living here for about six months, so I didn’t have any real long-standing, deep relationships with anybody yet because I just didn’t have the time to establish them. But once I shared that information, everybody was super supportive. I actually learned that one of my grad school friends went through the same thing of also had an engagement end during her first year of grad school. They were super helpful. And then my longterm friends were unbelievably helpful. One actually flew out from Canada, where he was doing his PhD to come help me move.

26:02 Emily: Very, very sweet. Very, very wonderful to have that both new and old connections supporting you through that time. Plus, for me, this part of your story, when you were talking with your advisor and committee hearkens back to when you entered graduate school. You didn’t have to conform to the standard procedures in place for applying to graduate school. You realize, “Hey, yeah, this is a requirement in the first year, but maybe they can be flexible with me, and I’m just going to ask about it because what’s the harm in asking?” I mean, your advisor’s probably noticing that you’re not totally engaged anyway. It just comes back to that point that you are doing a great job kind of advocating for yourself and making things happen for you, and people can be accommodating if you ask them in the right way.

Best Financial Advice for Other PhDs

26:45 Emily: Tina, with the end of this interview, I’m going to ask you a question that I ask of all of my interviewees, which is what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be related to the conversation that we’ve had today or could be completely something else.

27:01 Tina: I think actually it kind of ties into our last point of just like asking for help, of just reaching out to people and saying, “Hey, I don’t know what I’m doing, please help me.” I realized in the last couple months that investing has been a big hole for me, and I’ve been talking to one, actually one of my closest friends of over a decade and only recently learned that investing as a hobby of his. And then also like friends who are very good cooks. I never really learned how to cook as a kid growing up, so now I’m saving money by cooking at home a lot more. Just reach out to friends or coworkers or whatever and say, “Hey, I think you’re really great at this thing. I’ve noticed you seem to be really good with your money, or you’re really great at cooking, or you’re really great at this thing — how did you learn that? I’d really love to learn from you.

27:51 Emily: Nobody’s going to say no to a request phrase that way, absolutely. Wonderful, wonderful tip. And actually I know from Twitter that you are starting investing yourself and that you are listening to a podcast that really pushed you to do that — you want to mention that podcast and what you like about it?

28:08 Tina: Oh, sure. Yeah, you and I have been corresponding a little bit over Twitter and another podcast I had discovered that’s really helpful is called “Bad with Money” with Gaby Dunn. Part of what I really like about it is that I grew up with not knowing a whole lot about money and feeling like a little bit ashamed of that and just kind of feeling the differences in class, especially having gone to a private university for undergrad and my family had lost their house and lost our cars right before I went to undergrad. I just felt very distant and ashamed and all these bad emotions about money. Listening to Gaby’s podcast and being like,” Oh, it’s not just me, there are other people who feel very left out of the system,” made me feel a lot more comfortable talking about it.

28:57 Emily: That’s fantastic. Thank you so much for that recommendation. And Tina, thank you so much for this conversation today. I am sure that it is helping people in the audience who are maybe considering a breakup, or trying to navigate one, or trying to recover financially from having been through one recently, so I really appreciate your willingness to talk about this.

29:15 Tina: Great. Thanks so much for having me on Emily.

Outtro

43:30 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes, and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. 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 Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

This PhD Entrepreneur Advocates for Universal Basic Income (Part 2)

May 11, 2020 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jim Pugh, the founder of ShareProgress and co-host of the Basic Income Podcast. Jim defines universal basic income and outlines how it would alleviate poverty and other social ills, including results from research and real-life experiments with basic income. He describes the possible avenues by which universal basic income could be funded and whether it would replace our existing social safety nets. Jim and Emily speculate about how universal basic income might affect higher education funding, including PhD stipends and postdoc salaries, and PhD trainees themselves.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

00:00 Jim: You could basically think of this as universal basic fellowships for PhD students because I think that the dynamics that come with it very, very closely would match what it would be if you were getting a fellowship of the same size.

Introduction

00:18 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season six, episode two, and today my guest is Dr. Jim Pugh, the founder of ShareProgress and cohost of The Basic Income Podcast. In this second half of our interview, Jim articulates what basic income is and how it would alleviate poverty in the United States, including results from recent research and experimentation. He describes the possible avenues by which it could be funded and whether it would replace our existing social safety nets. We speculate about how basic income might affect higher education, including PhD stipends and postdoc salaries. Without further ado, here’s the second part of my interview with Dr. Jim Pugh.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:06 Emily: We’re back now with part two of my interview with Dr. Jim Pugh. In part one, he told us all about how he started a business a few years after graduate school, which ultimately allowed him a great deal of time freedom. So, his business pays for his lifestyle, but he only works at this point about five hours a week on the business. And that has allowed him to pivot to his advocacy work around universal basic income, which is what we’re going to be hearing a lot more about today. So, Jim, thank you so much for continuing this interview with me. And we want to start off with a basic question about universal basic income because frankly, I probably would not have really heard about this except that you and I are Facebook friends. And also, we’re recording this in September, 2019 and Andrew Yang is a candidate for the democratic nomination for president. So, between those two things, I’ve kind of heard a little bit about basic income, but I would love to hear a lot more about what it actually is from you.

01:59 Jim: Sure. Well, so, just to start with the definition. A universal basic income is a policy that would provide every single person in the country with unconditional cash payments regularly–most people talk about once a month–that’s actually enough to cover basic needs. And the idea of it is that, if you were to enact this, you eradicate absolute poverty. You’re ensuring that everyone does have enough money to cover the fundamentals. And so, in some ways it’s very, very simple because it’s just giving people some cash. But in other ways, we’re potentially talking about something very radical because we would for the first time be saying, we are fully abolishing absolute poverty. We’re saying that absolutely no one in the country should be poor and that we’re going to structure our systems with that in mind. And so the ramifications of that are pretty profound as far as what does it mean for work? What does it mean for health? What does it mean for people’s general lifestyle if you’re actually establishing that fundamental financial security floor?

Benefits of Universal Basic Income (UBI)

03:12 Emily: Okay, so let’s first take the benefits–the upsides of this–and let’s leave aside, for the moment, the practicalities of it, but just to talk about the vision for what this society might be like. So, what are the benefits that people might experience maybe who are currently in poverty but would be lifted out of that through UBI? You started to talk about this a little bit at the end of the last episode. So, there’s actually been research done in this area and there’s been some experimentation. So, can you talk a little about what we know already about how this might change things for people?

03:43 Jim: Yeah, so I think there are the obvious things that we know when people are poor, they can’t afford food or at least healthy food. They may be having trouble finding somewhere to live. They may not be able to take care of themselves. So, if you’re actually ensuring that everyone is up above the poverty line through just regular cash transfers, those are all things that are addressed, first order of facts. But I think beyond that, that’s where things start to get quite interesting because we have seen more and more evidence around how poverty and financial insecurity, if not causing, are at least are greatly contributing to a lot of other issues that we’re dealing with today. And so, people when they are approaching any aspect of their life, they can either be in an abundance mentality where they think, “Okay, I have enough. I can think bigger picture.” Or a scarcity mentality where they feel constrained, which basically gives people tunnel vision that they’re only thinking about what’s right in front of them.

Abundance Mindset, Higher IQ

04:51 Jim: And that difference has huge impacts on what happens to people. So, first off, there have been studies just looking at general intelligence, and there is a substantial shift in people’s IQ level between those two different headspaces. I think it’s around one standard deviation, so about 10 IQ points, smarter when you’re in an abundance mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset. So, you’re making better decisions. Second, as I said, when you get that tunnel vision and so it means you’re just thinking about what’s right in front of you, it basically prevents you from longterm planning. You can’t be thinking about, “What is my life going to be even a year, much less, five, 10 years down the road?” if you’re worried about, Oh, how am I going to put food on the table tonight or tomorrow? And so, it allows people and encourages people to plan better, to make better longterm decisions which has big impacts around choices on education, choices around what sort of work they pursue, and ultimately, where they do end up in five, 10 years down the road.

Scarcity Mindset Damages Mental and Physical Health

05:58 Jim: And so, beyond just being able to afford health treatments, there’s also a lot of evidence that when you’re in a scarcity mindset, when you’re in poverty, it’s extremely damaging for mental health. And also for physical health, the stress has an impact on that as well. Crime–strong, strong correlation based on people’s financial security as to whether they’re more or less likely to commit crimes. And so there’s all of these second and third order implications around how things would look in our society if we weren’t to have this absolute poverty. That’s seems incredibly promising. And so, that’s why, again, our typical approach as a society is to, when something’s going wrong, to treat the symptoms of it. And this, instead, is really saying, “Let’s actually try to take a step back, deal with some of the underlying causes, and see how much easier that makes dealing with all the rest of this stuff.”

UBI and Job Flexibility

07:00 Emily: Okay. Sounds amazing. It sounds very, very compelling. I’m wondering a little bit more about what the vision for what this society may look like, should we bring it about. You talked earlier about jobs. And so, is the idea that not as many people would need to work? There wouldn’t necessarily be as many people in jobs? Or is the idea that you would have just more freedom and flexibility around when you want to work and when you went to have further training? How does this relate to the jobs, I guess is what I’m asking?

07:28 Jim: I think much more the latter. So, the idea is not that this is something that’s going to replace jobs wholesale. I think it does allow you to pursue a more general definition of work, I would say. And so, in the sense that “job” right now means a fairly specific thing in those conversations about more like a nine to five, like ongoing, consistent workplace. This does give you additional flexibility to think a bit differently about what is the right form of work for you to be doing. So, whether that’s part-time, whether that’s taking some time to get more of an education in the area that ultimately is going to allow you to do something that you feel better about and maybe much more productive for society. Whether it’s going to give you the flexibility if you want to do some sort of family care or staying home with children or elderly folks.

UBI Facilitates Entrepreneurship

08:25 Jim: Another one is entrepreneurship. If you’re considering starting a company or doing something that, in its early stages, may not be giving you a steady paycheck–having more flexibility around that as well. So, it opens up all these doors that most folks, I would say, don’t really have access to at this point in time. As far as overall impact on how much people are working, there have actually been a number of studies on this. And what it suggests is the results vary. That there are certain situations where, when you give people regular, unconditional cash, they work more. It seems like, either through stimulating the local economy and creating jobs or by giving people that flexibility, they end up doing more work. So, Alaska for the last 40 years has actually had a universal income provided by oil in the state. And recent studies have found that the overall work rate hasn’t changed, but you see a lot more people engaging in part-time work than you have in the past. Or, certain groups, studies have found there is a decrease in work, quite consistently actually across studies. The ones where that’s only really stood out is parents with young children and teenagers, basically. And interviewing folks involved in that, it seems like the former is spending more time staying home with kids, the latter spending more time at school. So, again, it’s not captured as work in how we measure it today, but it actually is work and potentially much more pro-social work than they might otherwise be engaged in.

10:06 Emily: So, this is really reminding me of–so I have not read this book. The book is Your Money or Your Life by Vicky Robin, I want to say. And she has a coauthor. Anyway, I heard a podcast interview with her within the last few weeks and she was talking about how in our current society, like you’re saying, there’s a lot of work that is not inside a job, right? There’s a lot of work that people do in our society to further it. A lot of women do this kind of work and it’s not valued in terms of a paycheck from a job, right? That doesn’t mean it’s not contributing to society. And so, I don’t remember if they specifically talked about basic income on that podcast, but this is a way to sort of reframe what counts as work and what counts as doing something valuable with your time.

UBI and Social Safety Nets

10:51 Emily: Yeah. Okay. So, I think I’m getting you here. I have another question: would this replace the social safety nets that we have currently and expand them, I guess you could say?

11:03 Jim: So, there are mixed opinions on this amongst people who advocate for basic income. I’m actually in the camp saying that this should not initially be treated as a replacement for any social programs. And I think the reasons are: one, is that I think there is widespread recognition across the political spectrum that our social safety net is not working as well as we would like it to. You get very different opinions as to what would allow it to work as well as we would like it to. But no one is satisfied with where it’s at. I think a lot of people have talked about, “Let’s provide basic income and then just cut much, if not all, of other social programs because this will eradicate absolute poverty. Why do we need to worry about anything else?” And there are actually, I would say, a lot of edge cases here where it’s people who are dealing with some specific challenge for which cash on its own is not going to quickly solve it. It will help a lot in many situations. But I think there is the risk that if you say, “All right, we’ll get rid of this other stuff and just give you cash,” you’ve basically taken a problem that requires multiple parts to solve and just replaced one part with another. And, in some cases, maybe they keep people worse off because of that.

Targeted Interventions Beyond UBI

12:25 Emily: Can you be more specific about what is being provided to people now that’s not money?

12:29 Jim: Yeah. So, I think disability being a good one where disabilities can look very different for different sorts of people. And in some cases, the support you would need to actually be able to live with disabilities requires much more than what a basic income would provide. And so, that’s a case where, if someone were to say, “We’re going to wipe everything off the books and just give you that,” a lot of people in that situation are going to be left far worse off. I think there are specific issues around addiction, in some situations, housing assistance where there is obviously there are areas where housing is far, far more expensive. And so, to think that a national UBI would actually be enough for people in the Bay Area to be able to get by, it’s not realistic. And so, that’s a situation where a targeted intervention beyond the UBI is going to be important.

13:22 Jim: And then I think there are other ones where it may be some general challenge where someone’s falling out of the workforce or coming back from deployment abroad where, again, making sure that they have enough cash is important, but there are additional services that come beyond that that also much better set them up to succeed than the cash on its own. And so, I think that that’s a key thing here is to recognize both how transformative and valuable UBI could be, but also that it’s not a panacea. It’s not a silver bullet. It’s something that will need an ecosystem of additional supports if we actually want to have an effective safety net. And so, I don’t think the safety net that we have right now is doing that well enough, and we need to be rethinking that. But I think that there’s a danger when people say, “UBI instead of that,” that we throw the baby out with the bathwater and end up in a situation where people may be much worse off than they are today.

Regional Cost of Living Considerations

14:25 Emily: Yeah. I think because this is, I don’t necessarily want to say it’s a new idea. I mean, you said Alaska has been doing something like this for 40 years, but it’s gained maybe national attention only in recent years. So, this is still an idea that’s being worked out. And at the policy level, if viable, we don’t know exactly what the ultimate solution would look like. And presumably, it would change over decades and generations anyway. So, I’m glad you brought up the cost of living question. Because the U.S. is very diverse in terms of cost of living. Is the ultimate idea still that people would get the same amount of money no matter where they live? Maybe with some additional help, like you were just saying, for certain people in certain areas?

Psychological Implications

15:05 Jim: So yeah, a key part of it is–and I don’t think I said in my original definition, but the idea is–this would be the same amount to everyone. And there are a couple reasons for that. One is logistical that it becomes much easier to manage if it’s the same for everyone. But the other is more psychological. One of the reasons for taking a universal approach is to try to eliminate stigma associated with receiving support, which in our modern age, we all see how much stigma is associated with receiving various forms of welfare. And that, if it’s something that everyone in society is getting, you’re able to get around that. Because why is it wrong for the homeless person on the street to get the check every month if I’m also getting my check every month?

Regional Supplements

15:52 Jim: And so, that’s another reason to have the equal, universal amount. But as you say, what that means is that in particularly different regions across the country, you’re going to see big differences as far as the implications of that. So, there certainly are parts of the country where if you were giving everyone a thousand dollars a month, you can survive without too much difficulty. If you’re in the Bay Area or other places, that does not get you very far. And so, that’s an area where you do need to have something beyond that. There’s been some discussion around regional supplements where you might be able to top up a equal federal amount with something that goes up more for more expensive areas. But I think beyond that, yeah, there may be other targeted interventions that are important.

UBI Increases Mobility

16:46 Jim: I think one question that comes up that we don’t really have a good answer to but people wonder about is, if you’re providing the basic income to everyone, it is going to increase people’s mobility. And so, if you currently feel tied to a certain geography for economic reasons, which may be very expensive, whether that gives you the option to relocate to somewhere that is less expensive. And then that gets very complicated because it goes into community ties and family and things like that where there may be other factors beyond just the economics of it. But it’s something that would be different if we did this and so, potentially, that at least partially would help to mitigate some of those challenges.

Commercial

17:35 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. I bet you and your peers are hungry for financial information right now, especially if it’s tailored for your unique PhD experience. I offer seminars, webinars, and workshops on personal finance for early career PhDs that can be billed as professional development or personal wellness programming. My events cover a wide range of personal finance topics or take a deep dive into the financial topics that matter most to PhDs like taxes, investing, career transitions, and frugality. If you’re interested in having me speak to your group or recommending me to a potential host, you can find more information and ways to contact me at pfforphds.com/speaking. We can absolutely find a way to get this great content to you and your peers even while social distancing. Now, back to our interview.

The Basic Income Podcast

18:34 Emily: I feel like I could continue asking you questions about this for quite a long time. It’s a good thing you have a podcast where other people can learn more about this. What is the name of your podcast?

18:45 Jim: Our name is a bit on the nose. We are The Basic Income Podcast. We’ve been introducing weekly episodes for about three years now and exploring both UBI specifically, but also, how it relates and connects to all sorts of other areas.

How to Fund UBI in the U.S.

19:00 Emily: Okay. So, I’m going to hold off on the questions that are still swirling in my head and just say, listeners, if you’re excited about this idea, or skeptical of it, or whatever, go ahead and check out the podcast and I’m sure there are other resources that you refer to from there where people can continue to learn even more. So, one more question around the vision of this, which is should we all, or enough of us in the United States, decide this is a good idea, what actually does it look like to fund this? Maybe post-transition, if there is a transition.

Enact Changes to the Tax Code

19:32 Jim: Yeah, so that’s another area where people have very different opinions around. Because, I mean, if we’re looking at it on its face saying, “All right, everyone in the country gets a thousand dollars a month,” that’s about $4 trillion, which is the size of our current governmental spending, which seems insane. But there are various caveats, I would say, that make it much more achievable than it may seem at a glance. My preferred approach to financing is first to recognize that, if you’re going to enact universal basic income, it means you need to make some significant differences in the tax code. And specifically, as a starting point, I think income tax. At its core, the goal of UBI is to provide people with financial security. And so, what that means is that, knowing you’re always going to get your check every month is important because who knows what may happen to you. And having it always there gives you that security.

20:31 Jim: But, if you’re earning a good paycheck, there’s no reason why you should be coming out net ahead, necessarily. And so, to basically update our income tax brackets such that, once people make above a certain point, their UBI is effectively being taxed away. So, maybe that’s four times the poverty level. So, if you as an individual are earning more than 50 or $60,000 a year, basically, you’d be getting your check every month and then you’d be paying a bit more in taxes to cover that expense. If you do it that way and look at what’s eventually the net cost, it drops to somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion dollars a year, which is still a lot, but a lot less than the four trillion we started with.

Shift Tax Programs and Brackets

21:18 Jim: And so, then there are different ideas as to how do you pay for that. That’s much more in line with other somewhat ambitious governmental programs. You can couple together some combination of a carbon tax, the financial transaction tax, a wealth tax. And sort of talking more about that, Elizabeth Warren wrote it up in her campaign where you’re able to raise that amount of money to cover that difference. And also, I think potentially looking at adding a few tax brackets at the top of the income level. If we were to go back to the taxation we had pre-Reagan, that would be bringing in a substantial amount there. So, with those things combined, you can relatively easily actually be able to cover the cost.

UBI and Graduate Training

22:02 Emily: Okay. Very, very interesting. So, I wanted to pivot a little bit to tie this really into more of our PhD audience because we haven’t brought that up so far really. I mean, you mentioned earlier that you know, having a basic income could afford people the flexibility to do more training. Of course, PhDs have a lot of that. Have you given any thought, or has there been any discussion around this, how basic income–I’m sure it’s been discussed at the undergraduate level, how that would affect people pursuing college degrees? You can speak about that a little bit if you like, but I am curious about what you think about how it might affect PhD training in the United States. And specifically, you know, you brought up earlier the scarcity mindset and how that prevented people from thinking longterm and it caused an effective IQ drop.

22:45 Emily: And in season four of this podcast, I published a two-part interview with Dr. Lucie Bland and she talked about her scarcity mindset that she developed during her PhD because she was living in poverty during her PhD. She was funded at a very low level. She lives in a very expensive city, and it’s something that a lot of people can relate to during their graduate training. Although you wouldn’t necessarily think about graduate students, a relatively privileged bunch, I would expect, necessarily being beneficiaries of basic income. But maybe during that training period, they are. So, can you just speak a little bit about that?

UBI and Financial Security

23:18 Jim: Well, I would actually just add on to that. What we’re seeing in the Bay Area right now is not only at the graduate student level, but actually the assistant professor level, in some places, that people are homeless. They can’t afford to live here. So, they’re living out of their cars. Yeah, I mean I think that it’s giving you that layer of financial security, which should help with that. I think, not just because it’s some extra money, but because it would be extra money not tied your employment education situation. And obviously this is not everyone, hopefully a small minority, but if you’re having some bad power dynamics with your professor and feeling like you don’t want to be working with him or her but are not able to step away because of finances you’re receiving from there, it gives you kind of that out knowing that, regardless of what you decide there, you have that income coming in otherwise.

Parallel: UBI and Fellowship Income

24:15 Emily: So, there’s actually a slight parallel there, actually with fellowship income, right? And you did your PhD outside of the state, so, maybe it’s a little bit different there. But here with fellowship income, you know, it’s an award that you receive as an individual. It’s based on your own merits. And so, it’s not necessarily tied to you staying in one person’s lab. And so, I again, I publish an interview in season four where someone was able to switch labs, did not have a good relationship with their first advisor, was able to switch labs partially because she received an NSF graduate research fellowship. And so, similar situation, right? If, you know you can go a few months and transition without a paycheck coming from your advisor, it gives you more freedom there to really seek out the situation that is going to support you best as a developing researcher. So, yeah. Excellent point there. Please continue.

24:59 Jim: Yeah. Well, I was going to say, I think you just nailed it. You could basically think of this as universal basic fellowships for PhD students because I think that, yeah, I think the dynamics that come with it very, very closely with match what it would be if you were getting a fellowship of the same size. I mean obviously with the added flexibility that you could leave a PhD program and still have it. But as far as the context within graduate school, I think that that’s basically what it would be.

25:27 Emily: Just to explore that a little bit further. Because I do think it’s a good analogy. So, one of the great things about fellowship income is that it gives you more freedom in your research, right? So, if you’re not beholden to working on a specific grant for your advisor, like you often are in STEM fields if you have a research assistantship. The fellowship allows you more intellectual flexibility and pursuing projects that are more in line with your own goals. It allows you to pursue collaborations. It’s just a greater degree of freedom. Now, some advisors exact more or less control when they do have people on a grant for research assistantships. That’s sort of up to their discretion. But yeah, the flexibility there in terms of your intellectual pursuits would then translate in terms of UBI into your general career pursuits, life pursuits. It would just be a much broader funding of that.

26:14 Jim: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think I could imagine there would also be kind of a trade-off on that versus greater financial security. Because one of the questions would be, if everyone were getting a basic income, would you still have PhD student stipends and outside fellowships at a similar level? If you would, okay, everyone’s going to be much more economically stable.

Final Thoughts on UBI and Academia

26:40 Emily: You said earlier as like a touch point that, in your vision of this, around 50 or $60,000 of income, that’s when the UBI would kind of phase out. And for the graduate student level, graduate students don’t reach that point. A lot of postdocs don’t reach that point. So, in some sense, if nothing changed on the grant side of things, then it would boost your income. But yes, the question is whether people would still be funded to the same degree given that they have that baseline. So, if the idea right now in academia is we give people just enough money to live on so they don’t have to have other jobs that distract from their PhD research, well then maybe they would just decrease that funding. So, yeah. Any other thoughts around that? I’m sure this has not been very fully explored because it’s a very niche interest.

27:24 Jim: Well, no, I think that this is a specific example of something that is much broader, which is basically, if we were to have UBI, what does that do to wages? And the theory is that it depends a lot on what type of work you’re talking about and how much there is the internal versus external motivation around doing that work. Because if someone’s only doing the work because they’re getting paid to do it, UBI actually has the potential to then increase wages because it basically gives them more leverage to say, “Oh, well I don’t actually like this work. I’m going to go pursue other options.” And a company might then have to say, “Oh, well instead of $8 an hour, we’re going to pay you $15 an hour.” On the flip side, if it’s something that people just want to be doing for other reasons, like perhaps going to graduate school since not too many people go to graduate school to get rich, then there’s the opposite potential where, if someone is basically willing to do it, assuming that they won’t be starving, then universities may say, “Okay, well you’re UBI now instead of giving you $18,000 a year, we’re going to give you six.

28:43 Jim: So, I mean, it’s a whole other topic, but I would say that that’s where unions might come in handy. But yeah, I think it’s one of those areas that it’s very, very difficult to answer and know exactly what will happen until we actually do it. So, we can hypothesize around it. But yeah, that’s an open question.

Value of Teaching and Shifting Landscape in Education

29:07 Emily: Yeah, I guess I’m also thinking about sort of we’re having larger debates and angst in academia around the value of teaching, right? Because there’s this huge adjunct workforce that is, you know, severely underpaid. They don’t have job security and yet such a huge percentage of the classes that undergraduates and graduate students take are being taught by people who are not full-time employees of the institution that they work for or institutions. And it’s just such a difficult area right now. I can definitely see how UBI would help people in that situation, right? Because they are also experiencing poverty or near poverty-like situations, many of them. But, yeah. I mean, we’re in a transition point for education broadly. Like, if we’re moving to massive online courses and so forth, maybe if your teachers are needed. I don’t know. There are just a lot of transition here. I guess when we’re talking about maybe some kinds of jobs disappearing or transitioning, teaching at the higher education level, is one of those jobs that is sort of in transition in the workforces. And so, yeah. UBI is just kind of another element to kind of throw into the mix here that we don’t really know how it’s going to play out entirely.

30:13 Jim: Yeah, I think that’s right. And this applies less, I would say. I would expect it to still apply to some degree, but on the flip side, as far as what is the responsibility of the teacher versus the student? I think, certainly at the elementary and high school level, there’s ample evidence that financial stability of the family that the students are coming from makes a big difference as far as how well they’re able to learn. And so, that’s, I would say, another wrinkle that gets thrown in here as well, where if you are ensuring that everyone who is in the class is in more of an abundance mindset, what implications does that have to what is the most effective way of educating?

Tell Us More About Your Podcast

30:55 Emily: Such an interesting topic, Jim. I think that people will definitely want to follow up with you and learn more about this. Maybe have more discussions with you around what does the potential of UBI look like in affecting higher education and graduate students and postdocs and trainees. Again, tell us a little bit more about what you do. We have the name of it, but what do you do on your podcast?

31:14 Jim: Yeah, so we cover a lot of different areas. Most of the episodes, I think like yours, feature or are centered around a guest interview on some topic. And so, we’ve covered everything from, yeah what does UBI do with the disability community, to what’s happening in Canada with UBI to digging in on some of the modern control pilots that are being done in the U.S. and abroad to what is the connection between UBI and housing? And so, it really covers a lot of different areas, but generally we bring on an expert, we chat with them, and then we talk through what are the ramifications of what they said. And so, really try to dig in a little bit on many different areas.

UBI and Healthcare, Education

32:03 Emily: So, actually one follow-up question that goes maybe more back to our earlier conversation with what does this vision look like? Does the implementation of UBI come with it or depend on a revolution within healthcare and also in higher education? You know, paying for higher education.

32:21 Jim: Yeah. So, I would say healthcare comes up a lot. And in my view, UBI can only truly be successful if we actually have truly universal healthcare because it basically counts on the assumption that you can somewhat reasonably project what is the cost of living for people across the country. In our current system. If you don’t actually have universal coverage, that is impossible. I mean we see all the time, all these cases of people having insane bills for services. And as long as that continues to happen, there’s no way to actually guarantee universal financial security. And so, I see those two things as very, very complementary and part of a whole package that we should be fighting for. And education, perhaps not quite as closely coupled, but I think if we’re talking about what is beyond just financial security, what is really setting people up for longterm success, it seems obvious that we want to make that as accessible as possible. And so, a model where everyone in society has access to higher education is certainly the way to go.

Best Financial Advice for Another PhD

33:29 Emily: Gotcha. Okay. Standard question as we wrap up here that I ask all of my guests which is what is your best financial advice for another PhD? And that could be related to something that we’ve talked about in these two episodes, or it could be something entirely new.

33:44 Jim: I mean, I think it’s just like figuring out your sustainability. So, I mean, thinking about where you’ll be going with your PhD and what is your cost of living then, but just trying to set yourself up so that you’re not heading towards a cliff somewhere, which yeah, I feel like it would look very, very different depending on your specifics.

34:06 Emily: Yeah, definitely. It’s something I talk about a lot for people who are sort of in transition, right, out of graduate school, out of the postdoc into other positions, especially when they’re moving. Make sure you understand the cost of living. As you brought up earlier, you know, in San Francisco, make sure you understand the cost of living that you’re getting into and that the salary that you’ve been offered is is appropriate for that area and negotiate if that is not your initial offer. So, thank you so much for that advice. Jim, this has been a fascinating conversation, really just the tip of the iceberg on this topic, and so thank you so much for joining me.

34:38 Jim: Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation as well.

Outtro

34:40 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at pfforphds.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

financial security

Links mentioned in the Episode

Introduction

Part 1: My Take-Aways from the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference

Part 2: Financial Steps You Should Take Right Now

Commercial

Financial Advice for Each Stage of Your Academic Career

Part 3: What I’m Offering You for Free

Outro

Links Mentioned

Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further

Getting Engaged, Starting Grad School and Moving to LA

Financial Ramifications of Breaking of The Engagement

Commercial

Making Budget Adjustments

Financial Life after the Break-up

Navigating the Emotional Aspect of the Break-up

Best Financial Advice for Other PhDs

Outtro

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Benefits of Universal Basic Income (UBI)

Abundance Mindset, Higher IQ

Scarcity Mindset Damages Mental and Physical Health

UBI and Job Flexibility

UBI Facilitates Entrepreneurship

UBI and Social Safety Nets

Targeted Interventions Beyond UBI

Regional Cost of Living Considerations

Psychological Implications

Regional Supplements

UBI Increases Mobility

Commercial

The Basic Income Podcast

How to Fund UBI in the U.S.

Enact Changes to the Tax Code

Shift Tax Programs and Brackets

UBI and Graduate Training

UBI and Financial Security

Parallel: UBI and Fellowship Income

Final Thoughts on UBI and Academia

Value of Teaching and Shifting Landscape in Education

Tell Us More About Your Podcast

UBI and Healthcare, Education

Best Financial Advice for Another PhD

Outtro

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