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Three Financial Strategies Every Early-Career PhD Should Employ (with Kate Mielitz, PhD, AFC)

February 3, 2020 by Lourdes Bobbio

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Kate Mielitz, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University who holds a PhD in financial planning and is an Accredited Financial Counselor. Kate gives her top three financial tips for early-career PhDs: celebrating financial wins, no matter how small they are; asking questions regarding your pay and benefits; and saving in advance so you can say “yes” to networking opportunities, from a meal or drink with a colleague to conferences. Kate also tells the story of a recent financial challenge she encountered that is highly relatable to anyone in academia. Due to her preparation, what could have easily been a financial disaster became just a hiccup.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

Teaser

00:00 Kate: It is okay to make a financial mistake. I want that very, very clear right now. We are human. It is only money. Yes, you heard it from me. It is only money. How do we use it? It’s the tool that we’re using like the hammer or the screwdriver. If you make a mistake, you pick yourself back up, you carry on, you figure it out. What’s the mistake? You ask the questions of yourself and figure out where you went wrong. You figure out where you need help going forward, and you take proactive steps. You’re going to be okay.

Introduction

00:43 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five, episode five and today my guest is Dr. Kate Mielitz, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University who holds a PhD in financial planning and is an accredited financial counselor. Kate and I discussed the top three financial strategies early career PhDs should employ: celebrating financial wins, no matter how small, asking questions about your pay and benefits, and planning to spend money on networking. Kate also shares her recent and pretty big financial mistake, which will be highly relatable to anyone in academia, and how she weathered it. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Kate Mielitz.

01:34 Emily: I am just delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Kate Mielitz, who is an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University and an accredited financial counselor. So we have an expert on the show with us today, for once. It’s wonderful. Please introduce yourself to the audience. Tell us a little bit more about how you got where you are and what you do.

01:55 Kate: Yes. Thank you so much Emily for having me on. This is a thrill for me. Let me give you the deep background first. I have 20 years combined experience, a bit little more than that, in collections, bankruptcy, fraud, financial counseling and education. I’ve been an accredited financial counselor for a little over 10 years. And the accredited financial counselor can be associated with and compared to the certified financial planning designation. The accredited financial counselor focuses on some of those foundational pieces, like, do you know how to budget? Do you know how to save? Do you have enough insurance? Do you know how to appropriately use credit? Whereas the CFPs look at wealth growth and wealth management. So my area of expertise is helping people get a solid financial foundation that works for them, that’s specific to them and their financial situation. Then I have my PhD in personal financial planning from Kansas State University and I work in the family financial planning program in the department of family development and family science at the Oklahoma State University.

03:06 Emily: Yeah. And again, it’s such a pleasure to have you on today, Kate. So, because you are an accredited financial counselor and a PhD in this area, and again, an expert, I am basically going to turn the reins over to you and let you direct where you want this to go. I asked you to give me your top three financial strategies that early career PhDs should be using. Let’s talk through those.

Financial Strategy #1: Celebrate Financial Wins

03:28 Kate: First, I want you to remember before I give these three strategies that it’s always dangerous to give me this much leeway, Emily, so thank you for that. But remember that no matter what I say, you need to be true to you. So ground this in your financial reality. And when I say for example, with my first strategy, always celebrate the progress forward that you make on your savings goals no matter how small, I mean that quite literally. If that means that for one month to the next, that all you can get in that savings account is an extra penny — celebrate it. It’s the small victories that then help us get into the bigger victories. Do we want to focus on just putting pennies, nickels, and dimes in savings? Not if we can avoid it, but when we are early career, when we are in graduate school and coming into postdoc and coming right up, it’s not always easy. Finding a way to commit to savings and then doing it always celebrating those small successes is so very, very important.

04:29 Emily: Yeah. I’d love for you to elaborate on the point you were just making about how, okay, even if it’s just a penny, it’s still worthwhile. It’s still something to celebrate. Even if the dollar $10 a hundred dollars, whatever scale we are at, it’s worthwhile doing. And can you talk a little bit about the reasoning behind that? Like why it’s worthwhile to save even if it’s just a few dollars? Because some of my audience members, it can only be a few dollars, if anything.

04:53 Kate: I have so been in those shoes. We could go forever on this, Emily. The fact of the matter is, any teeny tiny amount that you can put forward is still a teeny tiny amount that you’ve put forward. I have worked with families who are experiencing homelessness, who are out of work or supporting a family on minimum wage. So I get working with small amounts and the reason that we focus on the small amounts is because those are bite size. How do we eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Therefore we save a penny, a nickel, a dime, a quarter, a few bucks at a time to make that small progress. So then we’re more conscious about it. The more we’re thinking, “Oh, you know what, this is 34 cents that I got back in change — I’m going to put that in my savings account.” And then the next time, “Oh, this is 56 cents, I’m going to put that in my savings account.” Maybe we can’t do it every time, but as we think about these pennies, whether we collect in a change jar or it’s just, “okay, I made progress,” it’s gonna stick in there and we’re going have these little tickle reminders that it’s like, “well, I was successful. I was successful before. I can be successful this month.” And we’re not focusing on, “Oh my God, I only put 20 bucks in savings. I should just give up now.” Never give up! These teeny tiny amounts add up. Americans throw away billions of pennies a year. I mean, it’s mind blowing. So stop and think about what you can put forward.

Kate: One real quick caveat I wanted to share with you, Emily, on this idea. I remember watching an old Family Feud episode and the host asked, “we surveyed a hundred people on the street, what is the smallest dollar amount you would dive back in the trashcan to retrieve?” I was blown away that the number one answer was a $10 bill. I mean, I was like, are you kidding me? I have gone for 26 cents and I’ll do it because to me those small things make a difference. And I mean, whatever happened to the $1 bill and the $5 bill? Those, those are very valuable, as our quarters and dimes and nickels and pennies. So start small, save small, build as you can and you can do it. So celebrate that small progress.

07:11 Emily: Yes. Oh my gosh, I love this point so much. And one thing I wanted to add to what you’re saying is, one of the most valuable things that I think, and this is I think another rephrasing what you’re saying, of it sticks in your head when you start saving, you know, rounding up to the next dollar, whatever it is. I think what most important thing that it does is it changes your self identity to one of “I am a saver.”

07:32 Kate: Oh yeah, absolutely.

07:33 Emily: Doesn’t matter what the amount is. If you become a saver in your own mind, that’s what’s going to create that habit change that carries into the future when the dollar amounts can be bigger. But you have to start with that identity change. And the best way of doing that is to actually enact savings. Even if it is that small amount.

07:52 Kate: You’ve nailed it, Emily. I mean that’s it. It’s really about phrasing it. When you got your first published article, even if you were fourth or fifth author, didn’t you then say, I’m a published author? Well, yeah, the same thing goes. I’m a graduate student, I’m a successful graduate student. Oh my gosh. I’ve landed my first job. I’m a postdoc, I’m an assistant professor. Own these things. And yes, even if it’s pennies, you are a saver. So now let’s keep going. Absolutely.

08:22 Emily: Yeah. And going back to your original point of celebrate — what are some ways that you can celebrate without spending the 34 cents that you just saved?

08:31 Kate: Absolutely. Well, it’s kind of like weight loss. They say never celebrate weight loss by going out to eat. So we’re not going to celebrate saving by spending, but we’re going to maybe, and this is so key, especially for graduate students in early careers, but give ourselves permission to just kick it. Give ourselves permission to sit back and worry about the hustle, not worry about the side hustle, it exists, and just breathe. Whether that means taking an hour for ourselves and watching an extra show, or that means potluck in with a friend. You already have the food in the, in the cabinet. So let’s have somebody over. They bring a piece, you bring a piece. Nobody’s really out of pocket. Talking about it with friends. Call Emily, send her a message, send me a message. Say, “Hey, listen, I did it!” Celebrate those small things. Tell your mom and your dad. Sometimes it’s just a matter of not physically doing something, but just acknowledging it. Looking at yourself in the mirror and say, dude, you saved. That’s empowering and it’s exciting and it is a way celebrate.

09:41 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. So I think the word celebration maybe can be boiled down to just acknowledgement in some positive way. It could be as small as that or it can be bigger, if you have the means and the time to do so. But the key is do something that’s out of your routine to acknowledge that you accomplished something because you really did.

10:00 Kate: That’s right.

Financial Strategy #2: Ask Questions About Your Finances

10:01 Emily: Okay, let’s move on to your second strategy.

10:04 Kate: Second strategy: ask questions about money. Now, if you are in graduate school and you don’t have access, for example, to a retirement plan, maybe it’s not human resources that you’re going to. If you’re early career definitely be seeking out human resources to ask questions about your insurance plan or your retirement plan and what those things mean. But don’t ever think that you have a question that is too small or too easy or so-and-so is going to think I’m an idiot if I asked this. Listen, Emily and I would not be doing what we are doing if any question were too basic or too small. That’s how we thrive, right? Emily?

10:46 Emily: Exactly.

10:47 Kate: So if you don’t know who to ask, reach out to Emily, reach out to me. We are more than happy to answer any financial question you have because it is your financial health that you need to be focused on. So what resources? No, we’re not going to rescue. Absolutely not. But we’ll get you a list of resources. We’ll point you in the right direction. Sometimes it’s just as simple as, well does this mean that they’re going to match this and that’s a yes or no. So ask the questions and never be scared that “Oh, I’m a graduate student or I’m a PhD, I should know this.” No, not necessarily. That’s why they give PhDs in personal financial planning because other people don’t know. So that’s what I’ve got mine.

11:29 Emily: Yeah. I’ll say especially for, so obviously anyone who is an employee anywhere, you’re going to have an HR department or an HR person, or something. I say person because my husband works for a startup and they do not have an HR department, but they have a person, part of whose job is to handle this kind of thing. So there is someone, if you are an employee, who you can ask questions about the benefits that you’re receiving or even something as simple as, and this is a big question that we’ll get into later, “Hey, when’s my next paycheck coming? What amount is it going to be in?” Those, those are not even trivial questions for, let’s say a graduate student or a postdoc who’s changing how they’re being paid from this system to this system, et cetera. Things can fall through the cracks. It is very worthwhile to keep on top of these questions.

Emily: If it’s not an HR person who’s available to you, go to someone in your department, like the administrative assistant for the graduate program that you’re in or there is someone there. Even if they can’t help you with the question directly, they’re going to be able to point you to the next step. Definitely keep asking questions at your institution until you get the answers that you need around your benefits. And like Kate was just saying, you can go to outside people like me and like her if you have non institution specific questions. One I get all the time is “am I eligible to contribute to an IRA?” I can answer that question for you if you give me a few details about you know, how you’re being paid.

Financial Strategy #3: Plan to Spend on Networking

12:47 Emily: Now, what’s the third third strategy?

12:49 Kate: The third strategy is to plan to spend money networking. We talk a lot about planning to pay our rent. We talk about planning to pay our car payment or our car insurance, but we don’t always talk about planning to spend money socially. And, no, I’m not talking about going and kicking it with the girls or the guys after work, but that can sometimes be a networking tool. But I’m talking about really digging in and you know, once a month, every couple of weeks, having that networking lunch. Who is somebody that you met at an orientation or somebody who your major professor introduced you to, or somebody who you happen to find out via a Google Scholar search has the same area of interest as you in research, but it’s across campus in a whole different department. Reach out, invite that person to lunch. You can go splits down the middle, you can pay, you can switch off and pay as you go, but plan to spend that money. Because the old adage is that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. But truly it’s what you know and who you know, you’ve got to have both pieces in there and that is so insanely true in academia. It’s what you know and who you know.

14:02 Emily: I think it’s really, really smart, as you’re bringing this up, just to acknowledge that first of all, networking is an important part of career development at every single stage. Never think that you’re too early on to start networking. You are a person worthy of knowing and you should introduce yourself to other people. So plan for it at every single stage of your career and just acknowledge in advance that you’re going to have opportunities come your way and you want to be able to say yes to them immediately without being concerned about where’s that money going to come from? You want to be able to accept a lunch invitation when you’re not really sure if you’re going to end up paying or the other person will, or you want to be able to accept taking a few hours drive to another institution to do a meeting. Anything like that, where you might end up being financially are responsible for, you don’t want to have to say no to that because you’re not prepared. So I really love the idea, and tell me what you think about this Kate, of having, so I’m really into targeted savings accounts or sinking funds, so having a sinking fund or target saving account that’s labeled networking and there’s enough money in there for whatever you think might come your way.

15:08 Kate: You know Emily, I was just thinking in my head, “Oh, I want to make sure that I talk about the budget sheet that I use.” Whether you call it budgeting or spending plan or targeted savings. The fact of the matter is you’ve got to have a plan for those dollars and cents and yes, having that emergency savings — I’m going to remind you, emergency savings comes first — but then secondary to that, what else do you need to have that money set aside for. On our budget sheets, I tell people all the time, I tell my students, I tell my clients, I remind co-counselors all the time — it’s not my money, it’s your money. So what is your plan for it? Where do you intend to spend it? And write it down. If I’m going to spend a $500 a month on entertainment, which I don’t do, but if I was going to spend $500 a month on entertainment, as long as my budget is balanced and I have the dollars and cents to do that, I can do it.

15:58 Kate: Now, when we’re talking about planned networking and we’re talking about spending money consciously to do this, I’m not talking 50 bucks a month. I’m talking maybe as little as $20. But like you said, Emily, maybe it’s a few hours drive to another institution. Or maybe we’re talking about a conference. It’s really big in our industry, and so we’ve got to take the time to find the money. Now it can be very difficult to do on small salaries so seeking out what funding is available through my department, what grant funding, what fellowship, what scholarship monies might be available. Ask. Even if you, graduated, you’re in your first position as an assistant professor or you’re a postdoc, don’t think that that precludes you from opportunities to get assistance to travel. Ask. Worst case scenario, the answer is no, we got nothing. Okay. At least you know, and then going forward you can put those dollars and cents away toward that. But I’m still going to say try and keep that $20 in your pocket so that if you get the opportunity to say, “Hey, let’s go grab a Coke” or “let’s go grab, you know, a quick bite to eat and talk this through,” you’ve got it. It’s not always easy to do, so please do not hesitate to ask a qualified professional for help. How do I put this budget together on these teeny tiny little pennies that I am paid? And there are resources available to help you do just that.

17:23 Emily: Absolutely.

Commercial

17:28 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Tax season is upon us and while no one loves this time of year, it’s particularly difficult for post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows. Even professional tax preparers are often thrown for a loop by our unique tax situation. And don’t get me started on tax software. I provide tons of support at this time of year for PhD trainees preparing their tax returns. From free articles and videos, to paid at-your-own-pace workshops, to live seminars and webinars for universities and research institutes. The best place to go to check out all of this material is pfforphds.com/tax that’s P F F O R P H D dot com slash 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.

Saving tips for larger networking events

18:38 Emily: One thing I just wanted to follow up on about the conference travel, because now we’re not talking about a $20 lunch, right? We’re talking about potentially thousands of dollars, between fees and travel and the lodging and all of that. So of course, totally want to underline, ask and ask and ask if there’s any money available from the sponsoring organization, from your department, from your university, from anywhere you get funding, outside scholarships you can apply for. There’s many different potential sources of funding for travel awards. That’s something we’ve covered on the podcast in the past. But I want to say that in some fields, the money is less prevalent, right? And so in some fields you may be able to say, “Oh, of course I’ll be able to find funding for that conference.” And maybe you can keep, you know, just a smaller amount of money available for your incidental expenses while you travel. But in some fields you may know, “well, I may get funding once or twice during my PhD, but really I should be attending a conference every year.” Then, it’s a scary thing, but you just need to acknowledge that that is going to come up at some point and start preparing for it.

Emily: Because the thing is, I think what happens with a lot of people with conference travel is that they end up just with a reaction to it. They act retrospectively instead of proactively about it. If you put a conference on a credit card and it’s $2,000, whatever, you’re gonna end up paying that over months or years and with interest and you may as well flip that around and pay it upfront into your savings over months and years and be gaining interest instead of losing interest. You’re going to end up paying for it slowly over time either way, if it has to come out of pocket and you can’t get it paid for, so just do it upfront instead of on the backend and you’ll come out much further ahead financially. I just hate it when I hear about students who have to forego these really wonderful conferences or networking opportunities because they can’t find the funding, they don’t have the money saved. And it can be a real blow to your career potentially. So it’s just something that’s worth building into your budget, as you were just talking about, early on, you know, from the beginning.

20:36 Kate: And let me, if you don’t mind Emily, I’d like to follow up on, on the comment you made with the credit card. Credit cards are amazing tools when used appropriately. We’re not going to use a hammer to put in a screw, we’re not going to use a credit card to finance everything. But if you know that you can utilize some points off that credit card and/or, emphasis on the and, you can pay that off, say for example, six months from now I will have this conference paid off rather than just making the minimum payment, but you can pay twice or three times the minimum payment, even if you can’t front load the conference because you found out about it last minute, or Oh my gosh, I never thought about it this way and I’m coming up on it. Don’t be afraid to use the credit card as a tool, but I just want you to be careful and I want you to be conscious and I don’t want you to think about, “Oh, it’s okay, I’ll carry a minimum balance for the next however long.” No, no, no. Go into it with the forethought to say, “all right, I’m going to pay this off in six to 10 months. This is how I’m going to do it. And at the same time, I’m going to be saving for next year’s conference.” Again, you are not walking this path alone. You have resources. Ask, ask, ask, ask, and you will get answers and you will find help to help you make these decisions and figure out how you’re going to use these dollars.

22:04 Emily: Absolutely. I feel I have to at this point put in a bid for my own services, which I do offer one-on-one money coaching. And so if you, one of the listening audience members, wants to work with me on these kinds of issues around budgeting or around paying off debt or investing for the future or whatever it might be, please contact me and I will be happy to, you know, have a short call with you to talk more about that. You can find more details about that in the show notes. And Kate, I don’t know if you offer individual services at this point or if you are, uh, you know, strictly in your academic role.

22:37 Kate: I do offer services. You can find, contact information for me and other professionals like me at afcpe.org and you can just search, find a counselor. I think it’s either find a financial counselor or find a financial professional in your area. I happen to be in Oklahoma, but there are many of us throughout the country who work specifically with students, graduate students, postdoc, early career, the broke, the wealthy, across the gamut. So we are available afcpe.org.

23:09 Emily: What I love about that AFCP database, and also if you wanted to search for a CFP, similarly, is that the professionals identify themselves by their areas of expertise or types of people that they prefer to work with. And so for example, for me, I’m not an AFC, but I specialize in graduate students, postdocs and early career PhDs. So probably anyone listening, your,within my area of specialty. But let’s say you had a different situation like you are in the military or your spouse is in the military, or you’re dealing with maybe an inheritance due to the death of a parent or you know, there are all these other special situations that might come up that maybe that’s your primary identification, not as a graduate student or postdoc, and maybe in some other area. That’s what I love about these databases that you can really search and find who is looking for…you are someone’s perfect client, right? And you can try to find that person through one of these databases. Thanks for adding that a resource, Kate, and that’ll be in the show notes as well.

How a AFC Deals With Financial Challenges

24:05 Emily: Okay. I think we’re ready to talk about your financial challenge that you have had recently due to your academic position. This will be very relatable to many people in the audience.

24:15 Kate: Okay, so let me lay it out really quick. Miscommunication is what this boils down to. Misunderstanding. Me, even as a financial professional, not asking the right question. Not full information being passed down the pipeline. So I wanted on the board, nobody is at fault here, but if somebody has to take it, it’s probably me. I didn’t ask the right questions, didn’t think about it the right way. But what happened is this: I have a nine month contract and I wanted to get paid over 12 months from the start, but because of when I did my onboarding paperwork, I couldn’t do it, I had to wait until the next spring. Well, the way I understood it was that when I did my 12 month pay, my pay would become effective July 1st, the new fiscal year of this year. Well, I knew that I was going to be out pay for about a month, but it turns out that that’s not what the actual situation was. Yes, they would input the information, but my 12 month pay would not actually start until my next contract started. My next contract starts September 1st, my first pay September 30th. So instead of one month without pay, I’m four months without pay. Ouch. Just to put it mildly.

25:42 Kate: Fortunately, because by nature I am a saver, I am a scrimper, I have very little fun. My husband is just like, “Can we go?” “No, I got to put the money away. No, we can’t. No, don’t ask me again.” I put money aside and my emergency fund will be empty come payday because I’m still pulling from savings with his retirement, his disability money to pay the bills. But come September, we’re back on the horse. And so yeah, the end of September. So I’m eking, I made it, I had enough money set aside. I had, I didn’t even realize it at the time, but with small changes, I had three to four months in the emergency fund. I’m always shooting for six. We had had a lot of fun and relaxation prior so I could have tightened the belt a little bit more. We only made a few small changes. This has been a hiccup for us. Not a, “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh,” but again, another learning experience.

26:45 Kate: It is okay to make a financial mistake. I want that very, very clear right now. We are human. It is only money. Yes, you heard it from me. It is only money. You set a hundred dollar bill on the table. You get up and walk away. Forget the wind. It’s not going to get up and walk its feet. How do we use it? And so it’s the tool that we’re using, like the hammer or the screwdriver. And so if you make a mistake, you pick yourself back up, you carry on, you figure it out. What’s the mistake? You ask the questions of yourself, you figure out where you went wrong. You figure out where you need help going forward, and you take proactive steps to fix it. You’re going to be okay. We’re okay. I’m going to be rebuilding my emergency savings over the course of the next year, because that’s probably how long it’s going to take to get things back into the groove. But that’s okay. I now have a plan of action and I lived through it. My family lived through it. Nobody starved. This is a good thing.

27:47 Emily: Yeah. I think that this issue that you ran into, again, for the people inside academia, I mean, I hope it hasn’t happened to you, but you probably know someone this has happened to you. They didn’t, as you were saying, didn’t fully understand the contract that they were signing, didn’t fully understand the timeline that the other party was working on. And you end up without — in your case, it wasn’t specifically without summer funding, but that’s how it sort of laid out — but many people will end up without funding for a summer or a semester or something, at some point in their graduate degrees. Hopefully not as a postdoc, although I have known postdocs that that’s happened to, that they go a lapse and pay for some period of time. But this is exactly what an emergency fund is for, right? The primary way you calculate how large an emergency fund should be is if I lost my income for three to six months, how am I going to pay the bills in the meantime? And that is exactly the kind of emergency fund you had so you were able to sustain yourself and your family through that period. But it’s a super, super relatable problem. I’m really glad that you brought this up because hey, if it happens to you as a graduate student, that’s a mistake that Kate made and so you don’t have to feel bad about making that mistake.

29:01 Kate: Don’t feel bad at all!

29:04 Emily: People with PhDs in personal financial planning can make this kind of mistake too. So don’t feel bad about it. But the point is just to the greatest extent possible to prepare in advance for whatever comes your way. It might not be specifically this kind of lapse in income, but at some point you may have a lapse in income for a variety of different reasons. It’s a great reason to have an emergency fund. All kinds of other emergencies might occur and other great reason to have an emergency fund. As we were saying earlier, use that mindset of putting away even the small amounts of money. Start snowballing that account bigger and bigger and bigger, and over time it’ll eventually become a full-fledged emergency fund or whatever it is that you’re working on. Thank you for sharing that story, Kate.

29:44 Kate: Absolutely. And then when you do use it, like I’m in my position, I’m empty or I will be empty in about three days. Start over. And if that means that I’m starting small and I will, because my last paycheck when I was really focusing on building it, I was getting paid over nine months. Now I’m getting paid over 12 months, so my paycheck is going to be smaller. So my contribution to savings is going to be smaller. But that doesn’t mean that I give up. That doesn’t mean that I look at that and say “Oh, I’m never going to make it.” No, I am going to make it. Is there something I can cut out? Like, I don’t need to go downstairs to grab something to eat everyday. I can pack that sandwich, or you know, small things like that. The things that we hear, no matter where we go, here are easy ways to trim your budget. They are true. Not all are applicable, don’t get me wrong, but if it’s a $1.50 for the soda at the vending machine and you’ve got a cold Coke at home, grab it from home, stick it in your backpack and off to work you go. Small, teeny tiny changes will add up. That’s not just in contributions to savings, but also in decreases to your budget. The small make a difference, because gosh darn those pennies add up.

30:54 Emily: Absolutely. One last point that I wanted to make about this story and what you were just saying, is that if you do end up choosing to make some sacrifices to your lifestyle to fund a savings goal. For example, you’re needing to rebuild your emergency savings, it’s going to take a while. You’re going to have to do a few sacrifices in the meantime. Don’t think that that’s going to be forever. Don’t think that just because you have to give up your weekly lunch out, or whatever it is that you are in the meantime, it’s a temporary thing that you need to do to reach this goal. Once you have reached the goal, you can reevaluate. Is that something that I want to continue in that habit that I’ve created? Or is it time to add that spending back in now that I have a little bit more financial security. But don’t have the mindset that just because you make the cut for some period of time, it has to be forever. Things will be different in a few months or a few years and you can reevaluate at that point.

31:47 Kate: And also don’t be afraid to say, I can’t afford to do it this month. It is absolutely empowering to say I can’t afford to do it this month. Maybe that means that you don’t participate. Okay. But if you are honest with yourself and have the courage to say, I can’t afford it, I guarantee you the person you’re talking to is going to understand, because they have been there or maybe they’re there, but they’re hiding behind a credit card or they’re hiding behind borrowed funds. Listen, people, it happens and it happens all the time. So it is okay to say I can’t afford it. And yes, I know that point number three was the plan to spend money networking. Well, plan to bring a Coke and a sandwich from home and go meet on the bench. Go meet at the union and people watch. Go for a walk in network. You don’t have to have $20 every time if it’s not going to work. If it’s not in your budget, it’s not in your budget. But don’t think that the money needs to stand in the way of that networking.

32:48 Emily: Yes, absolutely.

How to Contact Dr. Kate Mielitz

32:49 Emily: Well Kate, this has just been a wonderful interview and I’m so glad to have met you and to be able to introduce my audience to you and you know, let them know a little bit more about what an AFC is and you know, what do you guys do? And so thank you so much for joining me today.

33:03 Kate: Thank you so much. It’s been an absolute thrill to be on today, Emily. I really appreciate it.

33:08 Emily: And where can people find you if they want to follow up about something?

33:11 Kate: People can find me on Twitter, @KateMielitz, and I have a sneaking suspicion Emily that you’ll put that in the comments. You can also find me on Instagram, @KSMielitz , or if you just Google my name Kate Mielitz and Oklahoma State University, it’ll pop right up and give you my university contact information as well.

33:35 Emily: Beautiful, thank you so much.

33:36 Kate: Thank you.

Outtro

33:38 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPphDs.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, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars covered the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

PhD Job Transitions Are an Opportunity to Break Negative Financial Habits

October 28, 2018 by Emily

Pursuing a PhD and post-PhD jobs usually means frequent professional and personal upheaval. Changing jobs/”jobs” and moving are typical for each stage of training and possibly career: posbacc programs or jobs, master’s/PhD programs, postdocs, and Real Jobs. Every time you change jobs or move, your routines and habits are upended, including those that affect your finances. The upside of these frequent transitions is that each time you give yourself a clean slate upon which to write new habits. That’s great news for anyone with a degree of dissatisfaction with their current habits.

I recently read Better Than Before* by Gretchen Rubin, which is about how to create and maintain habits. The quotes included in this article are from the chapter “Temporary Becomes Permanent: Clean Slate.” While it is not a financial book, the strategies included in Better Than Before can be applied to your financial life, and the Strategy of the Clean Slate struck me as particularly useful for PhDs.

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

Why the Clean Slate Works

A great proportion of our decisions each day are not ones we make consciously but rather are part of our routine or standard responses to stimuli. This is great when you have cultivated positive habits or at least are not in any negative habits. But a negative habit can be incredibly challenging to break under normal circumstances.

Any beginning is a time of special power for habit creation, and at certain times we experience a clean slate, in which circumstances change in a way that makes a fresh start possible–if we’re alert for the opportunity.

Experiencing a clean slate – a wiping away of your previous habits in part or much of your life – can greatly benefit you if you had any negative habits or even a desire to start new positive habits. The old stimuli that prompted you into your negative habit are no longer there, and instead you can tie your new stimuli to positive habits. There is also an opportunity for a strong change in your self-conception, such as “In my new job/city, I am a person who ___.”

There’s a magic in the beginning of anything. We want to begin right, and a good start feels auspicious… Because we’re creatures of habit, the first marks on that slate often prove indelible. We should start the way we want to continue.

When you experience a clean slate for whatever reason, you should very intentionally start practices that you want to become positive habits and keep yourself from falling back into old habits. This will likely take some preparation in advance of the occurrence of the clean slate. You should devote some time to brainstorming the positive habits you want to begin practicing and the negative habits you want to drop so that you’re ready to hit the ground running when you have that clean slate.

I now pay very close attention to the first few times I do anything because I know those decisions will shape my baseline habits; to deviate from them will feel like a deprivation or an imposition.

Job Transition and Moves Are Perfect Clean Slates

The slate may be wiped clean by a change in surroundings: a new apartment, a new city, even rearranged furniture. Or some major aspect of life may change: a new job, a new school, a new doctor.

Job changes for PhDs come relatively frequently throughout training and sometimes following, and many or all of those job changes may very well involve a move. A new job in a new city is just about the cleanest slate you can get when it comes to your habits (not including changes in the members of your family): new home, new job, new co-workers, new commute, new city to learn.

Not only are you in a different environment with your old triggers and routines wiped away, but the people surrounding you are no longer reinforcing your prior habits and associating you with them. You have a chance to forge relationships without succumbing to any negative habits.

What Kinds of Financial Habits Should You Lose with a Clean Slate

Mindless Spending

The entire point of a habit is that it takes little to no conscious decision-making to carry out. If you are aware of any mindless spending that you currently engage in, resolve to drop it with your upcoming clean slate (if not before!).

Mindless spending is spending that you neither need nor even truly want to do. Perhaps it gives you some satisfaction, but it’s all too fleeting. You pick up a coffee every day during your commute because that’s what you always have in your hand on your way in. You browse a certain store and make a purchase on the same day of the week because that’s how you kill time in between work an an evening activity. You go out with the same people to the same bar/restaurant/club every weekend because that’s where you went when you first met them. Somehow these actions became habits even as your desire to do them faded. You may not have even realized the cumulative effect they were having on your finances.

With your clean slate, you have the opportunity to drop these old habits and begin how you want to continue, e.g., brewing coffee at home, taking a route that doesn’t pass any shops, and meeting people through fun and less expensive activities.

Living Beyond Your Means

In many graduate programs and at many places, limiting your spending to the means provided by your stipend/salary is not possible or at least not palatable. In those cases, accruing debt, usually student loan or credit card debt, is a necessary evil. Still more PhDs (in training) accrue debt because of a lack of sufficient motivation to avoid it.

Living beyond your means is a negative financial habit, necessary or not. When you start a new, higher-paying job, make a clean break with that habit. In your new job, you are A Person Who Lives Within Your Means. In fact, you should not only resolve to not accrue any new credit card (or similar) debt, but you should start repaying your accumulated debt. If credit cards were your debt of choice, stop putting new charges on them entirely.

Hiding Your Head in Sand

Sometimes a negative financial habit is simply the absence of a good financial habit. Your financial state during grad school or after can be so discouraging that you stop looking at it entirely. You might slip into being unaware of the balances in your checking and savings accounts, the balances on your credit cards, the total of your student loan debt, the value of your investments (if any!), etc.

At some point and after some healing, you’ll start looking at your finances again – perhaps when you have a higher income and the future looks rosier. With your clean slate, leave behind your habit of hiding your head in the sand and put in place a new habit of regularly looking over your finances comprehensively, even if it’s painful at first.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Keeping up with the Joneses is a negative financial habit for anyone, but it’s particularly impossible for PhDs on trainee income. You don’t want to be in that habit when your higher income rolls in, as you might actually be able to make a go of keeping up. Do whatever you need to do to (leave/filter social media, stop watching HGTV) to keep the Joneses out of sight and out of mind.

What Kinds of Financial Habits Should You Implement or Maintain with a Clean Slate

The Strategy of the Clean Slate can help us launch a new habit with less effort.

With your clean slate, adopt a new identity as a person who practices positive financial habits and is actively working to improve your financial health.

Tracking/Budgeting Your Spending

Tracking your spending and creating a spending plan (a budget) are fundamental tools for managing your finances well.

Tracking can be done relatively automatically with software, so the easiest way to implement this habit is to sign up for Mint/You Need a Budget/similar, hook up your bank accounts, and check on your spending periodically (at least once per week).

After you have an idea of your expenses, you can start projecting them with a budget, which will help you be mindful about your spending in your trouble areas. You may have to update your budget frequently if you’ve recently moved, but after some time checking in with it once a month or more will become automatic.

Track Your Net Worth

When my husband and I transitioned to our first post-PhD Real Jobs, I started manually tracking our net worth. Yes, our Mint account has it, too, but I liked my own formatting. Once per month on the 1st, I copy all of our account balances into an Excel spreadsheet and update my graph. You don’t need to check frequently for the habit of tracking your net worth to be valuable. After all, “That which is measured, improves.”

Negotiating

That a candidate will attempt to negotiate a job offer is almost always expected. (Grad school offer letters are an exception, though some students do attempt to negotiate. Negotiating a postdoc offer is more common than you might think.) If your clean slate comes with a new job, be sure that you negotiate that job offer (and every one that follows). You may make an exception if the offer is clearly and objectively on the generous side of appropriate, but even then you can still try to negotiate some benefit. A raise gained through negotiation is the easiest money you’ll ever earn, and it compounds throughout your career!

Automatic Saving and Being “a Saver”

Post-clean slate and with a higher income, you are a saver, no matter what you were before. Enforce this positive financial habit by setting up automated transfers to your savings account, loans, or investments, depending on your goal. Incrementally increase your savings rate over time.

Investing can be very intimidating to someone just starting to get their finances in order. It’s doubly intimidating for someone who doesn’t have access to a 401(k)/403(b)/similar like a grad student and some postdocs. With your clean slate, put in place the positive financial habit of investing (if that’s an appropriate financial goal). If your new job offers a retirement account match, by all means take full advantage, and invest beyond that up to your goal amount. Never leave match money on the table!

It’s a shame not to exploit the power of the strategy of the Clean Slate when it presents itself. For instance, the time of moving introduces so much upheaval into our customary habits that change becomes far easier. In one study of people trying to make a change–such as changes in career or education, relationships, addictive behaviors, or health behaviors including dieting–36 percent of successful changes were associated with a move to a new place.

The Downside to a Clean Slate

While the clean slate offers tremendous opportunity for forming new habits, it can disrupt a person’s existing good habits by eliminating a useful cue or breaking up a positive routine.

To this point in the article I have largely assumed that you have some negative financial habits that can be eliminated by a Clean Slate, and I’ve suggested positive financial habits to fill the vacuum. But you also may well have positive financial habits that will be jeopardized by the Clean Slate. It’s understandable that you habits will be disrupted by a Clean Slate as dramatic as a move and job change, so as soon as possible (before you feel settled and ready) jump right back into your old positive habits so you don’t slide into negative habits in their absence. As much as possible, maintain monitoring your habits through your transition so you have an accountability system urging you to return to them as soon as possible.

How to Prioritize Financial Goals When You Can’t Do It All

June 11, 2018 by Emily

As graduate students, we can be overwhelmed easily by everything our stipends are ‘supposed to’ accomplish for us. If you read any personal finance material (including mine!), you will see that your income should go toward saving for retirement, paying off your debt, saving an emergency fund, saving for your short-term goals… oh, and feeding, clothing, and housing you, too! It can seem impossible to make any financial progress when faced with all these demands. Instead of trying to do everything at once, prioritize the various financial goals you might set based on both the math behind them and your personal disposition toward saving, investing, and debt.

A version of this post originally appeared on GradHacker.

In my opinion the first two goals you should accomplish with your stipend are obvious, and after that you’ll have leeway to choose among competing valid goals.

Goal 1: Pay for Your Basics

The primary purpose your stipend should serve each month is to pay for the basic expenses in your life, such as housing, utilities, food, and transportation. If that’s all your stipend can manage, it has served its purpose: providing you with enough money that you can fully devote yourself to your studies. Increasing your short- and long-term financial security will have to wait until after graduation.

However, keep in mind that it’s very possible for these basic expenses to inflate from “need” into “want” territory. “Want” aspects of these basic expenses include living alone, housing amenities (access to pool, gym, social spaces), a car/a car that’s worth a significant fraction of your yearly income, eating out, bar tabs, etc. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t spend money on those above-basic aspects of these expenses, but just be aware that you can’t justify that portion of the spending as “needs.” It’s easy for your large, fixed expenses such as housing and transportation to get away from you, so spending your stipend on the “want” aspects of your basics should be weighed against using it for your other possible financial goals (more on that later).

Goal 2: Save an Emergency Fund

Everyone should have an emergency fund, even if it’s small. An emergency fund is cash reserved only for emergencies. It’s basically money that will prevent you from going into debt when something unexpected happens. A full emergency fund is on the order of 3-6 months of expenses, but that shouldn’t necessarily be your first goal. A small emergency fund of $1,000 is a great start when you have other pressing financial goals, such as debt repayment. It’s not prudent to delay repaying high-interest-rate debt to save a larger emergency fund the purpose of which is to prevent you from going into high-interest-rate debt.

Start with a $1,000 emergency fund as your second financial goal, but after that let the math of your other choices and your gut help you decide whether to keep building the emergency fund or move on to another goal.

Accumulating Cash vs. Growing Wealth Mid/Long-Term

Cash savings has great utility. If your expenses are quite uncertain over the next year (such as when you near graduation), it makes sense to save up to be able to pay for the most costly scenario in cash. It’s also a good idea to keep cash on hand for irregular expenses, such as in a system of targeted savings accounts. As just discussed, a larger emergency fund can bring great peace of mind to certain people.

But you should limit your cash savings to the amount that you may well need in the short term (1-2 years plus any mid-term goal expenses like a house down payment or wedding). To increase your net worth in the long term and ultimately become financially independent, you need to invest for the long-term and pay off debt. As soon as you have sufficient cash on hand (by your estimation), you should start investing or paying off debt, but deciding when you have enough cash is largely about your comfort level.

It’s also fine to simultaneously invest/pay down debt and save additional cash, as long as you can accept that your progress toward each goal will be slower. For example, if you decide to save 20 percent of your income, 10 percent can go toward investing/debt repayment and 10 percent can go toward cash savings.

Investing vs. Debt Repayment

The earlier you get compound interest working in your favor, the better. You can accomplish that by investing or paying off debt. Deciding between investing and debt repayment is again a balance of math and personal disposition.

First, do the math. Put numbers on your various possible investing and debt repayment goals. Your debt repayment “rate of return” is the interest rate of the debt in question. The long-term average rate of return on your investments is estimated from your asset allocation. For example, a grad student invested 100 percent in large-capitalization US stocks could anticipate a 9-10 percent long-term average rate of return (before adjusting for inflation). Other asset allocations will have different expected long-term average rates of return. Mid-term investments should be more conservative, with a lower expected average rate of return but more muted peaks and valleys.

Compare your investing and debt repayment expected rates of return, giving a handicap to the debt repayment side of the equation because there is no risk associated with debt repayment as there is with investing. Given a certain expected rate of return for your investments, the math would argue that debt below a certain interest rate will be a lower priority. For example, if you expect an 8 percent long-term average rate of return on investing, any debt below about 5 or 6 percent might become low-priority.

Second, evaluate your personal disposition. If you feel passionate about one type of goal over another, that should have some influence on your decision. I believe that your passion for a financial goal positively correlates with the amount of effort (i.e., money) you will put toward achieving it. For example, if you hate your debt, you should pay it off, even if the math favors investing. If you are very excited to start investing, perhaps you could reduce the debt repayment handicap in your math to only 1 percent. Just don’t justify keeping high-interest-rate credit card debt because you want to start investing!

The one caveat I’ll make to allowing your personal disposition to hold sway over the math is for a very risk-averse person: you will have to start investing eventually, even conservatively, if you want to reach financial independence. You will automatically pay your installment debt off in time even if you just make the minimum payments, whereas there is no mechanism to force you to start investing. So it is acceptable to prioritize (non-mortgage) debt repayment over investing, but when you’re done paying the debt, be sure that you hold yourself accountable to take the next step to start investing.

Know that More Goals Means Slower Progress

The more financial goals or purposes for your money that you have, the slower your progress will be toward each of them. If you feel strongly about working on multiple goals at once, accept this knowing that you are making some progress in all the areas that are important to you. But if you are frustrated by slow progress to the point that you end up not devoting money to any goals, working on one or a small number of goals at a time is a better fit for you. In this case, set concrete dollar-amount goals that you can achieve within months or a small number of years and work toward them intensely. For example, set $4,000 as your goal emergency fund size, but once you achieve it, move on to something else. Paying off one debt entirely could be another concrete goal.

Living Your Life

Since our income is limited (unless we have a side income), any money that you put toward the above types of financial goals is money that won’t be used for your everyday comforts and living expenses. By no means do I suggest that you suffer through a Spartan lifestyle while you put every penny possible toward your long-term future. Everything must be in balance for you. A guideline like the Balanced Money Formula may help you work through what percentage of your income to use today and what percentage to put away for tomorrow.

My Choices During Grad School

When I was in grad school, the financial goal that most excited me was investing. Therefore, after ensuring that I could live within my means and establishing a $1,000 emergency fund, I started investing 10 percent of my gross income into my Roth IRA. Over time, I built up cash savings in my targeted savings accounts and also increased the fraction of my income that I saved for retirement. To devote more money to these goals, I reduced my living expenses by developing frugal practices. Paying off my remaining student loans was my lowest priority as they were subsidized during deferment. I’m happy with these choices given my personal disposition (not risk-averse), but if I were to do it over again I would have beefed up my emergency fund earlier, delaying increasing my investing percentage for a short time.

How to Improve Your Finances this School Year

October 4, 2017 by Emily

A new school year brings the sense of a fresh start, even for those of us who are largely unmoored from the academic calendar. Even with a PhD trainee’s limited income, we can harness our renewed optimism for our finances each September. If you are willing, there are steps you can take this week, this month, and this year to improve your relationship with money, your money management skills, and your net worth.

A version of this post was first published on GradHacker.

Improve Your Finances This Week

Identify your life values

There is no single right way that everyone should use their money; your own individual best practices will be based on your life values. Your values are the concepts that you hold most dear; examples include freedom, fun, family, health, excellence, and so on. Identifying what is most important to you will bring great clarity to your financial decisions. You can choose to spend more resources fulfilling your values and dispense with things and activities that do not.

Further reading: Determining Your Values and Financial Goals in Graduate School [A Personal Finance for PhDs Guide]

For example, when my husband and I identified ‘community’ as one of our top values, we knew we wanted to allocate more money for traveling to visit our families and attend weddings. To enable that, we cancelled our cable TV and stopped eating out for convenience, as those areas of spending did not correspond to any of our values.

Create a balance sheet

A balance sheet is a snapshot of your entire financial life – every asset and every debt listed by type, financial institution, balance, etc. If you have any confusion or disorganization in your finances – or the tendency to bury your head in the sand – a balance sheet will help you see your whole situation at a glance. If you have debts, you can also include the minimum payments and interest rates so that you can easily decide which payoff to tackle first. Your balance sheet may reveal vestigial accounts or other duplications that you can clear up this week.

Start tracking your spending

My top financial ‘tip’ for grad students newly interested in their finances is to implement a tracking system for all their financial transactions. The simple act of tracking is often enough to start optimizing behavior. You can do this manually with anything from a notebook and pen to an app such as Wally or automatically with software that links to your accounts such as Mint or Mvelopes.

Create a prioritized goal list

Taking your values and balance sheet into consideration, list the current financial goals you would like to reach. You may be able to work on some of those goals simultaneously. For the goals that should be tackled sequentially, choose the order in which you will focus on them so that you can make quick progress. For example, if you have multiple debts you want to pay off, use the debt snowball or debt avalanche method to create your prioritized list.

Improve Your Finances This Month

Implement a frugal strategy

Trying out a new frugal strategy is a great way to unblock what can feel like an impossibly tight financial situation. You don’t have to commit to it forever – just give it a test run so that you can evaluate how much money you save and how it affects your life. (Bonus points if the frugal strategy you choose reduces a fixed expense!) You can find tons of suggestions online (example: 66 Ways to Save Money in New York City) or among your peers.

Further viewing/reading: A Month of Frugal Tip for PhDs-in-Training by PhDs(-in-Training)

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Optimize your food spending

Food spending is a prime target when you are trying to free up more money, as it’s among the largest variable expenses in a grad student’s budget. Check out these articles on how to get the most for your money:

Add to your emergency fund

Even a small amount of available cash can save your bacon in the case of an emergency. If you have nothing put aside for emergencies right now (46% of Americans surveyed couldn’t even cover a $400 emergency), set a goal of saving $1,000 for that purpose. If you already have $1,000, consider setting a larger goal based on your current monthly expenses or your insurance policy deductibles. You can add to your emergency fund with a monthly savings goal or in dribs and drabs as you free up cash.

Improve Your Finances This Year

Right-size your housing and transportation

As housing and transportation eat up a huge fraction of a grad student’s income, it’s important to pay only what you can afford or – in some high cost-of-living areas – as little as is feasible. If you realize that you are overspending on rent or your car, it will take some time and doing but you can correct the situation by moving, getting a roommate, selling your car, switching to cycling for your commute, etc.

Develop a side income

There are two ways to free up more money each month: spend less or earn more. Grad students tend to focus on the “spend less” side of that equation, forgetting that “earn more” is sometimes also an option, depending on the source of your funding and your department’s culture. A judiciously chosen side job can advance your career as well as generate income, providing you with opportunities far beyond what your program can.

Increase Your Income

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Regularly invest and/or pay off debt

In some situations, the best a grad student can do is keep his head above water financially in grad school, but in others it is possible for a grad student to increase her wealth. The best way to increase your net worth is to make saving, investing, and/or paying down debt regular and automatic (pay yourself first). Don’t only use frugality or a side income to free up cash flow that is then lost to the ether. Commit that cash flow to working for you through automatic monthly transfers to your savings account, investments, or loans.

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What are you doing this week, month, or year to improve your finances?

What Grad Students Can Learn from the FIRE Community

February 20, 2017 by Emily

At first blush, graduate students and the FIRE community don’t have much in common. FIRE stands for Financial Independence/Retiring Early; it is a movement to retire or reach financial independence (working becomes optional) very early in life, often by age 30 or 40. FIRE aspirants usually have high-paying jobs that they wish to stay in for only a handful of years, whereas graduate students are taking a large (theoretical) pay cut to acquire training that will set them up for long, productive, not necessarily high-paying careers.

Further Reading: Early Retirement Isn’t for Us

However, I think there is a great deal that graduate students can learn from the FIRE community (and vice versa), financially and otherwise, even if they do not have the same goals.

1) They have a clear vision of what their future will hold.

FIRE people regularly fantasize about what they will do in retirement/upon reaching financial independence. They do so in detail. They have a plan for where they will live and travel, how they will fill their days, what skills they will use or learn, who they will spend time with, and how they will serve their communities. This detailed picture steels them for the sacrifices they are making in the present and motivates them to reach their goal on schedule.

Unfortunately, it’s fairly common for graduate students to apply because graduate school is the next step in their educational progression or because they haven’t been exposed to careers outside academia. Even those who matriculate with a career in mind (usually research and/or teaching) decide against pursuing it in the course of their training. This lack or loss of career focus usually results in students languishing during their training or wasting effort on projects or skill acquisition that won’t serve them later on – not to mention the time not spent on appropriate networking. The clearer the career goal, both for students pursuing academia and those pursuing alternative careers, the more effective the student’s training can be.

2) They have a roadmap to their goal and obsessively track their progress.

Another lesson along the same lines is that FIRE people have a detailed plan for how and when they will reach financial independence. They know exactly how much more money they need to earn, into what vehicles they will save and invest, and how they are going to maintain their lifestyles in the meantime. They track their financial progress on detailed graphs and spreadsheets.

Grad students do create, from time to time, plans for their research progress, but then the plan always seem to go awry or get delayed. That is the nature of research. But the more closely a grad student can stick to a detailed plan, checking off experiments or sources one by one, the better off she will be in terms of keeping her motivation and productivity high. There should be an increasingly clear picture of what the end point will be as time goes by.

3) They work their tails off.

FIRE people tend to be super hard workers. They often have demanding primary jobs, on top of which they might add one or more side income streams to get to financial independence even faster. FIRE bloggers additionally document their experience online.

There is no doubt that grad students can work hard, but many fall into a pattern of working in fits and starts, such as in advance of deadlines. The uncertainty of the progression through grad school exacerbates this tendency. It’s very difficult to push yourself to work hard when you’re not sure where the hard work is leading (see points above).

4) They are uber frugal.

When I jonined the financial blogging community and started reading about other people trying out frugal strategies and challenging themselves to no-spend weeks and months, I wasn’t very impressed. That version of frugality was just my normal life living on a stipend!

But FIRE people really know what they are doing when it comes to frugality – they are an extreme breed. The bar for frugality was set early on by Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme (a PhD scientist!), who lived in an RV for a time. While not many FIRE people go that far, they have become masters of lifestyle cost minimization in a variety of creative ways. Grad students looking for ways to cut their lifestyles further can take some pointers from other FIRE bloggers like Mr. Money Mustache and the Frugalwoods.

5) They save like mad.

There is no doubt that FIRE people understand the power of compound interest. They have taken it completely to heart. They are mad for investing and building up a large portfolio quickly so they can utilize the 4% rule to fund their lifestyles in perpetuity. Certainly many graduate students understand the power of compound interest as well. But some grad students I talk with just haven’t gotten around to starting to invest yet. Some think it’s not really worth getting started because they could only invest a small sum or a small stream. But the fantastic thing about compound interest is that, given enough time and a decent rate of return, it can turn even small sums into staggering ones. A FIRE person knows that putting away an extra $10, 50, 200 or whatever amount really does make an impact. Your savings rate is the most important factor in determining your ultimate portfolio balance, not the rate of return that you get on your investments.

Further reading: The 4% Rule and the Search for a Safe Withdrawal Rate; How Important Is Your Rate of Return?; Starting Down the Road to Financial Independence? Don’t Obsess Over Investment Returns, but You MUST Obsess Over This.

Graduate students really have stepped off the beaten path when it comes to education and career, even though it doesn’t feel like it inside academia. Sometimes it’s worthwhile to take a look at other unusual but highly successful communities to adopt their best practices. Grad students would certainly benefit from taking a few pages out of the FIRE community’s book, even if their objective is not financial independence and early retirement.

Values, Goals, and Tactics

December 12, 2014 by Emily

Personal finance is personal. The root reason that there is so much variety in how people handle (or don’t handle) their money is because we all have a slightly different constellation of values. What we value in life influences the kinds of goals we set for ourselves, and our individual goals will determine the tactics or strategies we choose to reach them. If you choose your tactics, like cutting expenses in certain areas or picking an account type, before examining your values and setting your goals, you will be acting inefficiently and may even give up on your system.

Further Reading: Determining Your Values and Financial Goals while in Graduate School (a Grad Student Finances Guide)

Values

Take a few minutes to think about what few concepts you value most in life – what brings you the most joy, what you’re striving for, what you would do if you knew you had a short time to live. Then, if possible, identify how money relates to those values or add more that are money-specific.

David Bach has a wonderful exercise in Smart Couples Finish Rich on determining your top five money-related values by asking yourself the question “What is the purpose of money in your life?” Some examples of values are spirituality, balance, health, marriage, security, freedom, creativity, family, making a difference, fun, and happiness, but you should generate your own unique list. You can read the chapter on this exercise from his book on his website (it’s for everyone, not just couples).

Goals

Once you have determined your values, take an inventory of the goals you’re currently working toward and where your money is going. Do you see that your current financial practices are in harmony or in conflict with your values? If you have never examined this before, you are likely to find there is some room for improvement. Now you can set new goals that align with your values and start making changes to how you direct your cash flow to achieve those goals.

Here are some common values and examples of goals that someone with those values might set that have financial implications.

Value: security; Goal: have a fully funded emergency fund, save for retirement
Value: freedom; Goal: achieve financial independence ASAP by cutting living expenses and increasing income/savings rate
Value: travel; Goal: save monthly for one big trip per year
Value: homemaking; Goal: save a down payment, improve credit score
Value: family; Goal: live on one income so one parent can be at home full-time
Value: health; Goal: pay for a gym membership and healthy food by cutting expenses in other areas
Value: helping others; Goal: give a certain amount of money each month to an organization

It may be the case that you are making a short-term sacrifice to be able to more fully align yourself with your values later, but it will be helpful for you to know that your dissonance has an end date. For example, perhaps ‘family’ is one of your top values, but you moved away from your family to attend grad school. That is a limited-time situation, and identifying ‘family’ as a top value lets you know that it is important to you to find long-term work near your family after you graduate. Perhaps you are in a phase of debt repayment, and it feels like all of the things you value are being neglected because you have to funnel everything possible toward paying off debt. In that case, what you are really doing is positioning your life to be even more in line with your values after you are done paying the debt because you will have much more control over your cash flow.

Some other useful questions to ask yourself alongside determining your values is to examine some other aspects of your personality that will affect how you view and handle money. Are you a spender or a saver? What is your risk tolerance? How important is it to you to live within your means? Your answers to these questions will greatly influence the tactics that you choose. For example, a spender and a saver might have the same goal of being financially secure by saving for retirement, but they will go about it in different ways because what comes naturally to the saver may need to be carefully orchestrated by the spender. Likewise, if two people have a goal of having a certain amount of money in savings in 10 years, but one is risk-averse and one embraces risk, the risk-averse person will likely have to commit to a higher savings rate (but she’ll be able to sleep at night).

Further reading: Investing in Experiences Is Better than Buying Stuff; How to Stop Procrastinating Your Personal Finances

Tactics

Once you have a goal, you can pick one or more tactics or strategies that will help you achieve that goal. People often access personal finance at the level of tactics or goals instead of values, which is a mistake because not every tactic will maximally support each goal and value, and tactics are not necessarily appealing to all personalities. However, some tactics will support many different types of financial goals for a broad spectrum of personalities, which is why you will find them commonly discussed. Such tactics include tracking your spending, paying off debt, saving for the long-term, and having access to cash. But that doesn’t mean that you won’t need to come up with additional, less-used tactics to meet your goals.

Further reading: First Values and Goals, Then Strategies; Americans Are Broke: Here’s Why, Conquer Your Financial FOSO (Fear of Starting Out)