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How This Outdoorsy Graduate Student Budgets Her Money and Time for Hobbies

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In this episode, Emily interviews Selena Cho, a second-year graduate student at the University of Utah who receives the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Selena shares her budget breakdown, through which her values and the joy she experiences in using her money in this way shine. Selena has right-sized her housing, transportation, and food spending so that they are fairly low but still meet both her needs and wants. By intentionally choosing a university in a medium cost-of-living city and maintaining moderate expenses, Selena has plenty of room in her budget for investing, eating out, and entertainment, which in her case means biking, skiing, camping, and other outdoor pursuits. Don’t miss Selena’s final advice about cultivating happiness during graduate school.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

S13E5 Image for How This Outdoorsy Graduate Student Budgets Her Money and Time for Hobbies

Teaser

00:00 Selena: We recently discussed the stipends at Utah in the department, and I would say the rough estimate for the stipend is around $22 to $24K for other students. And like having that in my head, I also made sure to like kind of live within those means as well because like, you know, the GRFP is only for three years. So, therefore, like if you know my PhD takes, you know, four or five years, I have to probably live on that stipend so I made sure to live within those means.

Introduction

00:40 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and the founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 13, Episode 5, and today my guest is Selena Cho, a second-year graduate student at the University of Utah who receives the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Selena shares her budget breakdown, through which her values and the joy she experiences in using her money in this way shine. Selena has right-sized her housing, transportation, and food spending so that they are fairly low but still meet both her needs and wants. By intentionally choosing a university in a medium-cost-of-living city and maintaining moderate expenses, Selena has plenty of room in her budget for investing, eating out, and entertainment, which in her case means biking, skiing, camping, and other outdoor pursuits. Don’t miss Selena’s final advice about cultivating happiness during graduate school.

02:02 Emily: I’d like to give you an update on how things are going for Personal Finance for PhDs and myself as the owner and sole employee. This year, I’ve had some aha moments about how I want to spend my time in the business, and I’ve taken steps to restructure so that I’m spending more time doing things that really energize and inspire me and less time doing things that are not so fun or draining. First, I decided to continue shifting how I deliver my financial education. This shift started a few years ago as an experiment, but I’m now confident that it is the right direction for me. Pre-pandemic I was doing mostly live in-person seminars, which then switched in 2020 to live remote webinars. I realized that what I find most fun and rewarding in the business is interacting with you all, the PhDs and PhDs-to-be, through answering questions and facilitating discussions and the like. That’s why I do this interview-based podcast as opposed to another form of content. I also love creating educational materials, for example my slide decks and scripts, but in terms of actually presenting them, I only like it. Overall, I really enjoy giving live seminars and webinars, but it’s because of the interaction component, not the presenting component.

02:09 Emily: So, the shift is that I’m offering much of my content now in a pre-recorded format paired with live Q&A and discussion sessions. My experiment years ago was with a pre-recorded tax workshop, and I now offer my two tax workshops exclusively in this format, which I believe serves both me and the participants really well. In 2021, I also created a series of four deep-dive pre-recorded workshops for graduate students and postdocs on financial goal-setting, increasing cash flow, investing, and repaying debt. This year, I’m creating a year-long workshop series for prospective PhD students. Through this format, I get to spend my time largely on creating and updating the materials and interacting with the people who have already viewed or read through them, and I get to skip the middle part of presenting. I find this super enjoyable and am either nudging or requiring my university clients to move in this direction with me, depending on the content.

04:21 Emily: Second, I decided I want to return to working in person—selectively. I didn’t do any in-person work from the start of the pandemic through spring 2022, but in the past several months, I attended two conferences in person and facilitated two in-person discussion and Q&A sessions for the aforementioned deep-dive workshops. I had the best, best time at every single one of those events. They were so life-giving. It sounds cheesy but it’s true! I love my work, and I did not realize how much I had missed talking with people face-to-face for work. I now see that I’m definitely experiencing Zoom fatigue, specifically when it comes to giving webinars. On the other hand, I like not traveling and being at home with my family. So, I don’t want to return to the kind of travel I did pre-pandemic, and I don’t need to sustain or grow the business because I have all these pre-recorded offerings like I just discussed. So, my conclusion is that I would like to start back up with in-person seminars and workshops, but I’m going to be selective about the kinds of events I agree to and make sure that it’s going to be really fun for me to participate in. Conferences would definitely qualify. Ideally, like I had a chance to do with the discussion and Q&A sessions I just mentioned and will again next month with my workshop Hack Your Budget, the events would involve more interaction and less presenting.

05:47 Emily: I’ll wrap this up now with a heartfelt thank you to all of you who have recommended me as a speaker or recommended my tax workshops to your graduate schools, postdoc offices, grad student associations, etc. Finding the appropriate sponsors for this educational content and convincing them that it’s an in-demand topic is something that I could never do on my own. Thank you so much for planting those seeds. It’s the work that I do with universities, etc. that funds the whole business, including this podcast and the other free content I make available. If you would like to see it continue, and I hope you do, please consider making such a recommendation today. Thank you again, and that’s it for this update. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Selena Cho.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

06:50 Emily: I am delighted to have joining us on the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast today Selena Cho. We are doing a budget breakdown today. So, we are going to hear how Selena manages her budget as a second-year graduate student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. So, Selena, welcome to the podcast. Will you please introduce yourself a little further for the listeners?

07:09 Selena: Thanks for having me, Emily. Well, hello everyone. I’m Selena Cho. I’m currently a second-year PhD student studying mechanical engineering at the University of Utah. I did my undergrad at UMass Amherst in mechanical engineering, and I’m actually in a transition phase where I’m switching labs.

Income and Household

07:27 Emily: We’re here to talk about your finances in Salt Lake City. So, please tell us more about your income and who’s in your household and those kinds of details.

07:38 Selena: So, I currently live in Salt Lake City. I’m originally from Boston. I grew up there all my life. And currently, I’m funded by the NSF GRFP. So, that’s $34K a year. And right now I live with my boyfriend and two other roommates in a four-bed, two-bath. The total rent is $2,500, and Sam and I are paying $600 each because we’re sharing a room.

08:06 Emily: Okay. Sorry, let me get this straight. You have four bedrooms and four people, but you are sharing a room.

08:12 Selena: Yes.

08:12 Emily: So, who has the extra bedroom? What’s going on there?

08:14 Selena: So the extra room is our gear room <laugh>.

08:18 Emily: Okay.

08:19 Selena: So, I guess I explain my hobbies yet. So, the household here we ski, we rock climb, we mountain bike, we cycle, we play tennis. Anything you can name, we do it. So, we also camp a lot too, meaning we have a lot of gear, which we have our fourth room dedicated to all of our gear. Yeah, <laugh>.

08:45 Emily: So, it sounds like you and your boyfriend and these other two roommates all share this like certain kind of lifestyle that apparently requires a lot of equipment that fills an extra bedroom and the garage in the house and so forth, all the storage. But in any case, your share of all this rent comes down to $600 per month. So, that’s what’s going into your budget, which seems like a pretty manageable amount of money, right? On that $34K GRFP stipend, right?

09:10 Selena: For sure. It’s actually the most expensive place I lived so far in Salt Lake City. But I would say the average rent in Salt Lake is around six to $800. I think that’s pretty fair, especially if you have roommates and stuff. Previous places I lived in were like $525 and like $435, and I think those were kind of like outliers in terms of rent because they were quite low. And originally, this place was listed for $2100, meaning it was going to be like $525 per tenant. But the landlord increased it actually to $2,800 and then we’re like wow, that’s a $700 increase. And we talked it down to $2,500, which was more manageable, especially on a graduate stipend.

Furniture Flipping Side Hustle

10:03 Emily: Wow. It’s good to know actually that negotiation is still possible even in an era of rapidly rising rents. Okay. So that is great. Is there anything else you want to add about, you know, your income or anything like that?

10:18 Selena: Sam and I like to pick up random furniture off the streets or wherever we find on KSL or Marketplace, and then we like to just sand it down and like make it pretty and then list it and resell it for, I don’t know, whatever price. So recently, we found a free teak table with eight chairs, an outdoor table setting, and we just like sanded it down, put some teak oil on it, and then we like resold it for $250, which was fun. <Laugh>.

10:52 Emily: Alright. So you have a little sort of monetized hobby, side hustle kind of situation. How much would you say that brings in on average on like a monthly basis?

11:02 Selena: Safe to say like around like $200, I think, a month at least. Because we also just like find random things and sell random things. And I guess that like really fluctuates. But the thing is we don’t really depend on it at all. It’s just more of like, oh now we have a little extra money to, I don’t know, go out to eat or something like that.

Financial Goals

11:22 Emily: Yeah, that sounds great. Well, let’s dive into your financial goals. So, we’ll talk about your expenses in a moment, but right now I want to know more like yeah, what are you doing overall to improve your personal financial situation? What kind of goals do you have going on?

11:37 Selena: So, I contribute to a Roth. So, I max it out. I think this year is $6,000, and I’ve been doing that for the past three years I think. So, I started in my undergrad, and my parents also started a life insurance for me. And so, I contribute that every month like a hundred dollars for a total of $1,200 a year. So, those are like my financial goals right now. I wish I had access to like a 401(k) where I can contribute but I don’t.

12:09 Emily: Well, I mean the $500 per month that’s going into the Roth IRA is already an awesome goal, awesome investing rate. So congratulations on your commitment to that. Do you do that regularly? $500 per month?

12:22 Selena: Pretty regularly. I think like if I can put in more that month, I will. Like I think early on in the year I just wasn’t spending that much money, therefore I was just like, guess I’ll just contribute to my Roth IRA this year. Because like I have, you know, a rainy day fund where I have enough in my savings where I can probably live off for a year. And then I also have like my checking account that has more than enough for me to live on with a year. And honestly I think I’m just like saving a little bit too much, and I should probably just contribute more to more of my investment accounts. Because I do have like your regular individual taxable accounts too.

13:04 Emily: Yeah, I was just going to say that would be a great next step if you wanted to invest beyond, you know, the amount in the Roth IRA, that a taxable brokerage account would be perfect. And you’re already there. So that’s great, it’s there if you ever want to to use it. Yeah, that’s one of the things that I teach in this framework that I use. I have like an eight-step financial framework that I teach, especially during my seminars. And one of the reasons I give ranges around like how much cash to have on hand is kind of for what you just mentioned, like sometimes it’s possible even as a graduate student to have too much cash on hand. Too much in the sense that it could then, you know, be used toward another purpose like repaying debt or used towards investments or something like that. And so, some people, because they don’t have a defined goal around that, they just keep accumulating and then it’s like well at some point it’s not really serving you to have that much cash. So, it sounds like you’re kind of at that like tipping point right there.

13:52 Selena: Yeah, I also recently paid off my car. So, after graduating, one of my quote graduation gifts that I got was a car where I supposedly share 50/50 with my parents, but it turned out to be 75 me, 25 my parents. So I recently was like, I have so much cash on hand right now. Literally why am I not paying it off? So I did, which is fun because I’m planning on selling that car to get another car that fits my lifestyle. So, like right now, the car that I bought was $18K, and right now even by a dealer’s party or whatever I can at least get $20-21K. So, Private Party on Kelley Blue Book right now is between 23 to 26. And my car is really low miles right now and I’m just planning on reselling it because I can make a lot of money off of it and planning on getting a vehicle that’s currently costing around $12-14K. So, that’s like my current, I guess financial goal is me selling off this car and buying a vehicle that suits my life better.

Income Tax

15:12 Emily: Yeah, I mean I love that on all fronts. Like, you know, tailoring the possessions that you have to the life that you actually want and of course selling a car in this like weird market where it happens to be that you can sell it for more than you bought it for. Wow. Who would’ve ever expected that? But that’s awesome all around. Okay, I know you have one other, what I would call kind of a financial goal, which is to handle your income tax because you’re on the GRF stipend. So, can you talk about how you do that?

15:40 Selena: Oh, so I think you had like a free Excel sheet that calculated your income tax. So I just used that and I just trusted it and hoped it worked. And the IRA isn’t coming after me right now, so I guess I did it right. So I think based on the sheet I believe it’s like around, I say set aside about $200 a month for the income tax. And that’s something I just automatically do. I didn’t set up like a new checking account just for that because I personally don’t need it because I know that $200 is there and I know I’m not going to touch it. And that’s just me, personally.

16:23 Emily: So, it sounds like it goes in with your other sort of general savings that you mentioned earlier. Yeah. But you’re just sure to put aside an additional $200 every time you get paid.

16:32 Selena: Yep.

16:32 Emily: Awesome. Well, we will link to that spreadsheet and the email series actually that it comes in in the show notes. So, if anyone else is interested in grabbing it, I’m glad it seems to have worked for you for last year. Hopefully, it was pretty accurate. Yeah. Okay, so we’ll link to that.

#1 Largest Expense: Rent & Utilities

16:48 Emily: Okay, let’s dive into your expenses, and we’ll just go one by one. So, starting with your largest monthly expense, what is that?

16:57 Selena: Largest is usually rent and utilities. So, currently, right now my rent is $600 and my utilities, which is just gas, electricity, and Wi-Fi is about $30 to $40 I think per month. So, let’s say right now my rent and utility is $650, so that’s my largest expense normally.

17:24 Emily: Now, you mentioned earlier that this is the most expensive place you’ve lived so far in Salt Lake City. Can you talk about that decision to spend more on rent than like you absolutely had to?

17:35 Selena: Yeah, so I think I wanted to live in a place that had, you know, more sunlight and just had more room for all my stuff and also living with friends. So, the people that live in my house right now, I ski with them and I bike with them and I climb with them. And basically, it was a place where we had more than enough space for everyone’s stuff and also have room for like a little workshop. So like for the little side hobby of like flipping furniture. So you know, we have like a whole garage where we have like a workbench and like all our tools and stuff. And for me like doing that makes me happy. Like doing all like the climbing, all the outdoor activities and hanging out with my friends makes me happy and flipping furniture makes me happy.

18:29 Selena: So, for me, I can justify paying slightly more because I think my quality of life increased. Compared to like when I was paying $435 for rent and I had like a window, but the thing is it was like under like a loft, therefore there’s no direct sunlight. So my room was dark all the time, therefore I didn’t really want to spend time in my room and I just like was over at my boyfriend’s house more, and basically I was just like paying money, paying rent for a space that I didn’t even live in, which was like in my eyes like a waste of money because I didn’t even use it.

19:08 Emily: Yeah. So, another kind of lifestyle decision, definitely this one takes a little bit more, but overall your rent is only just over 20% of your gross income. Of course that’s not taking into consideration your taxes, but that’s nowhere near, you know, the kinds of rent percentages that we see for graduate students in, you know, higher cost-of-living areas. So like yeah, even spending a little bit more, you’re still like well under the, you know, maximums that you sort of theoretically should be under to have a balanced budget. So, you’re totally free to spend more than that if you want to. It sounds great.

19:39 Selena: Yeah.

Commercial

19:42 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2022-2023 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/speaking/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

#2 Largest Expense: Groceries

21:05 Selena: I think like, I guess like moving on to my next expense, which is groceries. So, I cook all the time. I am a huge cook. I love cooking, and I love food because it was just like part of my family. We always ate well no matter what. And I was very, very like I only buy, you know, fresh produce. I never buy processed food. Because I just thought that I can make it myself. It’s so much more expensive to buy the box even though it’s more convenient. And I was like basically still saving a lot of money where I think my grocery bill per week was like, like $30 to $50 because I just knew how to buy groceries. Because like a lot of grocery stores, they would have like reduced bags of produce which was like a whole like, I don’t know, I would say like a five-pound bag of vegetables for like $1.25.

22:03 Selena: So, like I would buy that. And I have learned to spend a little bit more because that’s where I spend basically the most amount of money, next to my rent. And I’ve learned to, you know, like I go splurge at Costco a lot now because of it where I’m like, I deserve it because like I don’t spend money on anything else. So like why don’t I like eat better? Where I can, you know, like yeah I’ll buy salmon, I’ll buy a pack of salmon type of deal. And I used to like not even do that because I was like, oh you know, $20 is a bit too expensive for this. So like now I’ve just learned to spend a little bit more because I know I can afford it. Because previously I was just really like tight budgeting everything and I think, I wouldn’t say like I was like, you know, like sad about it but I think I wasn’t living my life as much.

23:06 Emily: I love another example of an area that you are, you know, you’ve sort of modulated how much you want to spend and found like a good balance for you right now. So, you mentioned I think that you were spending $30 to $50 a week on your like lower spending end. So like how much would you say you’re spending now?

23:21 Selena: I would say about $75. So, it’s not that big of an increase. So, $75 to like $100. The thing is I now split my groceries with my boyfriend. So, I would say normally groceries is between $300-400 per month.

23:43 Emily: Per person. Yeah.

23:44 Selena: No, no, no. Between the two of us.

23:46 Emily: Okay. Okay. So, your part is $150-200.

23:50 Selena: Yeah exactly. And I think because there’s like two of us, I feel like I’m like I can go buy more because there are two people, but the same time I’m really not expending, like it’s not a linear trend where like therefore you know, a second person means double the money. It really wasn’t. If anything, in some ways I save money because I’m able to like afford like expensive cuts of meats that I normally wouldn’t buy if it was myself.

Cooking and Meal Prepping

24:20 Emily: Interesting. I’m actually wondering how you fit in all this like cooking that you love to do with, you know, the work schedule obviously and then all the extracurriculars as well. How do you manage your time in that sense?

24:32 Selena: Well, I cook every night <laugh>. I don’t think I normally like schedule it, it’s just like a natural thing for me to do. It’s like it’s dinner time, therefore I’ll cook. So, when I go grocery shopping, I already have an idea of what I want to eat that week. And then usually all the ingredients that I get, I don’t like getting ingredients specifically for a recipe. I dislike doing that. I feel like you spend a lot more money when you do that. And I’ve learned to just work with what I have, because it’s not going to drastically change the taste of the dish at all. So, I’ve just like learned to get an idea on like what I want to eat. So let’s say like the week is like “Mexican week,” then like I know that I’m getting tomatoes, I’m getting avocados, I’m getting onions and stuff and all that stuff I can cut myself.

25:28 Selena: And that’s like stuff I can make a big bulk of, because I can make a whole big batch of beans, a whole big batch of pico. And then maybe at Costco, I buy the $4.99 rotisserie chicken, which is a steal. And I would get that and I would just basically break down the chicken myself and just like have it in the Tupperware all week. So then throughout the entire week, all I really need to do is just put my burrito bowl or my salad together, because I already have it pre-prepped. Or like, I like finding recipes I can make big bulk of, like Mediterranean. I can make a lot of chickpeas. I can roast chickpeas really fast. I can make all these like yogurt sauces like in you know, mason jars and stuff. And that’s stuff I can eat the entire week. So, I think it’s a lot of like buying stuff that you can easily maintain through the week. Like I would spend like an hour or two maybe on like a Sunday or whenever I buy groceries and break it down and then really all I need to do is just heat up stuff or maybe like make an additional salad where it just still feels fresh to eat.

26:46 Emily: I’m so glad I asked this question because when you were describing how you were eating earlier, I definitely was not picturing this. But it sounds like you are doing batch cooking, bulk prep and then your, you know, cooking or meal assembly each night is really just drawing on some of those ingredients you had prepped earlier in the week. So, it’s like a pretty fairly fast and easy like assembly at that point, which I think is great for coming home from work or whatever you’ve been doing that evening. So, that makes a ton of sense to me. Is there anything else you want to say about your grocery budget?

27:17 Selena: Don’t hardcore meal prep. I think my definition of meal prepping is making individual things that can be paired with other things. For instance, my chipotle yogurt sauce that I make. I can use it on a salad, I can use it as sauce on a burger, I can use it in a sandwich or anything. I like to make items that are very versatile and that I can change up what I’m eating so that it doesn’t feel like the same meal every dinner or lunch. I would say that’s my tip for people for meal prepping. It’s not have chicken, broccoli, and rice every single meal. It’s making stuff that can be used with other items is my advice.

28:11 Emily: Yeah, when I was sort of studying up on meal prepping a couple of years ago, that was a real insight that I got at that time, what you just articulated. I had first imagined meal prep as being what you just said, like actually assembling the same meal you’d eat like every day for a week. But instead, you can do the shift that you did, which is just assemble the components and then use the components in different ways. Like you said, salads or sandwiches or wraps or bowls or you know, whatever it might be. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Thank you.

#3 Largest Expense: Eating Out

28:40 Emily: So what is your third largest expense?

28:43 Selena: I would say eating out. So, I like to try different restaurants, and I keep that to like once a week type of deal. And I have a budget of probably I would say like $100-200 a month for eating out. Because I just grew up trying different restaurants, so that’s something I continue. And my partner and I, you know, enjoy doing it and exploring restaurants. And we didn’t want to be like hindered by the fact, you know, like, oh you shouldn’t eat out because it’s expensive. It’s like, I think the idea is that since we budget for it, we can spend money for this thing because we care. We, you know, enjoy it and that’s what we do. So, we budget about, you know, $100-200 a month to just eat out, try different restaurants, and not feel guilty about spending that money.

29:41 Emily: Yeah, I mean look at, you know, the elements we’ve mentioned so far. Like your income being what it is on the GRFP, your rent being reasonable, you have, you know, your car paid off, you cook almost all of your meals. So, spending, that’s only like $25 to $50 per person per meal if you’re only eating out once a week, which is like, yeah you’re trying like a pretty decent restaurant. Like that’s not convenience eating, that’s like a good like dining experience, right? So, I love this that, I don’t know, I’m just, every item I’m just like, oh wow, you’re really thoughtful about this and you really like tried to, you know, figure out what you want your lifestyle to be. This is great.

#4 Largest Expense: Gear

30:14 Emily: Okay, fourth expense then.

30:17 Selena: Gear. Gear like camping, ski passes, bike. So, I would say more these are kind of more one-time expenses. So, let’s say like, I think the most expensive thing I ever purchased was my bike, which was like $850. And you know, that’s a large amount of money to be spending on one item. But, you know, I’ve used that bike a lot to justify the purchase of that bike because it’s, you know, part of my lifestyle now that every weekend we go biking during the summer, or during the week we go for morning rides before work. And then in the winter it’s skiing season or snowboarding. I do both. So, a ski pass last year on the student discount from the U is $450 for the base icon pass and I’ve skied 25 days on it, so that’s like $18 a day for skiing, which is worth it in my head because I enjoy it very, very much.

31:23 Selena: And then coming out here I got, you know, a new pair of used skis for me. So I think, and I got a pair of good ski boots. I would say ski boots are probably the first purchase you should make that’s big for yourself, especially if you’re skiing because that’s the most important thing is ski boots, how comfortable they are. And it was like, should I buy like a cheap pair or should I buy a relatively good pair that fits me very well? And I decided on the latter, where I think I spent I think like $250 on it. But this pair of boots is going to last me for at least five to 10 years. So, that’s how I justified that cost. And then my skis, I got them for a hundred dollars used, and I can wax it myself and sharpen it myself.

32:17 Selena: So, I save another 50 to a hundred dollars there for tuning. This year, I think the ski pass I’m planning to get is like $750, which is very expensive for just, I know it’s only one mountain which is Alta. And it’s a lot of money, but we enjoyed skiing at Alta the most. So, why don’t we just only go to Alta compared to all the other places that we already visited and went for a few days? So, we decided to spend a little bit more so we can ski the place that we actually want to ski.

32:51 Emily: So, how much would you say that average like monthly/year category comes out to?

32:58 Selena: I would say about like $100-200 if it’s like spread out throughout the whole year. Because these purchases are kind of random at random times, because they’re not common occurrences.

Handling Irregular Expenses

33:11 Emily: Yeah. You mentioned when we were chatting before the interview started that you don’t use a system of targeted savings accounts, which is something I suggest for like a budgeting way to handle these like irregular expenses. So, why don’t you tell us how you do handle these irregular expenses?

33:28 Selena: I don’t think I personally plan for it. It’s more of like, because I already set aside money for my Roth and then like my savings, I’m good with my savings right now where I don’t feel like I need to contribute more. Because I already like set aside money for rent, groceries, Roth, and everything else. I know that I have this budget already that I can just spend money on. Because like I have the savings where I don’t touch it. That’s like my rain day fund. And then I have my checking account where it’s like more than enough for like really big purchases. And the checking account is the only account that I really touch throughout the whole month. And basically whatever is in that account, I can use because I already did everything beforehand.

34:23 Emily: I see. So, if I can express that in my own words, you know, you have your investing goals going on, you have your savings set, you have a need to draw down from savings that’s more like sort of emergency or like longer-term savings. And then you have your checking account, and just by glancing at your checking account, you can see how much money is sort of built up there. Because it sounds like you know, you’re living beneath your means in a sense of every single month you’re probably building up some buffer, more buffer in that checking account. And then occasionally you’ll have like these larger drawdowns if you have like a big purchase to make. But just by looking at the balance, you can see whether or not you have money available for a larger purchase. And you, it seems like, sort of naturally think about the course of a year.

35:03 Emily: You know, you mentioned earlier, oh you do these activities in summer, you do skiing and snowboarding in the winter, so you know you’re going to have some larger expenditures, maybe at the beginning of those seasons, but it’s something you can see coming. It sounds like a lot of this is coming intuitively to you or it’s something you’ve practiced very naturally for years. Whereas like I get very like analytical and like spreadsheety about this because I’m not like naturally that way. Like I would just spend money if it was available to me. So, I have to like hide it from myself to make sure I don’t spend it, right? Until the time comes when I do.

35:36 Selena: Mm-Hmm <Affirmative> that’s fair. And also, because I spend like the extra money for nicer items for my gear, these are one-time purchases for the next five to 10 years. So, like I would say last year was quite an expensive year for me because I bought a lot of new gear. I bought a bike, I bought skis, I bought boots and then like all the equipment, all the clothing that comes with it. But the thing is, I did not need to spend any of that this year because I already made that purchase. So like yeah, like sure I already saved on money, and the only thing I need to really buy now is just like ski passes, which are very expensive but it’s the only thing I need to buy. I don’t need to buy anything else.

36:21 Emily: Yeah. So really, that like, we called it a gear category earlier. I would actually just, leveling that up, it’s basically just entertainment. It’s just your flavor of entertainment, which is going to be buying ski passes and stuff like that. Because you really did the gear purchasing, you know, in the past as you just said. And going forward it’s just going to be like access to the, you know, places you want access to.

Note About Transportation

36:40 Emily: Well, this just sounds fantastic. Do you want to add a fifth expense this list, or do you want to stop there?

36:48 Selena: I don’t have any other expenses, maybe gas but <laugh>.

36:53 Emily: Well yeah, I was going to say we didn’t have any transportation expenses in this top, you know, four. So, would you put that at five, gas? Or like car insurance?

37:01 Selena: Not really, because I bike to work. So, and also, University of Utah, all the students and faculty have free access to the public transportation. So, whether it’s the bus or the TRAX system, which is like a train. And so, that’s free for all the students. And at all the places I lived in, I made sure that it was near public transportation. So, whether like I can walk to it or I can bike to a bus, which all the buses also have a bike rack on them, so I can just bike to the bus and then ride the bus to school and then I bike back home. So, because of that I don’t need to spend much money on gas besides like on weekend trips. And I would say like right now gas is like, what, $4.20 right here, I think? So, usually a tank is between like $40 to $60 for me. And I do that according to like my, you know, spreadsheets and stuff. I only do that once or twice a month. I have to say, I bike to school regardless of the rain or storm. Last year, I biked every single day to school or to work, whether it was snowing or not. Because I can always get to a bus at least.

38:25 Emily: So, it sounds like, I now see what you meant earlier when you said you were thinking of, you know, exchanging your car for one that better fits your lifestyle, because this is not a daily commute car, right? Or it is a daily commute car, but you don’t have a daily commute so you don’t need it for that purpose. You really want a car that’s going to fit your, as we were talking about earlier, the camping and the going up the mountains and so forth, all of that stuff. So actually, like the gas spending is almost really under that category that we talked about before under entertainment, because you’re using it for those weekend trips and everything and so, it’s access to the places you want access to for your entertainment purposes. Yeah.

38:58 Emily: Well, that sounds so great. Okay. Any other comments you want to make about your expenses?

39:05 Selena: So, we recently discussed the, like stipends at Utah in the department. And I would say like the rough estimate for the stipend is around $22-24K for other students. And like having that in my head, I also made sure to like kind of live within those means as well, because like, you know, the GRFP is only for three years, so therefore like if my PhD takes, you know, four or five years, I have to probably live on that stipend. So, I made sure to live within those means.

39:43 Emily: Yeah, that’s a great idea to make your fixed and larger expenses like your rent to fit within that lower stipend amount.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

39:51 Emily: Let’s go to the question that I conclude all of my interviews with, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or it could be something completely new.

40:07 Selena: I think when you’re applying to schools, know your lifestyle. So for me, I, you know, got into schools that are, you know, in big cities, you know, like Washington, the Bay Area, Boston, and Philly. And all of those cities were just very high-cost living, rent-burdened, you know, places. And they didn’t have the outdoor access that I wanted. Because I know that I’m going to be, you know, going somewhere on the weekends I know that I will be. And I wanted the access to be there, whether it’s, you know, climbing or biking. And I didn’t, you know, want to live in a rent-burdened city. I wanted a city that, you know, fit my outdoor lifestyle. And Salt Lake was that city for me. Where, it’s getting pretty expensive, but it’s not nearly as expensive as, you know, Boston where I grew up in. And for Boston, like I needed to drive two hours up to New Hampshire if I wanted to go climb outside.

41:13 Selena: And then like, you know, all the ski mountains are, you know, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, which are all at least a two-hour drive. And then in Salt Lake it’s a 30 to 40-minute drive with traffic up the mountains, and I have four resorts near me right now that are less than one hour away. So, there was that for me. And I think while like the lab and the project is very important, the most you spend your time on is you know, your life outside of the lab. And I think it’s very important to be happy outside. Because I know that I need to be active for me to be happy. And I think people need to take that into consideration when picking grad schools. Because I’ve seen many of my friends that are, you know, very sad in the cities because they can’t really do anything, or things that they want to like back in undergrad going outside and stuff. So, that’s what I recommend.

42:11 Emily: Obviously, you know that I love this advice so much of really as you said, knowing yourself, knowing your values. I think your, like joy in your lifestyle has come across so clearly as we’ve been talking through how you break down your budget. Because your budget does reflect what your values are and what you want to be spending your time and your energy on. Of course, work is part of that and you chose a great university to go to. But as you said, work is actually a relatively small <laugh> fraction of how we spend our time. And so, what you’re doing outside of that is going to have a huge impact on your quality of life. And so, I’m just so pleased to hear this advice from you, and I I hope that a lot of, you know, whoever is listening to this who’s a prospective graduate student will really take that to heart and think critically to themselves about what they want their life to look like in graduate school, and hopefully apply to some places that are going to be able to, you know, offer them that lifestyle.

43:06 Emily: And in your case, you’ve paired it of course with also having a fantastic fellowship that pays you, I’m assuming above, you know, what the base stipend would be in your department, and so forth. And so, you really got kind of the best of both worlds of having like a decently high stipend in an okay cost-of-living area and getting to do all these other fantastic things with your time. So, I’ve just been so pleased to hear about your lifestyle. So, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast, and it’s really been just a joy to talk to you!

43:36 Selena: Thank you for having me! I enjoyed my time here.

Outtro

43:43 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This Graduate Student Doesn’t Sweat the (Financially) Small Stuff

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In this episode, Emily interviews Keiland Cooper, a fourth year PhD student in neuroscience at the University of California, Irvine. Thanks to his inquisitive nature, Keiland has developed a financial philosophy that he has applied to his own financial management practices since his days as an undergraduate. Through focusing on the big picture, he has increased his income as a graduate student and right-sized his housing and transportation costs, which has enabled him to accumulate cash savings and invested assets. You won’t want to miss Keiland’s insight at the end of the interview into the optimal money mindset for a graduate student.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

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Teaser

00:00 Keiland: We’re all PhD students. Think of it as like a research project, right? There have been times when I’ve sat down and like analyzed my financial data in Python, right? It’s, you know, it’s kind of fun to sit down and play with the spreadsheets and add things up. Most of us are nerds here, and finance can be a very nerdy topic. So, it doesn’t all have to be scary. And certainly, all of us are getting PhDs, so we all have the aptitude in one way or another to learn about these topics. Even though some of them might seem really complex at first, they certainly don’t have to be.

Introduction

00:35 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 13, Episode 4, and today my guest is Keiland Cooper, a fourth-year PhD student in neuroscience at the University of California, Irvine. Thanks to his inquisitive nature, Keiland developed a financial philosophy that he has applied to his own financial management practices since his days as an undergraduate. Through focusing on the big picture, he has increased his income as a graduate student and right-sized his housing and transportation costs, which has enabled him to accumulate cash savings and invested assets. Don’t miss Keiland’s insight at the end of the interview into the optimal money mindset for a graduate student.

01:44 Emily: My Office Hours are back for this fall! About once per month, I’m hosting a free Zoom call to which you can bring any financial question or topic that relates to your journey as a PhD or PhD-to-be to discuss with me and the other attendees. These sessions are limited to four people each. Register through PFforPhDs.com/officehours/. I look forward to speaking with you there! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e4/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Keiland Cooper.

Would You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:28 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Keiland Cooper. He is a fourth-year PhD student in neuroscience at the University of California Irvine, and we are going to talk today about some mindset shifts and some strategies that he’s found really useful for his finances during graduate school. So, Keiland, welcome to the podcast. Would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

02:48 Keiland: Hi. Yes. It’s really great to be on, and I really admire a lot of your work that you’ve done. I found it really helpful. And part of the reason why I wanted to be on is I think it’s really important and really useful to share, you know, each person’s experience, because we can all learn from it. And I’ve certainly learned a lot from everyone else’s. So, I thought it’d be useful to contribute.

03:11 Emily: Well, yeah, thank you so much for volunteering!

03:13 Keiland: So, I’m Keiland Cooper, as you said. I’m a fourth-year graduate student at University of California Irvine. My PhD’s going to be in neuroscience, and so I study how the brain learns and remembers at the neural circuit and ensemble level. I’m also interested in artificial intelligence and the co-founder of a nonprofit called ContinualAI which is the largest international nonprofit for our branch of neuroscience.

Financial Mindset at the Start of Grad School

03:40 Emily: Oh, wow, okay. Didn’t even know that. Great. Let’s talk about your financial picture when you started graduate school. Like where were you, maybe both literally with your numbers and then also with your like mindset?

03:54 Keiland: Yeah, yeah. So, I knew going into a PhD that, in many ways, it was going to be a big opportunity cost. A lot of friends that I were graduating with from undergrad were, you know, starting with six-figure salaries in a lot of cases. And so, I knew kind of from the get-go that it was going to be a big adjustment from that. But I think telling myself that I’m not doing a PhD obviously for the money or even for what the money could be down the road because that is not necessarily the case, but for other reasons that I felt really important about. So, I absolutely love what I do. I love where I’m doing it at, and love who I’m doing it with. And that was really important to me, and I knew I probably wouldn’t be as happy doing other jobs than starting the PhD. So I think, you know, right from the get-go, that was really, really helpful, at least for me to kind of justify, you know, that kind of change in income. And then everything else just kind of falls out from that.

04:56 Emily: I am really glad that you articulated that perspective. I don’t think that most people go into PhDs for the money, even if they do expect like a better-paying career later on, maybe, than what they could get with their bachelor’s degree. It’s definitely a passion-driven decision. But, I think as I talk about in many other places, and we’ll see during this interview, that doesn’t mean your finances are neglected entirely. We’re still going to focus on them a bit and do the best we can with what we have at that point. But it’s so important to have your priorities straight and your reasons for why you’re embarking on this. I love that. And did you go straight from your undergrad into your PhD program?

05:32 Keiland: I did, yeah.

Debt and Savings After Undergrad

05:33 Emily: Did you have any student loan debt, for example, or any savings coming out of undergrad?

05:38 Keiland: I was really lucky that I didn’t have to take student loans by the end of college. And so, that was a function of, you know, some family savings. And also I worked most of, I mean I worked all four years of college. So, I was really lucky to not have that. But I also lived really very frugally in undergrad, as most people do. I think what was really important for me to do that was I wasn’t living frugally without a goal. So, in my head, I knew that once I saved up, say, you know, three to six months of savings that if I had to drop out or if I couldn’t get a job that I would be able to live or pay rent or do something for about three to six months was like my first goal. Then I would start to feel okay, and I would, you know, not regret paying for other things that maybe I didn’t necessarily need or something like that. So, I think that was really important that, you know, living frugally kind of comes naturally to me, but something certainly didn’t and it is kind of a harder choice. And so, having that kind of goal in mind of, you know, one, it’s not forever, right? Because like once I get this and how I get that and could be strategic about that, at least once I kind of have that number in mind, then I’ll be okay.

07:04 Emily: I think there’s a huge difference between setting the goal for yourself, not even really articulating it as a goal of just, I just need to get by.

07:14 Keiland: Yeah.

07:14 Emily: Right? I’m not going to take out student loans. I’m going to work enough so that I don’t take out student loans. I’m just going to get by. And that is one level, and that is an accomplishment, obviously, to not have to take out student loans. But you went further than that and wanted to provide for yourself a safety net. Did you get to that point by the end of undergrad? Did you have that three to six months of savings?

07:33 Keiland: Yeah, yeah, I did luckily. And that was really important I think from moving in, maybe like towards the end of senior year and then going into to grad school to kind of feel a little bit more comfortable with, you know, meeting new people and going out and not having to worry about, you know, I can’t go out with my friends because I don’t really, you know, spend money this week or something like that. But generally, I think once I kind of had that, I started feeling more comfortable. Not only with just spending money in general, but also thinking about, you know, now that I have that safety net, what’s the next one? Well, probably retirement, so I’m going to open a Roth IRA. And once you have, you know, start spending the extra money have filling up that, you know, bucket or cup. Or if I was in industry, it would be a 401(k) and then Roth IRA to max.

08:23 Keiland: And then once you have that, then you can think, okay, well, you know, I have enough money, I’ve maxed out both my, you know, emergency savings, you know, six to 12 months, my Roth IRA, that’s maxed out. What’s next? Well, you know, I have some money left over, cash gets basically no return. The four big buckets are cash, bonds, stocks, and alternatives. So then, you know, you can start feeling a little bit more comfortable saying, I’m going to spend a little bit of money on stocks, not Roth IRA stocks, but just in general, you know, investing just so you can somehow try and beat inflation in these other things. And then starting to spend a little bit more money on that. Or, you know, I like to donate, and so donating money to certain charities. I have a little bit extra money, I don’t have to worry about, you know, if I give money, then I won’t feel as bad.

09:11 Keiland: And so, that’s kind of how I saw it, is that I have these kind of milestones and cups. And once I, you know, get more comfortable and safe, then I can start doing this next thing, and then I’ll have a little bit more cushion for the next thing. Which for me, as a very financially risk-averse person is kind of a good way to manage, I think, that risk. And at least in the back of my mind, yeah, I have that in case something happens.

Financial Knowledge Resources

09:39 Emily: What you just described about these different milestones and goals is very reminiscent of my financial framework that I teach through my seminars, which you probably haven’t actually encountered because it’s not really on my website. I saved that for the seminars, but yeah, very, very similar to that. So, it sounds like you actually have, or maybe even had, at the point of entering graduate school a pretty high degree of financial knowledge. And I’m wondering where you got that from? Because I think you mentioned in our prep materials that you’re like a first-gen college student, for example. So, like did you learn that from your parents? Or did you learn it from other sources?

10:14 Keiland: Yeah, so yeah, I’m a first-gen undergrad student and certainly a first-gen PhD student in my family. So, like I was saying earlier, a lot of the reason I came on is because I really just had to leverage a lot of resources in other people. And so that was just a function of, you know, asking every question that I could. And not just in, you know, in terms of finance, but pretty much for all of navigating college, and especially the PhD because it’s so you know, such an esoteric thing that is really kind of hard to teach unless you’re in it and you really just get that kind of ad hoc advice. And so yeah, with finance, I learned obviously like everyone, some things from my parents. I certainly learned to live more frugally from, you know, my dad for instance, who also didn’t grow up with a lot of things. And so really knows the value of, you know, having that safety net and feeling comfortable and those things.

11:09 Keiland: But other things, I really just had to learn on my own and from talking to friends and, you know, there’s a lot of research online and asking, you know, professionals questions sometimes when it comes to it. Just cold emails of like my parents didn’t know what a Roth IRA was, or they really didn’t invest in the stock market outside of their 401(k) and what the company had given. And so, those things, you know, you just pick up from all sorts of sources, whether it’s excerpts from books or websites or YouTube talks from professionals over time. There’s really not exactly one source. And I think what also makes it difficult that I found is there’s certainly, like with most things, not one strategy either to build wealth. There are a thousand different strategies, and everyone is going to think that they have their right way to do it, but that’s not necessarily the case, right?

12:04 Keiland: So, there’s a whole cohort of people who think you should have no debt ever. You should try and pay everything in cash than have debt, where on the flip side people are like, Well, no, no, no, debt can be really useful. Why would you buy something with, you know, debt that has a really low interest rate when you could get that more return if you invested that money in something else, Right? So, you know, different strategies to accomplish the same goal and not either of them is necessarily correct. It probably just depends on the individual person and their situation and how they want to navigate things.

Financial Strategies During Grad School

12:41 Emily: Yes. Let’s talk more about strategies now. And I want to kind of divide this into two categories. I want to divide it into what strategies are you using during graduate school that you found fruitful for your finances? And then what have you tried and then discarded along the way because it didn’t work out for you? Because you mentioned in our prep that you like to do experiments, which I love that idea as well. So, let’s start with what you have picked up in terms of strategies during graduate school or have continued from your earlier life.

13:11 Keiland: Yeah, I think the big one that has been probably most helpful for me, one is like I said, having that safety net I think is really important. Just because once you have it, you feel really comfortable and you can start doing other things or you can start working in other areas of finance that you might necessarily do. Another is, I like to focus on the big purchases, or at least put way more effort in the big purchases and big expenditures than the little ones. And so, the famous example is everyone yelling at millennials for buying Starbucks coffee. Too much Starbucks coffee each month. And I would much rather be able to not worry about whether or not I’m buying a Starbucks coffee each day than how much money am I paying for rent. Because in the long-term, that rent cost is going to far exceed, I would have to drink a lot of Starbucks coffee to exceed the amount that that rent will cost.

14:18 Emily: I totally agree with this, like getting those, I call them the big rocks. Getting the big rocks in your budget right. But you live in Orange County, California and it’s hugely expensive. So, I want to know specifically what have you done with your rent to try to minimize that cost to the degree that you are comfortable?

Minimizing Rent in California

14:36 Keiland: So, I’m lucky. Obviously, rent is awful in California. That’s just a blanket statement that’s going to be true pretty much wherever you are. But even within that, there’s certainly variability. I’m lucky in the sense that University of California Irvine subsidizes rent, and so you don’t have to live at the university. You could live outside and commute and some people do and it might be a little bit cheaper, but then you have to factor in commuting costs and so on and so forth. But even then, I knew I wanted to live, you know, near campus so I wouldn’t have to drive to campus every day. And even within the housing that UCI offers, there’s variability on the order of, I think on the low end it’s, you know, $500 a month and at the high end it’s like $1,300 a month.

15:28 Keiland: And I chose and requested housing that’s on that lower end. I didn’t get the lowest because, you know, they don’t have very many of those, but, you know, and certainly my apartment isn’t as nice as it could have been, but it’s not that important to me for those years. And so again, the $300 I would save just from that one decision each month adds up to, you know, a few thousand that cushions some of the other things. So, I don’t have to worry as much about, you know, I enjoy eating out. I don’t like to cook as much so I can eat out and not feel as bad about that decision. Or, I can intentionally say, you know, I’m going spend my money on something that I want to do or that actually makes me happy rather than something that, you know, I’m just spending money on kind of mindlessly and doesn’t really bring that big quality of life to me.

16:22 Emily: Yeah, I think, I mean this housing decision is just, it’s so important. You can change it if you’re a renter, you know, it’s difficult but not impossible to change where you live. So, it’s great to get it, you know, as best you can sorted out from the beginning. But it’s again, as you said, for each individual you have to evaluate how much joy am I going to get from living in this type of apartment versus this type of apartment. And to me as well, like I need to, you know, I want to have a place to live, but it doesn’t have to be the most hospitable or the most fancy or whatever, whatever. And so, I think that sometimes people can get tripped up, maybe setting other people’s expectations on themselves about, oh, I have to live in a nice place because that’s what my parents think or whatever. Whereas if they really evaluated it, maybe they could go a little lower on the cost spectrum and still be just as happy. And as you said, then the money is available to divert to something else that does bring them more value and does bring them more joy. Like you said, you don’t want to sweat the small stuff, so you’re going to focus on those big items. Are there any other big items that you want to mention? Aside from rent?

Another Big-Ticket Item: Car

17:26 Keiland: Car is certainly a big one. You know, buying a new car off the lot versus a used car. For some people, I’ve met a lot of people where both of those decisions is a no-brainer. It’s like, obviously I’m going to get a new car, why wouldn’t I? Or obviously I’m going to get a used car, why wouldn’t I? Right? So again, it really goes back to what’s your financial situation and really what’s important to you. Is it really that important to you to have that nice of a car? In some cases it might be, and that might be the thing that you really enjoy and really, you know, why you work and make money and what you live for is that thing. And so that’s fine as long as it’s, you know, in my view, intentional. But other things, like for me, I don’t really need that nice of a car and so I can, you know, cut back and use that money I save for other things that do mean more to me.

18:18 Keiland: And so, that’s kind of the intentional decision. And it doesn’t mean that even for the big purchases you can’t do them, or you have to live cheaply. But I, I think the amount of time you spend needs to be proportional. And there’s a famous law in psychology that kind of proves that, the prospect theory that we will fight tooth and nail to spend a coupon on like a $5 hamburger. But for a thousand-dollar car you won’t fight for that $5 savings, even though at the end of the day it’s still $5 in your pocket. So, to to kind of be mindful of these kind of like cognitive biases and really put the effort into the big things. Because you can still have probably the same car for a better price if you just put in a little bit more work to find it and look for it and save.

19:06 Emily: Absolutely. And sort of like what you were saying earlier, if you put in the time and you put in the work to finding that, you know, great housing situations, a great deal, or the car or whatever these other bigger items, as you said it should be proportional to the amount of money that you’re spending on those. Then, again, you don’t have to spend much time fretting about those smaller purchases. So you specifically, do you own a car?

19:27 Keiland: Yeah.

19:27 Emily: Is it paid off? Like what do you want to tell us about your car?

19:29 Keiland: Yeah, I’ve been driving the same car since high school <laugh>, so and I was actually thinking about saving it because it’s awful on gas and the environment, but then the economy and the used car market was terrible. And I honestly don’t drive, like I said, I live very close to campus, so I really don’t drive that much at all. So, you know, personally, I didn’t feel as bad of, you know, just keeping it for a few extra years and then after, you know, the PhD, maybe I’ll look for another one or if I see a really good deal then maybe I’ll consider.

20:03 Emily: Yeah, my family has one car for four of us but we really don’t drive very much, as you just said. Like, we work, my husband and I work from home. I walk my daughter to school, my other daughter we need to drive, but it’s like a two-mile distance. And so, yeah, I don’t know, it just doesn’t add up to much. And we’ve sort of, for the last couple of years since, you know, kind of before the pandemic been thinking, oh, I, you know, at some point we need to upgrade this car, like get more of a family one or whatever. But you know, just not driving that much, I don’t see the way to justify like the expense until it’s absolutely necessary. And that’s kind of our like, attitude about it. And again, if we were spending a ton of time in the car, then it would be a higher value, but it’s really just to get from here to my daughter’s preschool and back. That’s pretty much all it’s being used for.

20:49 Keiland: Yeah, that’s how I see it too. Like if I was commuting an hour a day and I just, every single day for an entire hour I was sitting in my car and I just said, I hate this car, I hate this car, I hate this car. Right? That would be worth it to me to spend a little bit extra money on, you know, something a little bit nicer. Just because I knew, you know, I would much rather have an hour a day where I just don’t hate myself in the car than, you know, this fine car or I’m thinking about something else other than, you know, is my check engine light going to combust at any moment? So yeah, I think it’s those kinds of decisions that are really helpful.

Commercial

21:30 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Basically, the Community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to pfforphds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success! Now back to the interview.

Increasing Income by Applying for Funding

22:36 Emily: How about some other strategies you’ve used during graduate school? I understand you have increased your income.

22:42 Keiland: Yeah, yeah. In grad school, it’s kind of hard because as you all know well, you can have side hustles, but PhDs are huge time commitments and really demand a lot of your focus and there are also kind of sometimes regulations in your program that prohibit it and so on and so forth. But there are things unique to a PhD that I think have been really useful. So scholarships and grants and those types of ways to increase your income are pretty unique to a PhD and there’s a lot out there. And I know everyone says this and even I really wish I probably one of my biggest regrets in undergrad was not applying to more, because the more I learned it really is just free money. And especially seeing it from the other side, from like sitting on committees that give out grants, they really just want to give money to people.

23:35 Keiland: And so, really just applying to as many as you can and especially the big ones will probably be worth the time. And so for instance, I did the GRFP, which was a huge comfort. Not only just from a little bit of extra income each month, which really wasn’t much compared to my stipend. But also just minimizing risk of, you know, if for instance, my advisor doesn’t have money, I know that I’m funded. Which I think of as probably just as important as increasing your income is just knowing that your income is stable, right? Because that helps you plan, that helps you, you know, make other investment decisions, that makes you, you know, feel a little bit more comfortable when you do other things rather than needing to save. And also, you know, smaller ad hoc grants that you apply for, or travel awards, or these things. Even the small ones, you know, if it’s quick and doesn’t take too much time, if you go back and add them up, they really add up to quite a bit of money. So looking for all those kind of opportunities and not being afraid to like ask for them or ask for help or these things when you need it, I found really, really useful.

24:57 Emily: I like the way that you phrased that. Being able to apply for scholarships and grants and fellowships is a unique thing to the academic experience. Because at face value, if I said something like, how do you increase your income as a graduate student? A lot of people would just dismiss it out of hand. There’s no way. They tell me what my stipend is, that’s it. But they’re just automatically discounting this whole category of an academia-approved way to increase your income, which is just to apply for awards of various types. And you’ll be lauded for doing so if you actually, you know, end up winning them. And so it’s like, yeah, even for people who are prevented by their visa or by policy from working outside of, you know, the PhD program, this is a completely straightforward and great way to at least attempt to increase your income.

25:42 Keiland: You asked earlier about things I’ve tried that work and don’t work. For me personally, I don’t really budget each month. Mostly because I’ve tried things that, you know, I tried to sit down and budget. But I think once you, or at least for me, once I got to the point where I kind of had a feeling of what the things were that I was buying and what the big purchases were, like I said, I didn’t really feel like I needed to budget as much each month. And so usually I’ll sit down maybe once a quarter or even once a year and really kind of get a handle on, you know, like I said, what are the big things I’m buying? What are the little things that are adding up? What are the like subscriptions that I don’t need? And those things to try and like reset myself for the next quarter or next year. But I really don’t sit down month to month anymore and really kind of get on myself.

Experimental Expenditure “Fasting”

26:40 Emily: I think there’s a lot of value in the exercise of budgeting and tracking and so forth, but only to the extent that it helps you actually make decisions or change your behavior. Because if all you’re doing is kind of a, okay, I’m doing a budget exercise, but it makes absolutely no difference to my behavior or how I feel or anything, then it’s pointless. But I like what you’re saying is okay, yeah, you’re not budgeting on like a weekly, monthly basis, but you are using the data that you’ve collected to make decisions going forward. And so, that’s really what you need to get out of budgeting anyway, is the ability to make those decisions. So that sounds perfect. Yeah, any other strategies that you’ve like tried out and decided that they weren’t the best for you?

27:23 Keiland: Yeah, there’s one thing I kind of did in undergrad just as a proof of, so like for instance, I would, you know, live without AC for a few months just to, you know, see what it was like or not AC, heat. I would turn the heat off in the winter for a few nights just to prove to myself that like, you know, before then I was like, I must have heat. I can’t live in a cold environment. And then you see all these things where like, you know, what if I couldn’t afford it? What if I couldn’t use it? What if I couldn’t do it? For no other reason just to one, to prove to myself that if I didn’t have it, I would probably be okay. To a certain extent. It’s nothing extreme or crazy. Or if I, so for instance, I felt like I was buying a bit too much like tea or coffee at the store and just be like, you know what, for this month I’m not going to drink it, and how badly will it really affect my life?

28:24 Keiland: Will I really be that upset if I don’t? That was kind of like the earlier advice that you had heard and it’s like, oh yeah, you need to cut back on everything. And I think it’s useful as an exercise just to get that point too just so you feel comfortable as like, you know what, it’s nice to have and I would love to have it, but it’s not a necessity, to really kind of understand what the necessities are. Because I think, at least for me, there were a lot of things that at one point that I thought were necessities and I thought that I had to have them and I had to spend money on them and I had to do them. And it wasn’t until I forced myself to kind of cut them out for a short period of time and kind of reflect back and see, was it really that bad? And then you realize, no, it really wasn’t that bad. It’s really not as important to me as I thought it was going to be.

29:13 Emily: I really like this point about these experiments to really determine for yourself like what is the line between a necessity and a discretionary expense? Not that it’s bad to spend on discretionary expenses, but just as you said, like, what can I survive without? What can I live without? And what is it really adding to my life to have that expense in my life? So then you can more accurately judge like how much you should be spending on it. I call these little experiments, the way that you’re describing them, fasts.

29:42 Keiland: Yeah.

Quiz Yourself on How Much You Think You’re Spending

29:42 Emily: So like, I know I’m going to go without this thing that I’m accustomed to for this defined period of time and we’re just going to see how it goes. And I fully expect to return to, you know, having it in my life after that point, but we’re just going to see, you know, how I feel about it, and maybe I’ll end up making a different decision later on with that new information. So, it’s not something to be doing all the time on everything, but from time to time yeah, to conduct those kinds of experiments, I think that’s valuable. Anything else you’d like to add about like, tactics that you’ve used during grad school?

30:12 Keiland: Yeah, one thing when I first learned about prospect theory, and that we focus more on the little things than the big things, even though they’re not proportional. I kind of got a little deep into it, and one thing I thought actually ended up being kind of useful was when I was sitting down and trying to budget my finances and what I was spending money on, to kind of take a minute before then and kind of ask myself how much I thought I was spending on these things beforehand. Almost like a quiz or a game, and then you’ll have your answer in black and white once you actually sit down and calculate it.

30:49 Keiland: But for me, I think it was really useful to try and begin to gauge how well do I know my own habits? And how much, you know, if you just like, it’s really hard. I think if you sit down and ask yourself, how much do I spend a year on x? How much do I spend a year on groceries? How much do I spend a year on blank? Even if you budget once a month, it still might not be that automatic before you budget to try and have that kind of handle on it. So really quizzing yourself before, so you know what you need to learn rather than just waiting for that aha moment of, oh wow, I’m spending too much on this. But to really kind of handle that psychology that’s underlying those decisions.

Money Mindset Shifts During Grad School

31:39 Emily: Let’s go a little bit further in this vein and talk about mindset shifts you’ve had. Now, the mindset that you described coming into graduate school, you were very inquisitive, including about finances, learning a lot from a lot of different sources, that’s super valuable. But have you seen any shifts in your mindset during grad school with respect to your finances?

32:00 Keiland: Yeah, I think the big one for me was not being as risk-adverse. So like I said, there are kind of two camps of you should have zero debt at all times, pay everything in cash, have little to no credit, et cetera. And the other camp is, you know, debt can be useful, just be careful or be very strategic about how you use it and you can actually earn more over the long-term. The thing is being like, if you do a big purchase of say like land or a house, it’s probably better to get a mortgage than pay straight up in cash because if you put that cash in, say like stocks for the same amount of time, you’ll make more money over the long-term. Pretty basic, but still there are kind of those two divides. And I really found myself on the other end of that spectrum for a long time of like, I’m going to pay everything in cash.

32:51 Keiland: I really didn’t want a credit card for a long time until I realized very soon that you have to build credit in today’s world. So, in undergrad I ended up finally getting a credit card and using, you know, 10% of the limit per month and so on. But that was, I think a shift is, you know, debt and credit and risk can be useful. You just have to be careful and you really have to, you know, plan and learn and know how you’re using it when you do use it. And if you do then, you know, in the long-term you can probably come out ahead of the super risk-adverse camp. So, that was one and that also helped with like other investments with like Roth RA and stocks and so on. To know that like, you know, like I said, I have a safety net.

33:41 Keiland: I’ve worked hard for this, I lived very below my means for this, but now that I have it, now I can try and, you know, learn what the stock market is, learn, you know, what it feels like to lose money for an extended period of time and have, you know, to discipline not to sell and so on. And to see and just kind of handle that volatility for me was a good exercise one, because I knew at some point most of my assets are gonna be in a 401(k) or retirement account at some point. And so, when I inevitably talk to an advisor, I would love to at least know a little bit about what I’m talking about so I can have those conversations with them. I thought was a tremendously useful exercise and then I like it, so, you know, invest some extra money that way.

34:28 Keiland: But yeah, that was a big shift I think. And also like I said, in undergrad, I was very, very frugal. I’m a lot less frugal. And that was actually hard for me. I know, like it was hard to kind of like let myself spend money. And it wasn’t until I really sat down and said, you know, these are my twenties, despite the fact that, you know, two of them are in COVID. Like, yeah, you have to live below your means and you have to live frugally and you have to save, but at the same time, you don’t want to save a bunch of money when you’re 60 and then look back and be like, what did I spend it on? So like I said, really kind of giving myself the permission to spend on the things that I really think make me happy or really increase my quality of life and those sorts of things. I at least found really useful to kind of justify like, yeah, I can go on vacation or I can spend for this because it’ll be really worth it and it’s not a mindless decision. I’m not just giving money because I want it in that moment. I really, you know, think this thing will be good and it’s worth the amount of money I’ll spend now on it.

Act Your Wage

35:42 Emily: I’m giving a webinar later this afternoon on the day that we’re recording, and one of the slides that I’m going to present exhorts the listener to act your wage. And that partially means being frugal in graduate school. You know, you’re not going to be living on a lot of money, but for you, because you had lived on even less as an undergraduate and you know, you had these really highly ingrained, frugal tendencies, for you and for other people like you, acting your wage also means doing things that you’ve never done before with your finances, like starting to invest, like acquiring credit. And it’s appropriate, right? As long as it’s all in balance with where your salary is at that time and the cost of living and everything. Like, so act your wage can mean a lot of different things to different people depending on where you’re coming from and where you are now.

36:31 Emily: And so, I like that you’ve grown, right? Over these last few years in that sense and your finances because your salary allows you to do those things to spend on vacations from time to time. To start to invest as long as you are careful about your rent and all the other things that we’ve talked about, it’s all in balance for you. And that’s a great place to be during graduate school. A lot of people don’t get there, but I’m really pleased that that you are yeah. Is there anything else that you wanna add like maybe mindset shifts that you would recommend to other graduate students?

37:01 Keiland: Yeah, I think the most important thing is just to think about your money, which, you know, a lot of people might not necessarily do, but you know, if you don’t do it at all, it’s worth, like you said, budgeting and going through and seeing where you spend your money and kind of getting a sense for yourself and learning about yourself. And I know we’re all PhD students, think of it as like a research project, right? There have been times where I’ve sat down and like analyzed my financial data in Python, right? It’s, you know, it’s kind of fun to, to sit down and play with the spreadsheets and add things up. Most of us are nerds here and finance can be a very nerdy topic. So it doesn’t all have to be scary and certainly, all of us are getting PhDs, so we all have the aptitude in one way or another to learn about these topics.

37:47 Keiland: Even though some of them might seem really complex at first, certainly don’t have to be, especially when there are experts like you sitting really close to us that, you know, are an email away or workshop away. So yeah, really, really know yourself, and learn how you spend your money and get a really a good sense for yourself and then ask yourself what your goals are and then if they don’t align, readjust, and if they do align, then don’t adjust. But I think having the comfort and knowledge of knowing your own behavior is probably the most important thing to just know how you spend money and whether or not it will get you where you want to be in the long-term or not.

38:31 Emily: I can definitely understand if some people do not want to go through that exercise, like they expect it to be like unpleasant or something. Like, yeah, it’s not the greatest thing to look at like a small salary as a PhD student and figure out, you know, how you’re managing it and everything, but it, it’s not gonna get better by ignoring it, right? So, really the only way out is like, is through <laugh> through the process of the introspection that you were just talking about so that you can make some better decisions on the other side that’ll help you feel better about your whole life and about your finances too. So, thank you so much for that.

Effective Altruism

39:04 Emily: Is there anything that you want to tell us about your finances now? I mean, I think we’ve gotten, you know, some pieces of the picture. You have some savings in place, you’ve started investing in a Roth IRA. Yeah, would you like to say anything more about sort of where these mindsets and strategies have taken you over the last three years?

39:18 Keiland: I’m lucky to have saved enough for six to 12 months of a safety net, which to me, I kind of think is my foundation. And then another, I try and max out my Roth IRA as much as I can each year. And once I’ve done that, I try and donate some percentage and I also try and invest so hopefully I can hopefully donate more. I’m really interested in kind of this mindset called effective altruism, which a lot of people have talked about. And it’s in a great community and so it’s just, you know, investing in spending your money in such a way that you can quantitatively maximize the impact. And so I do, philosophically, I really like those ideas and the discussions there.

40:04 Emily: There was actually a Stuff You Should Know Episode on Effective Altruism. Just we’re recording this in June, 2022, so it was a few weeks or a couple of months ago. But anyway, I hadn’t heard of the concept before that, but following that episode I ordered a book from some effective altruism organization that sends out free books about it, <laugh>. So, it’s on my reading list, although I haven’t gotten to it yet. So, thanks so much for bringing up that concept. Is there anything else that you want to add?

40:30 Keiland: Yeah, no, yeah, I really like those topics. Particularly because I think, in a lot of ways, that scientists really just want to do the amount of good and don’t really think about money as much. But effective altruism, at least for me, made me think of money in such a way that, you know, it’s the energy to do good. Money doesn’t necessarily have to be evil, right? It’s like how much money is being spent in the NSF or NIH budgets each year. It’s like millions and millions and millions of dollars. So, to think of money as, you know, earning money need not be kind of like a greedy evil thing, as long as you are ethical about it and you’re conscious about it. Because ultimately you can use it to do other good things. So, that was a good way to kind of changed my mindset of how I was thinking about, you know, earning wealth, and so on.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

41:23 Emily: I love that we got there. I love that we got to that motivation by the end of this interview. Let’s conclude with the question that I ask all my interviewees, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we touched on during the episode or it could be something completely new.

41:40 Keiland: I think we tend to to be stuck in our fields and think like, Oh, I’m really good at this, but not this. But the PhD is really just a signature of you’re a really smart person and probably any problem that you’re handed, given enough time, you’ll figure it out. And your finances could just be another problem that’s on your PhD. And no matter how daunting it might seem, I’m sure the beginning of your PhD probably seemed more daunting than that. So, finances need not to be that thing. No matter how weird our taxes are in quarterly payments and you know, do we pay on stipends or not and have to get like a mini degree in accounting to do a, you know, 20-something-year-old’s taxes, it’s fine. At the end of the day, you’ll learn about it and that’ll be useful in the long-term and could even be interesting depending on who you are. So, don’t let it be daunting, and don’t be afraid to ask for help along the way to answer those questions.

42:41 Emily: I don’t think I’ve thought about it or heard it phrased that way before, but I really like your articulation there of like think of your finances as another thing that you can be a student of, and another thing you can learn about during this period of time. And you don’t have to have it right from the beginning. You don’t have to master it from the beginning. It’s a process. And I also like that there’s relatively lower stakes with your finances when you’re earning that lower salary. And that can be kind of the training ground and the proving ground so that when you get to that higher post-PhD salary, then you know the things about, well, does budgeting work for you or not? Maybe you have a different system that’s better for you. And like, yeah, I’m now versed in how to invest in a Roth IRA, so it’s really not going to be too challenging to select the investments inside my 401(k), et cetera, et cetera. So, I love that framing of it. Well, Keiland, this was such a pleasure to talk with you and thank you so much for volunteering to be on the podcast!

43:30 Keiland: Yeah, yeah, thank you. And thanks for all the work you’re doing for PhD students like us trying to navigate it all.

43:36 Emily: You are very welcome. It’s my pleasure.

Outtro

43:43 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How This Grad Student Saves Nearly 40% of Her Stipend in a High Cost of Living Area

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In this episode, Emily interviews Janelle Coleen Dela Cueva, a rising second year graduate student in structural engineering at UCSD. Janelle breaks down her budget, including her largest four expenses and aggressive investing goals. Janelle’s gross stipend is approximately $2,500 per month, and she is able to save almost 40% of it due to subsidized university housing and strong habits that minimize her variable expenses. She still lives a comfortable life with weekly eating out, frequent international travel, and car ownership.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

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Teaser

00:00 Janelle: I have a week off this summer. So, I want to spend that in Costa Rica around August. And then in December, I hope to visit family in the Philippines and Thailand. So, I will be traveling there for December.

Introduction

00:26 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 13, Episode 3, and today my guest is Janelle Coleen Dela Cueva, a rising second-year graduate student in structural engineering at UCSD. Janelle breaks down her budget, including her largest four expenses and aggressive investing goals. Janelle’s gross stipend is approximately $2,500 per month, and she is able to save almost 40% of it due to subsidized university housing and strong habits that minimize her variable expenses. She still lives a comfortable life with weekly eating out, frequent international travel, and car ownership.

01:35 Emily: I have a new workshop available exclusively for prospective graduate students! It’s called Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School, and it comprises twelve modules that I will release throughout the 2023 application and admissions season. The modules that are available to join right now are:

  • Funding Models for Graduate School
  • Why and How to Apply for Fellowships
  • Your Financial Vision for Graduate School, and
  • Stipends vs. Cost of Living

Each module comes with a video on the subject matter, a private homework exercise to further explore the material, a reflection exercise that you share with me, and invitations to upcoming live discussion and Q&A calls with me. To read more about and purchase any of the currently available Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School modules, go to PFforPhDs.com/setyourselfup/. I know that this material is invaluable for prospective graduate students, so if you are in contact with any, please share the link with them! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Janelle Coleen Dela Cueva.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:02 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today. Janelle Coleen Dela Cueva. She is a rising second-year graduate student in structural engineering at the University of California in San Diego. I also live in the San Diego area, North County. So, this is a local conversation for me. And today we are doing a Budget Breakdown, which we have not done in a while. So, Janelle will share with us her top five expenses as well as her financial goals and so forth. So, I’m really going to enjoy this conversation. Janelle, will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

03:31 Janelle: Okay. So again, you know, my name is Janelle. I’m a rising second-year PhD student. I’m going to be doing that in the fall. Currently, my major is structural engineering with a focus on aerospace structures. I live in the San Diego La Jolla area in grad housing, and I have a roommate in my household. My income on a monthly basis is $2,510. And my position would be a GSR, so graduate student researcher.

Investment Goals

04:11 Emily: I was so impressed when you wrote in that you have major investment goals going on, as well as just managing your expenses, you know, in a high cost of living area on not the biggest stipend. Tell us about these investment goals that you have.

04:27 Janelle: Yes. Okay. So, for my investment goals, I have multiple goals, one of which is retirement. And that, you know, includes a Roth IRA and contributions to that monthly. And then a second goal would be to buy a house or maybe start a business. And so, I keep a separate investment fund for that specific goal.

04:51 Emily: Okay. So, you sort of have two locations for your assets. One is inside a Roth IRA, and one is in a taxable type investment account, just a normal investment account.

04:59 Janelle: Yes. A brokerage.

05:01 Emily: Yes. Let’s talk more about both of those. How much money are you putting towards that Roth IRA on a monthly or yearly basis?

05:08 Janelle: I am maxing out my Roth IRA at a $500 contribution every month.

05:14 Emily: Wow. So impressive. Something I never managed to do when I was in graduate school, even though the maximum was lower at that time, I was never able to max out. So, that is awesome. What inspired you to reach for that goal so early in life?

05:28 Janelle: I don’t know. I think I felt that everybody was working, and outside of a PhD, everybody was working in industry and I just felt this need to catch up as like a little bit of pressure to catch up with everybody. And so, I started saving a lot more money.

05:47 Emily: Okay. So, you’re kind of looking at your peers who didn’t take the grad school route and saying to yourself, okay, what can I do to sort of keep on track with what they’re doing?

05:56 Janelle: Yes.

05:56 Emily: Okay. That makes sense. And what about this other brokerage account? How much money are you contributing there? What are you investing in?

06:04 Janelle: For this other brokerage account, I invest around $423. It’s a very specific number, and the brokerage includes you know, dividend stocks and crypto.

06:19 Emily: Alright. What’s with the specific number? Is that just based on what you had in your budget, or is that tied to some other larger goal?

06:27 Janelle: This number is just what works in the budget. I just had some extra cash when I, you know, subtracted everything out.

Short-Term Financial Goals

06:35 Emily: Yeah. Well, that’s incredible. I mean, investing, going on, you know, close to a thousand dollars a month on a grad student stipend. Wow. We are going to find out in a moment how you’re doing that. Are there any other financial goals that you’re working on right now, or maybe financial goals that you’re not working on so that you can do these investment goals?

06:52 Janelle: I have two other financial goals that are short-term. So, I have an emergency fund, and I also have a vacation fund. And the vacation fund is about $200 a month. And the emergency fund, I stopped contributing because I reached my goal, but it was about three month’s worth of living expenses.

07:19 Emily: Yeah. Perfect. I know you’ve had some exposure in the past to my like eight-step like financial plan. It sounds like you’re working at least a few of those steps. I don’t know if you had that idea beforehand or you got it from me, but either way, I’m really happy that you are working that plan. So yeah, for now your emergency fund is full. If you have an emergency and have to deplete it a bit, that’ll become a goal again, it sounds like to, you know, contribute until it’s back up to that three-month level.

07:43 Janelle: Yes. And then once that occurs, it will eat away at the vacation fund. So, it’s either/or.

#1 Largest Expense: Rent

07:50 Emily: Gotcha. Okay. Well, I think we’re ready to talk about your top five largest expenses every month. So, let’s start with the largest one, the number one largest expense. What is that?

08:01 Janelle: My largest expense is rent.

08:03 Emily: Yeah, no surprise there.

08:05 Janelle: It’s really high <Laugh>.

08:06 Emily: How much are you spending on rent?

08:09 Janelle: The rent bill for my apartment is $1380, but I pay half of that at $690, because I found a roommate.

08:23 Emily: So, when you say roommate, like how big is your apartment? Is it a one-bedroom studio? Is it two bedrooms? How large are we talking?

08:30 Janelle: It’s a two-bedroom apartment with one restroom, but the restroom is in two rooms. So, one for showering and one for using the restroom.

08:40 Emily: Gotcha. Okay. So like a two-bedroom, one-bath situation. So, a pretty normal kind of thing to share with a single roommate. So, the way you phrased that, it sounded like this apartment is yours, but you have found someone to share it with, is that right?

08:55 Janelle: Yes. So, the entire lease is under my name and I got a two-bedroom because it had a lot of space, but I really looked for a roommate to cover the second or like half the rent.

09:10 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. And is your roommate another graduate student or someone else?

09:15 Janelle: My roommate is somebody else. She went to undergrad with me, so I knew her, but she doesn’t go to UCSD.

09:23 Emily: I always find it like, sort of interesting to investigate for me, like how graduate student housing works. Like who’s allowed to live there and so forth. It sounds like you, as the graduate student, then the lease is under your name, but you can, you know, sublease to whoever you like. Is that right?

09:38 Janelle: Yes.

60% Rent Hike at UCSD

09:38 Emily: Okay. Well, honestly though, a two-bedroom place for, I think you said $1380 a month is really not that bad. Like, I mean, how do you feel about that price?

09:50 Janelle: I feel that it’s not bad given the rising cost of rent in the area and just in California in general. I got really lucky with this rent because I signed up for it before UCSD got the 60% hike in rent.

10:12 Emily: Yes. We heard about this actually back in season 11, episode one with Maya Gosztyla, who is another UCSD graduate student. She also was saying that she had graduate student housing at a relatively low price, but she sort of told us as part of that interview, actually, I think, as a follow-up from the interview that this price hike was coming. So, can you give us an update on that? It sounds like you said you got in before the price hike, but what’s going on for other students?

10:38 Janelle: For other students, the price hiked a month after I signed my lease. So, I signed the lease for August, and the month after, September, the price hiked 50%. And it was because San Diego passed a rent control law, and that law went into effect this year in 2022. So, UCSD increased the rent by 60% just in time before this law went into effect.

11:08 Emily: I see. So, kind of on their side as the landlord, they’re seeing that in the future, their rent hikes are going to be limited. So they got all the rents up to market rate or closer to market rate in advance of that. So, sort of a perverse effect of that law, I would imagine.

11:23 Janelle: Yes. I wouldn’t say it was market rate for the apartments that they’re renting out, but on top of that, they are also increasing the rent to 3% every year, which is the maximum that they can increase rent every year from now on. And for my rent, it’s not into effect yet, but next month it will be going up to $1450, I think.

11:51 Emily: Gotcha. But you expect your rent, it sounds like is locked in with that 3% annual increase for as long as you stay in this current lease, right? As long as you stay with the apartment.

12:01 Janelle: Yes.

12:02 Emily: Okay. And do you have any plans? Like, do you, as of now plan to stay there for the rest of your PhD?

12:07 Janelle: Yes. I plan to stay here for the rest of my PhD, because the apartments outside of UCSD are much more expensive.

12:16 Emily: Yeah. So, I understand you have experience with this, right? Because you also went to undergrad at UCSD and you were not living in graduate housing as an undergraduate student. So, can you talk about what you were paying even, you know, a year or so ago?

12:28 Janelle: Yes. It’s less than, but the living situation is better. I paid $400 a month for my last apartment as an undergrad, but I shared the room with two other people, so it was a triple and then there was another room in that apartment with one person. So four of us lived in that apartment. One room was a triple, one was a single.

12:55 Emily: Wow. Okay. So, inexpensive, but definitely a trade-off there in terms of privacy and ability to concentrate and all of that stuff. So, yes. A better living situation for you now. Alright. So, it doesn’t sound like the strategy of getting in before price hike is replicable at this point. Unless you find, like your roommate has with you, a roommate who is locked in under this lower, like prior agreement. Other than that, all these new leases are going to be quite a bit more expensive.

13:23 Janelle: Yes. It was incredibly lucky.

#2 Largest Expense: Food

13:26 Emily: Yeah. Alright. What is your number two expense?

13:31 Janelle: My number two expense would be food. I aim to do $200 a month on food, groceries, and meal prepping, but I always go over that from eating out.

13:46 Emily: Okay. So $200 per month is like approximately your grocery cost. And then you have some additional costs for eating out on top of that.

13:54 Janelle: Yes.

13:54 Emily: Well, still, you know, that’s not terribly a lot of money for a single person. Can you tell us some of the strategies that you’re using around keeping that cost down?

14:05 Janelle: Yes. So, on a, you know, 2000 adult calorie diet, I try to shop, you know, as healthy as possible. So, produce is actually not that expensive. And then on Sundays, I meal prep enough meals for the entire week, and that level of like planning obviously helps me save a lot of money.

Meal Prepping Helps Save Money

14:34 Emily: Mm-Hmm <Affirmative>. How does it do that?

14:37 Janelle: So, when I meal prep ahead of time, it stops me from eating out all of a sudden, and eating out because I’m hungry and I don’t have food. So, it takes the convenience out of eating out. Or, you know, post-meeting or, you know, going to a restaurant near me. And this also helps with, you know, nutrition goals.

15:04 Emily: Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about like what you’re eating when you do these meal preps.

15:08 Janelle: I eat pasta and, you know, side of vegetables with some sort of protein, sometimes beef or chicken that I prepared in bulk.

15:23 Emily: Yeah. So, that’s like a lunch or a dinner. Do you take this food, I presume, you take this food to campus for lunches? What’s your like sort of rhythm of eating?

15:34 Janelle: Yeah. So, in the morning, I eat a bagel, so that’s breakfast, and I take a packed lunch to school and that’s lunch. And then in the evening, I do another packed meal prep at home. So, I can eat three meals a day. But this level of planning, it gets old when you eat the same thing over and over again. But what helps is that I try to plan out three different types of recipes on a Sunday and then just cook them all in bulk and then eat them throughout the week.

16:12 Emily: I see. So, like, even for instance, for your dinners, you have like, like three different dinners that you’re sort of rotating through? Or are you saying three different meals, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

16:22 Janelle: Yeah, for dinner, I have three different types of food that I cycle through. And then for lunch, I do the same thing just based on what I’m feeling. I have three different meals to choose from.

16:33 Emily: Gotcha. I’m always fascinated by this like meal prep process, which I’ve never like, sort of examined it, but I’ve never like fully devoted myself to it. So, I’m always really curious when other people are doing it successfully. So, thanks for those details.

Commercial

16:49 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2022-2023 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/speaking/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

#3 Largest Expense: Car

18:11 Emily: Okay. What is your number three expense?

18:15 Janelle: My third expense would probably be gas.

18:19 Emily: Yeah. So, let’s talk about your transportation situation. So, it sounds like you own a car.

18:23 Janelle: Yes.

18:24 Emily: Is it paid off?

18:25 Janelle: The car is paid off, so paying off the car is no longer an issue. So, this gas expense is $150 a month, or I guess not just gas, but car expenses is $150 a month. $70 goes towards the insurance, and the rest of it goes towards gas, but gas prices have been increasing a lot. So, I’ve been opting for you know, walking and taking the bus.

Why Own a Car?

19:00 Emily: Okay. But you do own a car. So like, let’s talk about that decision, like in the first place. Is it an option for you at all to not own a car, like maybe some of your peers do? Or like, why do you own a car?

19:13 Janelle: I own a car because my family lives in Los Angeles, and I think it’s really important for me to visit them, you know once every two weeks. Genuinely, I don’t need a car. And over time, I’ve really reflected on, maybe this is not a good expense to have because I can take the bus everywhere here in San Diego, and I can walk to school.

19:43 Emily: Hmm. Okay. So, it’s really just those trips to LA that are like the reason that you still own the car.

19:49 Janelle: Yes.

19:49 Emily: And the gas price, like the gas cost is like all for those trips.

19:53 Janelle: Yes. Yes. It’s all from those trips.

19:56 Emily: Yeah. I’m very familiar with this as well, because as I said, we live in North San Diego County and we have relatives in Orange County who we go to visit with some frequency. And we use our car for other things, but that’s one of the major reasons why we choose to have one. But like you, ours is paid off. The insurance cost is not very high. And so it’s like, oh, okay, well, yeah, you could, in your case, trade off the $150 per month car expense for maybe some increased costs of like public transit or however you’re going to be getting up to LA instead. Maybe that’s also public transit. But yeah, I don’t know. It seems like a small line item to me in the first place.

20:33 Janelle: Yes.

Alternatives to Car Ownership

20:33 Emily: Yeah. So, you feel good about the car ownership?

20:37 Janelle: Not necessarily. I think I could find a way to go to LA without the car. There’s a UCSD ride share Facebook group that I used to use in undergrad where it’s $20 a seat to LA and back to San Diego. And, you know, I feel that the car was a very frivolous expense.

21:00 Emily: Hmm. So, when did you acquire the car?

21:03 Janelle: I acquired it last year, around April.

21:10 Emily: So, April, 2021. So like, just before your graduation from college?

21:14 Janelle: Yes.

21:15 Emily: Okay. Interesting. Okay. Well, I’m glad it’s at least on your mind of like a debate, and good for other UCSD students or maybe other students in the San Diego area to know like, Hey, like you can set up your life. It’s okay to let go of a car if you really don’t need it. So, cool. Give us an update on whether you decide to keep it, or if you decide to sell it. I guess it’s a good time to be selling if you decide do that.

21:35 Janelle: It is. It is really good for a used car.

#4 Expense: Miscellaneous

21:37 Emily: Yeah. Okay. Well, what’s your number four expense?

21:42 Janelle: Yeah. My number four expense is just general necessities, clothing, and you know, recreation stuff. I put them all in the same line item, so clothing and going out to do activities are under the same item, which is $200.

22:04 Emily: So, that sort of general like spending money kind of line item, like as long as you keep, it’s all sort of discretionary in a sense that like you could spend it this month, you could spend it next month, but as long as you keep it within 200, like you’re good. You’re meeting your budget goals.

22:19 Janelle: Yes. That $200 encompasses like a lot of random things. As long as it’s like an item or it’s for recreation, for example, buying clothes or buying random medication at CVS. And it also includes, you know, let’s say I want to do a fun rec, going to the park to go rock climbing would probably also be in there.

22:46 Emily: Okay. Yeah. So, like pocket money sort of thing.

22:50 Janelle: Yes.

22:50 Emily: Yeah. That sounds great. And good on you for, you know, limiting yourself to this certain, I sort of think of it as like guilt-free money. Like as long as I stay within this boundary, I can spend it however I want. I don’t want to feel guilty about it at all. I like that, like budgeting sort of in that sense, when I first started doing that, giving myself permission to spend and not like overanalyze. Like, does this, you know, help me meet my goals or not, or whatever, whatever. I knew as long as I stayed within this boundary, I could like, feel good about any purchase that I wanted to make. So, I really like that kind of line item.

23:20 Janelle: Yes.

23:21 Emily: Alright. And your number five line item. What’s that?

23:24 Janelle: My number five line item, I think that’s it. I think it just goes savings, rent, vacation, groceries, transport, and recreation. There’s not a lot to fit in a $2,500 paycheck.

Vacation/Emergency Fund

23:38 Emily: True. Because we already got down to the miscellaneous spending. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about like that vacation fund. I think you said it was $200 a month, is that right?

23:47 Janelle: Yes. Yes. It’s $200 a month. And in a given year, it goes to like $2,500, honestly. Sometimes, it eats away at the emergency fund, which is a trade-off, but that vacation fund has let me travel to 10-plus countries by myself. It doesn’t seem like a lot, the $200 a month, but it can buy so much outside of California.

24:14 Emily: Yeah. So, going to 10 countries. Over how many years did you do that?

24:20 Janelle: Okay. So, I started at the end of my sophomore year. So, I guess from now maybe three, three and a half years.

24:29 Emily: Yeah. Okay. So, over three years, has the budget line item stayed at about $200 that whole time?

24:36 Janelle: Yes.

24:37 Emily: Okay, so we’re talking $7200, $7500 total, and you visited 10 countries.

24:44 Janelle: Yes.

24:45 Emily: How did you do that?

24:48 Janelle: Yeah, this is very difficult to say. I guess I plan it ahead of time with like a cost analysis, very comprehensive and all of the, you know, food every day, accommodation every night, and then plane tickets. But the cost of living outside of California, everywhere else in the world is a lot cheaper. So, if you think about it, if you’re spending $400 a month, you know, feeding yourself here in California. That goes a long way somewhere else. Where, for example, I stayed in Vietnam for I think two weeks, and per night, I stayed at a hostel. And even private rooms would be $10 a night, but a hostel where I shared the dorm with other people would be $3 a night. And then food every day was less than 10 bucks a day.

Travel Hacking

25:48 Emily: Yeah. Well, you still have the expense of getting there though. So like, are you doing travel hacking or are you paying cash for flights? How does that work?

25:56 Janelle: Oh, okay. I just started doing travel hacking. So, there’s this thing called credit training. If you keep up a good credit score, you can sign up for credit cards that give you cash rewards for traveling. And then once you obtain those rewards, you can cancel your credit card at the expense of your credit score. So, if you have any long-term goals like buying a house, obviously don’t credit churn your credit score. But given that credit churning that I started doing just this year to obtain a new credit card for traveling, after the period passed where the score deducted, I think around 20 to 30 points, I was still able to bring it up to 780 by keeping up monthly payments and being very responsible with that credit card and not, you know, spending credit that I don’t have in cash.

26:57 Emily: I love the strategy of travel hacking. We’ve had a couple of previous guests on the podcast, Seonwoo Lee and Julie Chang, and we’ll have those links in the show notes, who have talked about their systems in detail. Now, those were both pre-pandemic interviews, I think. Or I think Julie’s was like in the pandemic, but she was talking about like pre-pandemic strategies. I’m just like getting back into this myself, because we took a big pause from travel hacking. One, because the pandemic, and two, because we were buying a house and so we didn’t want to be messing around with our credit scores, but like since closing on the house, we’ve sort of been dipping our toe back into it. And it’s so fun. And I’m trying to think about like our, you know, 2023 and what trips we want to do then. Like, what’s coming up for you? Do you have any trips planned right now?

27:39 Janelle: Yes, I actually have, hopefully, I haven’t asked my boss yet <laugh> but my PI, I want to. I have a week off this summer, so I want to spend that in Costa Rica around August and then in December, I hope to visit family in the Philippines and Thailand. So, I will be traveling there for December. Another travel hack that I would like to add in. If you open Google incognito mode and then search up the flights through Skyscanner or the Skiplagged website or the Momondo website and compare all three, you can find generally the cheapest ticket. And so, the cheapest day to fly is Tuesday. It’s hundreds of dollars cheaper to fly on Tuesday than any other day. And then the cheapest day to buy the tickets are between 6:00 AM on Saturday to noon on Saturday.

28:42 Emily: Alright. I will be noting that and using that for my travel hacking endeavors going forward. It sounds like most of your travel is international, right? Because if your family is in like the LA area, it sounds like you’re probably not doing that much U.S. like travel, right?

28:57 Janelle: Oh yeah. It’s expensive to travel in the U.S. Whether it’s gas from driving to a road trip or whether it’s flying, the accommodation here is a hundred plus a night. It’s very difficult. I think it would be a lot cheaper to just go international.

Taxes and I Bonds

29:18 Emily: Hmm. Alright. Good to know. Yes. Okay. So, we’ve kind of come to the end of our like budget breakdown. It sounds like we covered your entire budget actually just with those top five plus the goals and so forth. But I wanted to ask you about one other thing, which was taxes. Because I think you mentioned when you said your income earlier, that’s like your gross income, like before taxes are taken out. So, how do you handle taxes on your stipend?

29:42 Janelle: For taxes on my stipend, I take out $127 every month and I put it aside and do my taxes when it’s due, I think this April and then, so I have a cash fund for the taxes ready. And so, you could put that cash fund in a high-interest account, so you can earn interest on it. And it’s not just sitting and getting eaten away by inflation. But another thing is that I put it on Gemini, GUSD stablecoin, which is a crypto that is one-to-one with the U.S. dollar, but it’s a 6.9% APR. So, I earn interest on all of my funds from taxes, vacation, stuff like that.

30:31 Emily: Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, I’ve been hearing more and more about the strategy, not something I have started doing myself, but obviously very enticing with that kind of interest rate. Not guaranteed though.

30:42 Janelle: Oh, another thing I could add is there are also I bonds for the U.S. government. Right now, between I think April to July, I’m not sure about those months. Don’t quote me on that, but there is a 9.6% APR for putting in like cash deposits on I bonds at a $10,000 maximum. But the issue with that is that you have to keep it there at least five years or get a three-month penalty removed. Yes.

31:14 Emily: Exactly. One of the reasons I’ve been hearing about I bonds for, I don’t know, half a year or so now at least, but yeah, but I haven’t done it because I’m a little nervous about the like, ah, well, all this, you know, saving is saving to spend for me. Like my cash is because I intend to spend it. So, how comfortable am I, you know, tying it up somewhere else. So, anyway, it’s a good question for each individual when you’re thinking about where to house your savings and how to get it to work for you a little bit.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

31:41 Emily: Alright, Janelle, thank you so much for this budget breakdown! It’s been really fascinating for me, especially being sort of close by. I want to conclude our interview with the same question that I ask of all my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve already talked about in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

32:00 Janelle: Yes. My biggest advice would be to save whatever you can, and to put those savings somewhere where the money works for you. Where it’s not just getting eaten away by inflation, whether that be stocks or crypto or, you know, bonds, but definitely save what you can because that money is going to be useful, whether it’s for an emergency or if you want to, you know, change your life.

32:32 Emily: I love it. And the other sort of flip side of like having saved money, like having savings is great for what you just mentioned. You want to make a change or, you know, you have an emergency, whatever. It’s awesome to draw on that money. But the other side of it is the act of saving forces you to create margin in your life, like you’ve done, right? So like, you’re saving almost a thousand dollars a month for the sort of more long-term things. And you also have some short-term savings going on. So like, if you needed to pivot in the short-term and something happened, like you have some margin there to be able to eat into if necessary, if something came up. And so that, like, I just love, just like we need like time margin in our life. We also need financial margin in our life and energy margin and all the rest of it, which is so hard to maintain, but you’re doing a great job with your budget and it’s been really fascinating to chat with you about it and just congratulations on all the success. And I hope that, you know, you have it continued going forward as well.

33:27 Janelle: Okay. Thank you! It’s been really nice talking to you and getting to meet you in person and I, you know, listen to you in the car, driving back here, driving to LA.

33:39 Emily: That’s good to hear. I <laugh>, I love to talk with people who have listened to the podcast before. It’s kind of a kick for me to know that we already have a relationship that’s been established a little bit. So like, we can have conversations like this, which is really fun. So, thank you so much for volunteering!

33:54 Janelle: Thank you!

Outtro

33:59 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This PhD Student-Nurse Is Confident in Her Self-Worth

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In this episode, Emily interviews Brenda Olmos, a nurse practitioner and rising third-year PhD student in nursing. A first-generation college student who grew up without financial stability, Brenda was debt-averse throughout college and her master’s degree and started building wealth in her 20s through investing and real estate, eventually aligning with the FIRE movement. When she decided to pursue a PhD in her late 20s, she held out for an online program with an excellent culture and funding package. Thanks to her lucrative outside work, Brenda has continued to invest consistently during her PhD, although more slowly than she did pre-PhD. Brenda’s strong financial position and career optionality have set her up well for a fulfilling post-PhD career.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Image for S13E2: This PhD Student-Nurse Is Confident in Her Self-Worth

Teaser

00:00 Brenda: It’s so cool to like see yourself grow in ways that you never thought you could. And financially like, okay, maybe I’m taking like a 50 or $60,000 per year cut. But in the course of my life, like is three years really going to matter that much, you know? And how much more will my life be enriched by having this degree? Like what doors will it open for me? Whether they’re monetary or not is not really the point for me anymore. And that’s something that I was able to achieve in my twenties.

Introduction

00:37 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 13, Episode 2, and today my guest is Brenda Olmos, a nurse practitioner and rising third-year PhD student in nursing. A first-generation college student who grew up without financial stability, Brenda was debt-averse throughout college and her master’s degree and started building wealth in her 20s through investing and real estate, eventually aligning with the FIRE movement. When she decided to pursue a PhD in her late 20s, she held out for an online program with an excellent culture and funding package. Thanks to her lucrative outside work, Brenda has continued to invest consistently during her PhD, although more slowly than she did pre-PhD. Brenda’s strong financial position and career optionality have set her up well for a fulfilling post-PhD career.

01:56 Emily: Would you please help me out with something? I want to record six podcast interviews this fall to be published over approximately the next six months. Will you consider being a guest? As a listener, I’m sure you have something to say about money as a PhD or PhD-to-be! Simply fill out the Google Form at PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/ to get the ball rolling. Alternatively, if you have someone in mind who you’d like to hear me interview, please connect me with that person over email or Twitter! I really appreciate it! Let’s keep the podcast going strong! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e2/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Brenda Olmos.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:52 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today someone I know from Fintwit, Brenda Olmos. She is a rising third-year PhD student at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She’s actually doing a PhD in nursing, so a very different kind of PhD student than we’ve had on here before. Not only that, her program is online, so she lives in Austin, Texas. So, Brenda, I’m so happy to have you on the podcast and get to have a deep-dive conversation with you. Will you please tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself?

03:20 Brenda: Sure! Hello everyone. My name’s Brenda Olmos. And, like Emily said, I live in Austin, Texas, and I’ve grown up in this area of central Texas and really enjoy living here. So, when I was searching for PhD programs, I was definitely searching for distance programs. And that’s the case about me being in an online PhD program. I grew up, like I said, here in central Texas, and I went to UT Austin for my undergraduate in nursing degree. Six years later, I graduated with my Master’s in Nursing as a family nurse practitioner. So, I had about six years of experience as a registered nurse at the bedside, which means I basically worked in inpatient hospital settings, taking care of people who were acutely ill. And then I chose to leave that setting when I became a nurse practitioner and I worked in an outpatient primary care setting for older people.

04:11 Brenda: So, I’m a geriatric nurse. And I found a scholarship in 2019 for geriatric nursing research. And I was kind of at a point in my life where I was satisfied with my career, and I found it rewarding. I found my work very gratifying, but I felt that my potential wasn’t really maximized in that role, that I made a difference one-on-one with patients, but that I wanted to make a difference at a larger scale. And in nursing, there are two paths for a doctorate degree. There’s a Doctorate in Nursing Practice, which is a DNP, and a lot of nurses do that because they want to make immediate change, like in administration or policy. And then there’s the PhD, which is the Doctor of Philosophy. And that’s more of a research-based doctorate, like most other PhDs in which you focus on generating new knowledge and you learn the research process.

05:07 Brenda: And I actually had really great mentors, which caused me to lean towards the PhD. And I chose the PhD in nursing because I felt that I wanted to have the doctorate that was universally recognized as a terminal degree and as a doctorate, whereas a DNP is very specific to nursing. I wanted to have something that, you know, the three letters that mean something to everybody <laugh> in the world, right? So, that’s kind of been my trajectory. I worked as a nurse practitioner for three years, full-time from 2017 to 2020. And then in 2020, I had been accepted to the PhD program. I was still kind of on the fence about it because I was making six figures as a nurse practitioner. And even though I didn’t know at the time that I had won this scholarship, I was like, I don’t know, this is a big leap to take. And then the pandemic hit and that took away so much of the joy of my work. And so much of the compensation that I realized I’m ready to go do something different. So, I’ve been in my PhD program since August of 2020. And like you said, I’m going into my third year now.

06:13 Emily: Wow. I love when I get someone on the podcast who has really, really thought deeply about their career and the trajectory of it and chosen, after all of that, to go into a PhD program. I don’t want be, you know, too critical of people who went like directly from undergrad down that path. I went almost directly from undergrad, but I just think it takes on a different tone. You have more focus in your research usually with all that like background work experience, and especially for you having a very, you know, very solid, super lucrative like career leading into that and you just really thought about, well, what do I want in my life? How do I want to be spending my time? That’s actually a lot of what we’ll be talking about today.

06:51 Emily: And I just want to kind of frame this for the listener a little bit that you know, Brenda’s had, as we just said of really different career trajectory than probably most people who are listening, probably the vast majority of people who are listening. And so once we get to start, you know, talking about Brenda’s finances, you’re going to see a pretty rosy picture. And it is of course, largely due to having that career in her twenties. But I don’t want you to like dismiss this episode as like, you’re never going to learn anything from it because you’re not in the same kind of position that Brenda was, because I still think there’s going to be something here, some strategy, some mindset, especially, that you can learn from. So, keep with us even though it may be a little bit of a different kind of story.

07:29 Brenda: And I do want to add to that that not every nurse is in my position, right? Like I had a really great scholarship for undergrad. Probably about 75% of my undergrad degree was paid for through scholarships and grants. I paid for my master’s degree, partially through hospital tuition reimbursement, and partially by working full-time. But I had classmates who took out a hundred thousand dollars for two years of their master’s program, and they’re paying that off now, right? So, I just want to be transparent about the fact that like, don’t go up to every nurse and be like, oh my God, you have no debt and you make a ton of money. Like, no, I was very strategic about the way that I got my education and I was always debt-averse. And so, I think that’s also important to point out.

Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE)

08:14 Emily: Yeah. Because I next want to kind of talk about you discovering the FIRE movement, which you did prior to starting the PhD program, but you had already, as you just said, taken some, you know, FIRE-like steps leading up to that, by being debt-averse, by working a lot while you’re in school, by choosing an employer who’s going to give you tuition reimbursement and so forth. So like, you were already setting yourself up well financially, even if you hadn’t, you know, discovered that particular movement. But let’s go to that like moment when you discovered the FIRE movement and what appealed to you about it? Like, why did you decide to start going that route?

08:45 Brenda: Yeah, I think a lot of it was rooted in, like for many of us, the way that we grew up around money, right? Like the beliefs that were planted in our minds as young kids. And for me, and I’ve talked about this in BiggerPockets and in some other podcasts, is that I had so much financial instability growing up and I knew so much about my parents’ finances and I knew the lows and I knew the highs. And I had kind of, maybe not consciously, but unconsciously decided that I was going to be stable, that my adult life was not going to be a roller coaster of emotions, secondary to my financial situation. And so, I think that’s why FIRE appealed to me because it was like, oh, I don’t just have to be stable. Like, I can be free. <Laugh>, you know, it’s like, there’s one extreme where you’re tied to the ball and chain, there’s the middle ground where you’re stable and you’re working, you’re saving, maybe you’re investing. And then there’s financially independent where no matter what you do, whether you work or you don’t work, you’re okay, right? So, I found out about it through some podcasts, StackingBenjamins, Afford Anything, Earn and Invest. And I just started listening and I was like, wow, there’s a lot I can do with some money I have saved up. Or like, maybe I should buy a property, you know? And that’s kind of how it all took off.

10:13 Emily: I think we’re going to get here, like later in the interview, but this like really interesting overlap in your story between pursuing FIRE and pursuing the PhD, and like the time freedom that FIRE can give you to then apply it to your academic interest. Even if those interests don’t pay as well as other career paths, perhaps, that were available to you. So, I really hope, yeah, we pull that out later in the interview. So, give me a couple, like, you know, mechanical things that you did in those early years of FIRE. You mentioned, oh, maybe I should consider buying a property. Like, what were some things that you did that were deviations from the path that you were on before, once you learned about FIRE?

10:49 Brenda: Right. So, I started investing in a brokerage account, which I had never done before. Like the thought of investing in the stock market was really foreign to me. I knew that my parents had 401(k)s, but I didn’t know that that was investing in the stock market. And so, I started doing research on that. And I talk about this on the podcast I have with my friend, Minority Millennial Money, about how my first experience into investing was like going to Wells Fargo and having an advisor there telling me that I needed at least $25,000 to like open a portfolio <laugh> and, you know, I look back on that and I did it. But I look back on that and I’m like, oh, I was so naive, you know? And now I know so much more and eventually, I transferred it out of Wells Fargo, but so the first thing was investing, and the second thing was buying a home.

House Hacking

11:40 Brenda: First, it was a small condo in 2017. Prior to that, I had kept my living expenses low because I just lived with a friend who owned a home and I rented a room from her for $600 a month, right? So, for Austin, even seven years ago, that was really cheap. So, and I didn’t, I don’t mind living with people, but it was nice to have my own place when I bought a condo in 2017. And then in 2019, I bought a single-family home and I rented out the condo. And so, now I have both.

12:11 Emily: So, let’s see, in 2019 you bought the single-family home, in 2020, you started the PhD program. So, are you still living in that single-family home? Or did you move again?

12:19 Brenda: Yeah, and I house hack it. So, I mean, house hacking is really just having roommates, right? So, basically, I started having travel nurses stay with me so that I didn’t have a permanent person. I just kind of had a nurse house. And so, I really enjoyed that. And there was a little bit of a lull there when COVID hit because many of their contracts got canceled. And so, I was at a critical point where I was like, I’m quitting my job. I have this house to take care of and the income may not be there, but it ended up working out. And hosting travel nurses is really awesome.

12:59 Emily: Yeah. This strategy of house hacking is one that I have given some air time to in the past and I’m really excited about for PhD students, because for that stage of life, it’s already really normalized to live with roommates. And so, if you have the financial wherewithal to be able to purchase, be the owner and be the landlord, it can like really radically transform your finances. So, so glad to hear that you were taking advantage of that strategy even before starting the PhD.

Choosing a Supportive PhD Program

13:22 Emily: So, we kind of already talked about like, why you wanted to start the PhD, you know, why you thought it was the best move for your career. Did you want to add any more details about, I don’t know, that particular program or anything else about your, you know, deciding to go down that career?

13:35 Brenda: Yeah. And, you know, we have met over Financial Twitter and there’s also Academic Twitter. And on Academic Twitter, I see so many horror stories of like really difficult programs, really toxic environments. And I was like, A) I don’t have to do this. So, I am not going to go to a program like that. And B) What if I found a really great program, you know? And so, I just created a spreadsheet with all the schools I was looking at. And this particular program, the director called me, she wanted to talk, she was warm, she was encouraging. And she was genuinely interested in me, you know? And I was like, wow, that’s really special. Whereas other schools like just sent me computer-generated emails, you know? And I was like, okay. So, like my email just went into like a black hole. So, that was important to me, especially because I know that people don’t know this, you know, people outside of nursing don’t know this, but nursing academia has a really negative reputation for being very toxic, very discouraging, not supportive, hazing, in a sense.

14:44 Brenda: And it’s especially prominent at the graduate, you know, and doctoral level. So, I was like, I don’t need that in my life. So, I’m going to look for a program where I feel like it would be a good experience. And I found that, and I was like, okay, I could do this here. So, that was important to me. And also, it was important to me that, if I was going to take this big financial hit, that it was going to be for something worth it. And like you said, for me, the PhD is really something I’m doing for personal enrichment, right? There’s no guarantee that I’m going to make more money when I’m done. You know, I made almost $200,000 in 2019 just working a little bit extra. If I get a job that makes me that much post-PhD, I’ll be really excited. But for me, it was also really important to see people that look like me because I’m a Latina nurse practitioner. And I just could count on one hand how many people who were nurses who had PhDs, who were Hispanic, that I knew, you know? And so, in a field that’s predominantly or 95% white women, I thought it was important to increase the representation.

16:00 Emily: Yeah. I love all those overlapping motivations. And I love, it sounds like you were patient, right? Like you were willing to be really selective about the program that you went to. And I love that little note about like, oh, this person actually called me, like, I talked to this person over the phone instead of just email correspondence and just form letter stuff. And I love that like, you looked at this field, like you said, it has this bad reputation, and you said to yourself, I don’t need to do this. And I’m only going to do it if I can find the program that is going to be really supportive of me. It’s the right fit for me. And even if you know, Academic Twitter and everything else is telling you, no, no, everything’s terrible. It never, it doesn’t exist anywhere. You were like, no, I’m going to hold out and find that perfect program for me. And you did. So like, I just say that to point out that, like, that’s a limiting belief that you could have had. Like, you could have told yourself, oh, I’m never going to find a home. It doesn’t matter. People like me never, you know, get into this level of nursing or succeed or whatever, whatever. And you chose to not have that limiting belief, right? So, I want other people to hear that message as well.

17:02 Brenda: Yeah. And I’ve spoken with my classmates about this, and I think I’m just fortunate in the sense that I have a very positive disposition <laugh> and so I didn’t, it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t find one. I just thought, I just need to find one <laugh>.

Net Worth in Grad School

17:17 Emily: Okay. So, let’s hear more details about your life, like coming into the program. We’ve heard a couple of things. You already owned two properties. You had been making like over six figures. In fact, your income was nearly $200K in that year immediately prior to starting graduate school. Would you like to share anything about like your net worth or just any other aspects of your financial picture at the time that you started graduate school?

17:38 Brenda: Yeah. So, at the time I started graduate school, that was 2020. So, my net worth now is about $550,000. And at that time it was probably, I think I remember tweeting about it and I think it was like $330K at that time. And that big leap has really just been real estate prices just skyrocketing. And so, I do count like potential, you know, appreciation in my net worth. And then I probably have, right now, I have about $160K or $170K invested. And at that time I probably had like $120K. And so, I’ve been contributing, let’s see, with Roth contribution maximum, which is 6,000, plus about a thousand dollars a month. So, that’s like $18,000 a year in the last two years. So yeah, that makes sense. $120K plus another $35K to $40K. So, I’m at $160K. And I anticipate, you know, this is just kind of a lull in my investing trajectory. And once I go back to full-time work and I’m earning a full-time income again of hopefully at least a hundred thousand, if not more, because I’ll be able to add my clinical practice contract work to it, then I’ll be able to go back to investing closer to $25,000 a year.

19:00 Emily: I mean, investing $18,000 a year while you’re in a PhD program is well, definitely the highest number that I’ve heard <laugh> of anybody on the podcast. So, you’re not exactly a slouch in this area. But so, prior to the PhD, though, it sounds like you were using a taxable brokerage account and maybe some employer-provided stuff 401(k) or 403(b).

19:18 Brenda: Yes, a 401(k).

19:18 Emily: Yeah. Okay. And so, that benefit went away, I assume. Like at the moment you’re only doing your Roth IRA and then the taxable brokerage account.

19:27 Brenda: Yeah. And actually, so before the episode, we talked about my stipend. So, my stipend is, just to protect my time, I don’t owe any kind of labor for that stipend, but I am limited to working 20 hours per week. The great thing about that stipulation is that I’m not limited to how much money I can make. I’m just limited to hours I can work. So, I have been a graduate research assistant at the university since spring of 2021 with one of my professors. And we’ve actually published two papers together, which is awesome. But one of the benefits of that is that as a GRA, you become staff of the university and you get access to their 403(b) and 457. So, I have been contributing at least half of my GRA income, which pays $25 an hour. And what’s funny about this is that the original pay for that position was $15 an hour at the university.

GRA Salary Negotiation

20:27 Brenda: And I told my professor, I was like, I’m sorry, like, I am passionate about your work, but like, I just cannot do it for $15 an hour. Like I have too many things going on and I have too many other much more lucrative offers. And so she went to financial, I don’t know, the financial services building and they agreed to bump it up to $25 for everyone in the nursing program, because we’re all registered nurses, at least, you know, some of us are nurse practitioners. So, it was like almost insulting <laugh>, you know? I mean, I don’t want to be a snob about it, but it’s like, who would take $15 when I can go work the same hour for $65 or $75? So anyway, so yeah, I’ve been doing the Roth, the taxable brokerage, which really comes third on my list. Like if I’m short on money one month, that’s the last one I fund. And then I contribute 50% of that $25 per hour income, which is 10 hours a week, a thousand dollars a month. So, half of that goes to the 457. And I chose the 457 on purpose because you can access it anytime without penalty.

21:38 Emily: Love all those details. Actually, it’s interesting because most people who I speak with who are like on the level of 10-hour per week employees are not offered those benefits. So like, I would say that’s a great, like, exception that your university or health sciences center offers that. So, that’s awesome that you’re doing that. And I love that you, you know, shared that negotiation story and that it not only benefited you, but benefited everybody. Like this is a message I’m trying to get across with like, you can negotiate for yourself as an individual. Yes. But it can also help other people when you do that, because it sends a message.

22:12 Brenda: I wouldn’t have expected them to just give it to me. I mean, it would’ve been fine, but then it’s like, I think it was a fairness issue, right? Because they were like, oh, well, all these other students are also doing it. No, it was great. And I think it was definitely something that the graduate college had to take into consideration because you’re looking at, you know, graduate students, but we’re also working professionals, right? So, that is kind of a unique situation that nurses in graduate school are in.

22:43 Emily: Absolutely.

Commercial

22:47 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2022 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is September 15, 2022. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate, named savings account for your future tax payments. Calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax, and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives.

24:06 Emily: If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. Now back to our interview.

Sources of Income in Grad School

24:50 Emily: So, let’s like back up a tiny bit and talk about sort of all of your income sources during graduate school. Because you know, you’ve mentioned a couple times you have this really fantastic scholarship, so let’s start there. Like, what does the scholarship give you?

25:02 Brenda: Right. So, the scholarship is specific to my university, and it’s a special foundation that was money given through a philanthropic organization. And they basically allotted $150,000 scholarships separated into three years, $50,000 per year. That comes out to $30,000 per year or $2,500 per month as a stipend, and $3,000 for summer tuition, $6,000 for spring and fall tuition, and $4,000 leftover are for travel to conferences and that kind of thing. And I will say that I have used some of your courses and the taxes because that $2,500 counts as 1099 income for me. So, I do have to pay taxes on that. And most of my contract work is not on a W-2. So, I do have to pay taxes on that as well.

26:01 Emily: Okay. So, it sounds like the scholarship is fully paying your tuition and fees, giving you a stipend of $2,500 a month, and you have this additional professional development fund per year. Wow. Okay. That sounds great, but we’re not done yet. The way that we talked about this earlier, and I think the best way to phrase it for the listener is that that stipend of $2,500 per month essentially protects 20 hours per week of your time for you to devote to your dissertation research, or your classes, whatever it is you have to be doing for your PhD. And so, with the next 20 hours of your work week, you can be doing other paid work in that time. So, you can earn above your stipend. It’s just, you’re limited in the number of hours you can spend working. And so for you, you’ve already mentioned like the assistantship that you have at 10 hours per week. Do you have any other work that you do in the other remaining 10 hours per week?

Clinic Contract Work

26:52 Brenda: Yeah, so my former employer kept me on as a contractor. So now, I technically work for the agency that staffs their clinics, but they have urgent care clinics every weekend from nine to four. So, I’ll pick up weekend shifts. And occasionally, because my former boss knows me and knows that I know like the day-to-day clinic work, then he’ll ask me if I can work some days during the week. And so, I’ll do that. And that’s at $75 an hour. And then I have a couple of other jobs where I fill in for other nurse practitioners, like when they’re on vacation or they’re out sick or something. And the great thing about some of those is that they’re kind of slow clinics. And so, I can just take my schoolwork and do it there <laugh>.

27:43 Emily: Yeah. Sounds like a sweet deal. So, with all these active income sources together, the stipend plus the other work that you’re permitted to do, what does that add up to in terms of like your yearly income on average?

27:56 Brenda: So, last year my taxes were a little bit complicated, so I have the 1099 income, and then I have the real estate income. And I don’t take any of that as income from the real estate. So, the condo has its own account, and it has a little emergency fund for itself. And anything that it makes, it stays in there for emergencies, and same with the house. It has its own account. I pay rent into the homes account for myself, and then my tenants pay for pay into that account as well. But I rarely take any money from those accounts. So, I don’t count that. So, out of $112,000 last year, about $30K of that was from the rentals. And so, I really made about $70K, probably. So, $30K of that was from the stipend and then I made another $40K in part-time work.

28:53 Emily: Okay. So interesting. So, you have income sort of on your tax return, you have income that you don’t actually consider, like you’re not actually taking it into your personal accounts. You’re just leaving that as emergency funds and so forth for the real estate stuff. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, earning $40K on top of the $30K, again, really great for a PhD student. So good for you. The message that I want the listener to be hearing from this part of the interview is Brenda’s time is valued in a certain way because of her existing credentials and work experience and so forth. But earning something like $75 an hour is not out of the question for a PhD student in other disciplines. Depending, of course, on your work experience and what your field is and how, you know, in-demand it is, et cetera.

Valuing and Monetizing Your Skills

29:38 Emily: So, like you made the comment earlier. It’s a good thing they’re only limiting me on time and not the amount of money that I can make, because, you know, in some of your income sources, you can command quite a high hourly rate. I would love for other graduate students and postdocs to hear that message and think about, wow, if I’m making $75 an hour, a hundred dollars an hour, I only need to work two hours a week to make a really huge difference in my budget. You know, like when you can get to those high hourly rates, you don’t have to spend a ton of your time, you know, to get your finances in the shape that you want them to be in.

30:10 Brenda: For sure. And I think that, you know, like you said, I have a very particular skill, but there are skills that I don’t have that I would gladly pay someone $65 an hour to do. Like currently I’m dealing with some big data and I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m like going on websites of like, you know, people you can pay on an hourly basis to like walk you through something. And I’m sure that there are people in PhD programs who know this like the back of their hand, and they’re just not making themselves available for someone like me. Because I can earn that money, you know, relatively easily, and I’m happy to pay someone for their expertise as well. So, that’s very true. And I think that maybe sometimes, you know, I am very aware of my skill because I have a license and a certification for it, but you may have skills that other people need that don’t necessarily have, you know, very formal credentials, but that people would be happy to pay for.

31:12 Emily: And I think it’s so easy to get caught in this trap of undervaluing yourself inside academia. Like what you were talking about earlier with like the $15 versus $25 per hour negotiation that you did. It’s so common inside academia to undervalue ourselves. We see everybody else doing it, then we do it as well. But if you can take a little bit of a pivot and maybe, you know, market your skills to somebody outside of academia where these are not, you know, a dime a dozen kind of skills that everybody has, then you can, you know, potentially get those higher hourly rates. So, definitely food for thought, I hope, for some people.

Negotiating In-State Tuition

31:42 Emily: So, I think that you are probably the first interview we’ve had on the podcast who is doing like a hundred percent remote program. Not just like remote for COVID or whatever has been going on temporarily. So, you live not in the same state as where your university is. So, how does that work out with your scholarship and with the tuition and everything?

32:02 Brenda: Yeah, so that’s true. I specifically was looking for long-distance programs because I like where I live. I live close to my family, and I knew that a PhD was an experience that I would need support for <laugh>. And so, I didn’t want to leave my support system behind to do that. And so, whenever I got accepted to the University of Oklahoma and I was still living in Texas, and I had no plan to leave Texas, there was the issue of out-of-state tuition costs. And so, I got accepted in about March 2020. I found out I got the scholarship in April of 2020, and I had kind of set that as the bar, like if I get accepted and I get the scholarship, I’ll go, right? But then I thought, well, out-of-state tuition is almost double, right? It’s the difference between $10,000 and $6,000 a semester.

32:58 Brenda: And I just told the director, like I really want to go to this program, and I’m really grateful for the scholarship, but I realized financially that the out-of-state tuition is going to eat up about 50% of my stipend per semester. So, is there any way I could get in-state tuition? And she actually took it up to the graduate college and they agreed to give me a waiver for three years. So, I pay in-state tuition, and actually the great part about being a graduate research assistant is that, when you take on that position, it’s actually the grant that is funding you, that pays the waiver. And so, the waiver that I had originally been promised can be given to someone else while I’m a GRA.

33:44 Emily: Wow. Okay. Another great example of negotiation, and also another kind of general negotiation point that I like to make to prospective graduate students is like, you don’t necessarily know all the different levers that these people behind the scenes can pull to like enhance your package. So, you made the suggestion, maybe I could pay the in-state tuition rate instead of the higher rate, and they made that happen. And if that hadn’t exactly been possible, maybe they could have found a different way to augment your package to make up that, you know, $4,000 per year difference. So, yeah, so encouraging for prospective graduate students.

34:15 Brenda: I do want to mention that one of the points I brought up was that, and maybe this is just using a rivalry to my advantage, but you know, UT Austin and the University of Oklahoma are rivals in football. And UT Austin has a policy that, if you’re an out-of-state student and you come in to Texas with a scholarship from Texas, like if you won a scholarship in Texas, then the University waives your out-of-state tuition. And so, I presented that to the director and I said, you know, UT Austin does this, do you guys do anything like this? And I think that was what helped, you know, is that I had kind of done my research and I was like, you know, this is something another university is doing. Can you guys do it? And they said yes.

34:58 Emily: That’s a great example as well of like sharing of best practices. Hey, these other people have found this solution over here. Sometimes it helps to open their mind. Oh, well, maybe we could find this similar solution. Absolutely.

Money Mindset

35:09 Emily: So, you mentioned, you know, you’ve taken a pretty substantial income cut to pursue the PhD. Are there any other ways that taking this step in your career has impacted your path towards financial independence?

35:23 Brenda: Yeah, like I said, it’s probably a little bit of a setback numbers-wise and on the spreadsheet, but I feel that it’s so valuable to me personally and professionally and in my development as a person, as a researcher, as a scientist, as a nurse. You know, I’m just being challenged to think in ways that I never did before. And my practice in primary care became kind of monotonous and, you know, unfortunately, there wasn’t very much motivating me forward. And I feel totally different now. You know, even though sometimes I’m overwhelmed to learn new things, it’s so cool to like see yourself grow in ways that you never thought you could. And financially like, okay, maybe I’m taking like a $50 or $60,000 per year cut. But in the course of my life, like is three years really going to <laugh> matter that much, you know? And how much more will my life be enriched by having this degree? Like what doors will it open for me, whether they’re monetary or not is not really the point for me anymore. And that’s something that I was able to achieve in my twenties, right? Like that I set myself up to where, whether I make $50,000 or $150,000, what matters most to me now is that I’m happy, that I’m fulfilled, that I’m challenged, that I enjoy the people I work with, that I genuinely feel that I’m making a difference.

36:54 Emily: And it’s just so like gratifying to hear that, you know, the work you did on your finances in your twenties, both before and after discovering the FIRE movement, set you up to have this excellent financial experience during the PhD. Now, part of that is your field, and this is normal and so forth, this fantastic scholarship, you got all of that. But part of that is just, you know, when I was listening to some of your other podcast interviews, I was thinking that you just sound so like, calm about your finances. Like you just sound so like relaxed about them, which is a very different energy than what I give off sometimes, and like other people who I listen to, or interview on the podcast. But that is on the back of all the work that you did in your twenties to lead up to this point.

37:37 Emily: And so, you get to be relaxed because you have this net worth, you have your properties, you have your house hack, and you have this fantastic income. And this is just something that I so wish that more PhD students could experience. Even a fraction of the experience that you’re having, right? Like maybe it’s having the reasonable income for a person in their twenties or thirties. Or maybe it’s, you know, having worked for a few years, building up a bit of a nest egg before taking that income cut the way you have. I just, I love hearing just your whole like, sort of disposition towards this.

38:09 Brenda: Yeah. And I think a lot of it is reorienting your mind to not have a scarcity mindset, right? To kind of have an abundance mindset, like I’m going to thrive and I’m going to find a great job after this. And like I said, I’m just gifted with a naturally positive disposition, but like, I don’t have any worries about what will happen after, because everything’s worked out so far. <Laugh> maybe that’s just because I’ve been so strategic, right? Maybe in some ways I could have relaxed a little bit, but I am very forward-looking, right? I’m always kind of thinking about the next thing. And I have to remind myself to live in the moment, too, but yeah. I think that most PhD students, like you said, undervalue themselves. And I think about my classmates alone. You know, I’m like, they’re so talented, they’re so smart. Some of them are doing this with kids, with a family, taking care of their parents, with a job. And I’m just like, those are skills, right? Like those are highly marketable skills. Like just getting through the program with life the way it is is a crazy good skill. So, I really appreciate that you encourage people to, you know, maybe do some inward thinking about how can I monetize these things that just come naturally to me now in this stage of my life?

What is Coast FI?

39:40 Emily: You said a couple of minutes ago that, well, it doesn’t really matter if I make $50,000 or $150,000 a year. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to work out. That reminded me of the term Coast FI, a particular version of FIRE. Do you think about Coast FI? Would you describe yourself as Coast FI? Let’s define that for the listener.

39:59 Brenda: Yeah. I think traditionally, Coast FI means that your retirement is set, even if you don’t invest another dollar. I wouldn’t say that I don’t need to keep investing. I think I do. But I don’t really see myself retiring early in the traditional like FIRE sense because I have, A) A very useful skill that’s highly needed in this country. B) I speak Spanish, which is really useful in my part of the country. C) I’m just such a busybody. Like I could never stop working, you know, <laugh> like, I just, when people talk about staying home, like with children, I’m like, I could never do that. I could have children, but I’m not staying home with them 100% of the time. So, yeah, Coast FI for me just means that I have the financial flexibility to choose something that means something to me, as opposed to just a means to an end, to like pay my bills. And a part of that has also been keeping my expenses low. But the other part is, like you said, everything I did to set myself up in my twenties. And, you know, a few years ago, I probably would’ve told you that I would quit working at 45. And now that I’ve been in the PhD program, I’m like, no, there’s so much to do. There’s no way I could cut off 15 or 20 years off my career, you know?

41:26 Emily: That’s so interesting that you described earlier kind of finding, getting into like a lull in your career. Like you weren’t so stimulated. And I think that some people, like you did, would see FIRE, the potential to retire early, as the solution to that. And you did, but you also found another solution, which is, you know, taking your career in a slightly different direction, going down the academic path. And you found that reinvigoration there. And now you have kind of choices on both fronts. You have many career options, you have many financial options, to work, to not work, to work in a capacity that other people would not be able to, perhaps, because they hadn’t maybe had all these, you know, made all these decisions in their twenties and so forth. So, kind of the world is your oyster really <laugh> once you finish this program.

42:09 Brenda: Yeah. And things have come up during the PhD program. I don’t know if it’s because of the PhD program, but for example, I was a volunteer vaccinator for a local community center that was giving out COVID-19 vaccines every three weeks. And I was just consistently going, because I just wanted to help my community. And then they reached out to me about being the clinical consultant for their community center, because it was part of their grant. It would help their grant application if they had someone, you know, whose name they could put down, and they offered to pay me for that as well. That was an income source I forgot to tell you about. So, they pay me $500 a month, and I basically like attend some meetings and answer questions about COVID, about the vaccine, about what to do if this or that. And that was something I never would’ve thought I would do. You know? And it’s just like kind of a result of just saying yes, like I was like, well, I don’t see clinical consultant on my resume yet. <Laugh> but I guess I’ll do it. You just tell me what to do and I’ll show up, you know?

43:17 Emily: That comes from having that financial margin in your life and the time margin, right? To be able to say yes to, at first unpaid, but then later look what it turned into, you know, opportunities, which is something I could certainly <laugh> learn from.

Post-PhD Plans

43:29 Emily: Okay. So let’s talk a slight bit more about post-PhD plans. You mentioned earlier, you know, you have a few different career paths that you might choose among. What are you thinking?

43:40 Brenda: So, the idea of working in industry, or like the pharmaceutical area appeals to me because every pharmaceutical company has a medical affairs division in which they have doctoral-level prepared clinicians or pharmacists, which kind of serve as the bridge between the scientists creating the drug or the device and the prescribers out in the world. And so, that’s actually a really lucrative option. Like I know a couple people who do it and they make about $170,000 plus bonuses. So, they’re making like $200,000 a year. So, if I wanted money, that’s what I would do. <Laugh> which I’m not above saying that I want money. Okay. <laugh> so if that job came up, I would definitely consider it. Then there’s obviously the traditional route of pursuing some kind of tenure-track research career in academia. I’m kind of iffy on that. I don’t know that it’s the best use of my strengths. I’m definitely a people person. I’m an extrovert. I can do writing and I can write grants, and I could potentially, you know, try to prove myself to the NIH for the rest of my life <Laugh> to try to get research money, but I’m not sure that I want that.

45:03 Brenda: And then, I could do a blend of clinical practice and teaching where I just teach as an adjunct and I maintain my clinical practice. That’s kind of what I was doing before the PhD. So, I’m not sure that I would really be maximizing what I learned in the PhD if I went back to that. And then there’s a postdoc if I do want pursue research and I just want to get into someone else’s work and see what they’re doing, and maybe that’ll make me more excited about a tenure-track career. And then I was also looking at the National Clinician Scholars Program, which is kind of like a subset of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. And that’s a program at six campuses all over the country in which you basically get more education on health policy and organizational change. And most of the graduates go on to work at like the Department of Health or Health and Human Services or the CDC or some kind of federal agency where policy is happening. So, that’s probably one of my top ones. Pharma’s one of my top ones, and teaching in a, non-research, like very little research, that’s probably my third one.

46:11 Emily: Yeah. Well, hopefully, you have all of those things on the table once you get towards your graduation. And like you said, money could play a role in your decision, or maybe you’ll be following, you know, what seems most interesting to you. And again, the position that you’re in affords you those options. So, it’s wonderful to hear. And I think you said earlier, you know, you’re probably not going to be idle, right? Even once you achieve financial independence, however you want to define that. It sounds like you expect to have a long career, which is, once you’ve invested in something like a PhD program, it’s very, I think, worthwhile to keep your skills out there and keep, you know, working for your communities you’ve said so far. Yeah. Anything else you want to add about what you envision your life to change or not change? Like after you achieve financial independence?

46:57 Brenda: I think as a woman and as someone in their early thirties, you know, one of the big factors in deciding what I do is like, if I want to start a family, and what career option would be most conducive to that. And like you said, I have options, but like women have to think about that more. And especially in academia or in science, like you don’t want to be put on the mommy track, right? So, that’s also something I consider like if I were to have children, would it be right away after the PhD? Would I settle into another job? Like give it a year or two? I’m going to be 33 in September. Like what about my, you know, what about my fertility? Like, there are so many things to think about. And I think that’s very real for a lot of women in academia, right? It’s like juggling your human babies and the baby of your career, which is your research or whatever you’re working on post-PhD.

48:00 Emily: Absolutely. And another thing that having a strong financial position just puts you in a strong position to decide about. If you want to take an extra long maternity leave that’s unpaid, but you have a job to go back to, well, maybe that’s going to be, you know, the best situation for you, or maybe not. Maybe it’ll be a different decision, but whatever you do, I mean, having money gives you options. I say that over and over again, it just gives you options. And that’s really what you have now, which is so delightful to hear.

Where Can People Find You?

48:24 Emily: So, if people want to hear more from you, where can they find you?

48:29 Brenda: I’m on Twitter @almostbrenda, like the word almost, and then my name, almost Brenda. And that’s also my Instagram handle and my email address at Gmail, [email protected]. I’m on LinkedIn. That’s linkedin.com/in/bolmosfnp for family nurse practitioner. And I’d love to connect with people. Even if, you know, even if you just want to talk about how to improve your finances, I know Emily, you’re a great resource for that. And I’ve been in the Community forums there too. But if you’re interested in coming on our podcast, I cohost Minority Millennial Money which is on Apple and Spotify and all of the platforms. We love to have people come on and we talk through their finances with them and see what they could do better. So yeah, I’m easily reachable. I’m all over the internet. <Laugh>

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

49:26 Emily: Wonderful. I hope you’ll have a few people follow up with you from this. Okay. I’m going to conclude with the question that I always ask my guests at the end of interviews, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we touched on in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

49:44 Brenda: I would say it would be to disassociate your self-worth from your net worth, right? Because although I’m in a particularly advantageous position, I know how difficult it must be for people who are not in this position and are looking forward to those days when they get to earn a higher living. And you know, you’re already undervaluing your skills. You’re already in places that may be toxic and not supportive. Like, the very least you could do is like not value yourself based on what’s in your bank account. <Laugh>. And also, if you have the ability to keep investing, like to not lose time, because time is money in the market, right? So, anything you can throw at it is super helpful.

50:32 Emily: Great messages to end on. Brenda, thank you so much for this delightful interview!

50:36 Brenda: Yeah. Thank you!

Outtro

50:42 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This Grad Student Advocates for Higher Stipends Using Cost of Living Data

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In this episode, Emily interviews Alex Parry, a sixth-year graduate student at Johns Hopkins in the history of medicine. Alex is a strong advocate for increasing stipends both in his department and at Hopkins broadly and is deeply involved with the grad student unionization movement. Alex and some colleagues recently released the results of a study of stipends vs. the living wage for about a dozen peer institutions to Hopkins, and he explains in detail the methodology of the study and the patterns that they found, making a case for the urgency to increase stipends at virtually all US universities. Emily and Alex discuss the benefits of this approach vs. how PhDStipends.com collects data. Alex shares a powerful concluding message on the need for collective action among graduate students.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

S12E7 Image: This Grad Student Advocates for Higher Stipends Using Cost of Living Data

Teaser

00:00 Alex: But ultimately, our ability to get what we need as adults and as employees of these universities done is contingent on what kind of pressure we are able to bring to bear. And what data we’re able to bring to bear. And the data are only a starting point, right? They provide the talking points you need, they provide the evidence you need. They provide the ability to do the negotiations, right? But ultimately, we will succeed or fail collectively. And we will succeed or fail on the base of our ability to sort of band together to demand what we rightfully deserve.

Introduction

00:37 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and the founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 12, Episode 7, and today my guest is Alex Parry, a sixth-year graduate student at Johns Hopkins in the history of medicine. Alex is a strong advocate for increasing stipends, both in his department and at Hopkins broadly, and is deeply involved with the grad student unionization movement. Alex and some colleagues recently released the results of a study of stipends vs. the living wage for about a dozen peer institutions to Hopkins, and he explains in detail the methodology of the study and the patterns that they found, making a case for the urgency to increase stipends at virtually all U.S. universities. Alex and I discuss the benefits of this approach vs. how PhDStipends.com collects data. Alex shares a powerful concluding message on the need for collective action among graduate students.

02:01 Emily: If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products, including my set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Our next live discussion and Q&A call is on Wednesday, August 17th, 2022. Basically, the Community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to pfforphds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s12e7/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Alex Parry.

Would You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:23 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Alex Parry. He is a rising sixth-year graduate student at Johns Hopkins in the history of medicine. And we have a really valuable conversation coming up for you because we are talking about stipends and how to increase them, and the advocacy work that Alex is doing. We are recording this by the way in May, 2022. I know it’s going to be out a few months later. So, just for context, that’s where we are. Alex, would you please introduce yourself further to the listeners?

03:53 Alex: Sure. So, as it was already stated, I’m a rising sixth-year in the History of Medicine Department at John Hopkins. I work specifically on the history of consumer product safety and home accidents in the United States from about 1920 to 1980. And I’m also one of the organizers with Teachers and Researchers United (TRU) which is the currently unrecognized graduate student union at Johns Hopkins. So, one of many people who’s trying to push here and at other universities for increases to our stipends to accommodate a quickly accelerating rise in the cost of living.

Teachers and Researchers United (TRU) History

04:26 Emily: Yes. So, let’s hear more about that unionization movement right now. So, it’s currently unrecognized. Can you give us a little bit of the recent history, and where you’re hoping to go in the near future?

04:35 Alex: Yeah, absolutely. So, TRU has been around since roughly 2014. It started initially at the arts and sciences campus at Hopkins and was focused primarily on parental leave for graduate students as well as to try and increase healthcare benefits, particularly making sure that all graduate students had access to dental care and to vision care. Since then, the union has sort of grown and sort of formalized. And right now, we’re currently in the midst of an ongoing recognition campaign trying to basically work through the National Labor Relations Board or NLRB to try and seek an official union election at Hopkins. So, we’re hoping to basically have a unit that will encompass all PhD students at the university. So, sort of regardless of what division or campus people are located at, which is about 3,000 PhD students altogether. And we’re currently in the midst of trying to build up our core of organizers, have a lot of conversations with other graduate students at the university about things that are working for them and things that aren’t, in the hope of then sort of staging to basically a card petition with the NLRB sometime over the next couple of years.

How to Become an Officially-Recognized Union at a University

05:44 Emily: Okay. And walk me through this because my university was not unionized at the time. There was not even a movement when I was there. So, you basically gain enough support from the people who would be part of the union on campus through this card campaign. What happens next? The NLRB is involved, but then how does the university ultimately recognize the union?

06:04 Alex: Sure. So, there are sort of two main pathways to get to an officially-recognized union at a university, especially for a private university. Either the university can voluntarily recognize you, say that enough graduate students support this, that we’re just basically going to acknowledge your presence and then sort of work towards a contract from there. Most universities don’t take that path because they’re sort of concerned about having to bargain with graduate students. So, what ends up typically happening is, and this was recently reaffirmed by the NLRB over the last year or so, but if one is trying to seek an election through the NLRB, what one does is you can submit a petition to the NLRB to basically arbitrate an election at your campus when you have signatures from approximately 30% or more of the bargaining unit. Most unions will aim for a higher number than that because you don’t want to sort of rely on a third of the people at the university to 1) be a reliable indicator of how much people want a union, or 2) basically, one typically expects to have a more difficult time in the actual in-person election, which is what we’ll follow if the NLRB accepts your petition.

07:14 Alex: Because typically when you’re just signing the initial petition, you can basically do that remotely. So, people can just sign a digital card. During the actual election, typically those are done in person, which means that it’s harder to turn people out. And there, you’re looking for basically a bare majority of the voters. So, ordinarily, people will aim for more like 50% of the entire bargaining unit when they submit a petition to NLRB, and then after that, an election follows. If the election is successful, then you would then sit down with the university administration and basically negotiate directly over a contract.

Winning an NLRB Election

07:48 Emily: Okay. So, if it’s gone through the NLRB for this like official card campaign, then the university has to recognize the union at that point. Is that right?

07:56 Alex: Yeah, that’s correct. If NLRB hosts an election and the sort of proposed union wins, then the university is obligated to negotiate in good faith. So, there are various mechanisms that then both the university and then the proposed union will use to sort of conduct negotiations. Typically, they’ll have like labor lawyers and/or sort of like corporate lawyers involved. And you’ll sort of haggle over the details. A really good example of what this looks like as ongoing right now is at MIT. They’ve just won their election earlier this year. They’re currently in the midst of negotiations which started sometime late April to the beginning of this month. Those are likely to extend for another several months after this.

08:39 Alex: So probably, they won’t have a contract ratified or least put up to a vote because after you’ve had their bargaining committee come up with a contract, you then send it back to the base to all of the membership, to see if people actually approve of the contract that’s been written. So, sometime, probably this fall, maybe this winter, MIT will finish negotiating a contract, will send it back to everyone to basically vote on, and then if a bare majority approves of the contract, then that will sort of be the first contract for MIT’s graduate workers.

Shift to Stipends Advocacy

09:10 Emily: Okay. Thank you so much for explaining that process to me. One other follow-up question. You said when the union at Hopkins was originally introduced as an idea, back in 2014, they had concerns about leave and about vision and dental insurance. But you mentioned that you’re now more focused on stipends. So, were those initial concerns like fulfilled in some way over the intervening years? And why are stipends the focus now?

09:36 Alex: Yeah, both great questions. Sort of to answer the first one, most of the things that TRU has been advocating for, eventually we were able to win. So, at this point, at least at the school of arts and sciences, vision and dental, they’re not perfect coverage. I don’t want to give the impression that it’s phenomenal, but they do have paid for health insurance, dental, and vision now, as well as parental leave at the Homewood campus. So, overall TRU has been relatively effective in terms of getting sort of these smaller asks dealt with, things that are relatively lower cost, and also things where Hopkins had sort of fallen behind many of its peers. One of the reasons this campaign on healthcare had been so successful is that, one, Hopkins is a world-renowned health provider and the hospital is literally attached to the university.

10:24 Alex: So, it was kind of a bad look that people weren’t getting the kind of healthcare coverage that they needed. But the other sort of major factor there is that other universities that Hopkins considers its peers had provided much better coverage than Hopkins was. That same sort of rationale is part of the reason why stipends have now come to the fore. If you look at Hopkins vis a vis some of its peers, one, of private universities, like private R1 universities, it has one of the lowest raw PhD stipends of almost any school. If you adjust for the local cost of living, it ranks basically in the bottom third regardless of division. So if you look at, you know, engineering, stipends versus medical students stipends versus like biomedical, I should say, biomedical PhD stipends, or social sciences, humanities stipends, more or less across the board, Hopkins ranks the bottom third.

11:16 Alex: The other sort of major reason why we’ve shifted to stipends, in addition to, again, this sort of increasing gap between Hopkins and its self-described peers, is that a lot of us have been hit very, very hard by the inflation post-pandemic. And many people were also affected financially by the time that they were trying to deal with the pandemic, whether that’s in terms of childcare, inability to use research funds that people had earmarked to go on research travel that couldn’t be deferred or delayed. In addition to basically just as soon as the pandemic was starting to change to the current moment we’re in, obviously the pandemic is not over, but we seem to have entered a new way of dealing with it from public health terms and in terms of the community. Since then, rents have skyrocketed, grocery prices skyrocketed. And because of that people, who used to feel a little more comfortable with their stipend here are really starting to feel pretty significant financial pressure.

12:16 Alex: So, the other reason that we really started to push for this at the school-wide level and university-wide level is because we’ve been hearing from many of our members that people are both feeling less able to pay their bills month to month, and are also becoming more and more financially precarious. Where if someone has an unexpected expense, like a major medical bill, or like last summer my car battery died and I had to replace all of my tires all at once. That thousand dollars was, was a pretty substantial hit for me. So, these are the kind of things that we’ve been concerned about, and this is why we’ve brought this to the administration. It’s something that really needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Departmental Advocacy

12:54 Emily: And you’ve been speaking about you know, school-wide and university-wide initiatives, but I understand that you’ve also been working just within your department on advocacy. And I really was happy to hear the example earlier of some, I guess, some success with advancing the benefits that are offered at Hopkins. Not even necessarily through unionization, but just through bringing awareness to it. And Hopkins realizing, as you said, it’s falling behind its peer institutions. So, you know, advocacy can be successful even before unionization is totally in effect or even without that being in effect. So, not that that’s not also worthwhile, but that’s a long process and there can still be wins along the way. So, I want to hear also from you about what you’ve been doing, like in your department, specifically.

13:39 Alex: Yeah. And I hundred percent agree. Like, you know, obviously I am a card-carrying union member. I, you know, really want us to have an election to have a contract, but one thing that’s important for people to know is that sort of just the gradual growth of pressure that accompanies unionization, where you’re sort of talking with your peers, gathering together, working as a group, is often enough to get small wins. Those wins aren’t necessarily protected because you have a contract, right? And those wins are not necessarily of the degree or magnitude that one would hope for in a contract. But there is something to be said for just doing the work initially will get you somewhere and you can just get further than with unionization. So, I think it’s definitely sort of a both-and situation, not an either-or kind of situation.

14:26 Alex: In terms of what we’ve done specifically in our department. One thing that initially brought stipends to our attention even before inflation started spiraling even more out of control, is I’m part of an interdivisional working group that brings together representatives from the student government associations, the recognized ones at the university, as well as the union, to sort of talk together to share information and to make sure that everyone’s on the same page about what advocacy issues are pressing to the community. And also sort of how then to mobilize both institutional channels, talking directly to the administration and sort of like more grassroots advocacy-style channels, more militant-style organizing. So, we were having one of these conversations and realized that apparently the School of Medicine as a whole has a minimum stipend that at that point was approximately $34,900 a year. At that time, folks in my department were making $30,500.

15:23 Alex: So, we were a little bit confused and concerned about the fact that we seemed to be making $4,000 roughly less than our peers while working in the same school and, you know, being under the same umbrella. And everything we saw online was indicating at least that this should have been an across the board minimum. So, we went to our department and asked basically why this discrepancy had appeared, or why this was the case, and didn’t get phenomenally helpful answers. And so we went then to speak with the Dean of the school, Peter Espenshade, who works on basically like graduate student affairs and graduate student research at the School of Medicine. And eventually what sort of came out is that our stipends in particular were tied to the stipend of the school of arts and sciences for a series of sort of complicated and frankly not super compelling <laugh> historical reasons.

16:18 Alex: So, this kind of got us to think more about the fact that, one, not only are all graduate students at Hopkins being underpaid relative to the local cost of living, but also there are significant and often sort of inexplicable disparities between programs and departments at the university. There really is no good reason why social science and humanities students are paid less than hard science students at the school of arts and sciences, and why those students are then paid less than the biomedical science students and the engineers at this university. And then at the very sort of bottom of the economic food chain here, people at the School of Education and people at the School of Public Health have even lower stipends. And at the School of Public Health, some students aren’t even guaranteed stipends at all. In which case they have to basically perform hourly work.

17:06 Alex: So, part of what this advocacy looked like was, you know, going through institutional channels, sort of talking to both sympathetic faculty and our department chair and our DGS. Then sort of like going to Dean Espenshade, being then redirected to the School of Arts and Sciences, where we were able to basically lobby successfully both folks from my department, as well as other members of TRU and other folks at the School of Arts and Sciences to get all of our stipends increased to $33,000. So, it’s a substantial raise, $2,500, at least for my department. But it’s also still not close to enough. The estimated cost of living for Baltimore as of this previous December is over $38,000, which means that even after this raise, we’re looking at a $5,000 shortfall.

TRU Study Comparing Stipends Across Institutions

17:51 Emily: Yeah. So, you can pump your arms and say, “Okay, great! Like good job, partial win here, but like, let’s keep on going. Like, people are listening to us.” And yeah, that’s great. Okay, well, let’s talk more about this study that you did. So, I found you because of something that you shared on Twitter that got a ton of traction. So, I wanted to talk to you more about it.

18:12 Alex: Yeah. So, essentially what I and some other folks from the TRU data and resource committee have spent some time doing was, one, trying to find basically stipend figures for particularly biomedical science and social science and humanities programs at a few sort of select institutions. And then comparing those stipends with the cost of living estimated by the MIT Living Wage Calculator for a given county. And then what we did is basically to calculate the raw difference between those things, and then to calculate basically the percentage of the living wage that a stipend would cover in those areas. Some first major results, then we could talk more about method and why we did this this way and not some other set of ways. One, we found that only two schools actually did meet or exceed the local cost of living out of the set that we used. Out of our sample, only Brown and Princeton actually exceeded the cost of living. Every other institution, including big names like UPenn, Yale, MIT, and Cornell as well as Harvard, Columbia, and others, were falling anywhere from about, you know, 98-99%, so close to local cost of living, all the way down to closer to like three-fourths, like 75% of the local cost of living.

19:34 Alex: And basically, our goal here was to demonstrate that stipends, while they have risen and have been rising, one, are not keeping up with inflation. So, even though a lot of these schools have been getting somewhat regular raises, the raises have not been enough, especially in recent years to cover that inflation. And that sort of given that the MIT Living Wage Calculator is really only supposed to cover bare essentials, not sort of the comfortable lifestyle, not, you know, it explicitly says in a technical documentation that it doesn’t account any eating out, basically no savings, you know, no travel. And some of those things, at least travel, often graduate students are expected to pay for out of pocket if they need to do it for their own work. Unless they’re able to get an external grant or have access to enough research money to cover things in full, which is pretty rare.

20:27 Alex: Given all of that, it was also important for us to note that the MIT Living Wage Calculator data is supposed to be sort of a minimum standard of living that is not the poverty line. As we all know, the poverty line in the U.S. has fallen well below what is even reasonably livable in basically any part of the country. And so, this is an alternative measure, and graduate students are consistently getting paid less than that sort of bare minimum standard of living.

20:53 Emily: Yes. I also point people to the Living Wage Calculator, which is an incredible resource. It covers every county and every major metro area in the country. So, you can look up, basically depending on your family size, how much this sort of, again, just to pay for basic expenses, I’m not talking about poverty level, but just basic expenses, basic housing, basic food, basic transportation, healthcare, these kinds of things, what it would cost for a single adult. That’s what I usually reference for graduate students. But there’s also like if you have a number of children or if you have a partner, et cetera. I love referencing this, especially for prospective graduate students who haven’t yet moved to the city that they’re going to be attending and haven’t yet experienced what the costs are. This is one way to give them kind of a touch point.

21:36 Emily: But as you said, what I also very much try to emphasize to them, and I don’t want the listener to miss this, is this is only talking about necessary expenses. There’s no saving included in this calculation. There are no discretionary expenses included. It’s just to run a baseline lifestyle. And as you said, not even those numbers are being met at the institutions that you studied. I do want to sort of reiterate, because I think this was maybe missed on Twitter, but like you were only looking at, it sounded like maybe a dozen different institutions. Private institutions, R1 institutions, maybe all in the Northeast to Mid-Atlantic. Is that right?

22:11 Alex: Not just Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, but only a handful of schools for other regions.

22:16 Emily: Yeah, so like, and I just sort of know from experience that the situation is worse at other places outside of private universities, outside of R1 universities. So, even this bleak picture is sort of like the best picture of the data that probably you could have selected.

Commercial

22:34 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2022 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is September 15, 2022. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate, named savings account for your future tax payments. Calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives.

23:54 Emily: If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. Even better, recommend that your grad school, grad student association, postdoc office, etc. sponsor the workshop on behalf of yourself and your peers. I offer a discount on these bulk purchases. Please point the potential sponsor to PF for PhDs dot com slash sponsor Q E tax. Now back to our interview.

Resources for Comparing University Stipends

25:00 Emily: What I would love to talk more about right now is how you found the stipends. So, the Living Wage is very easy to work with, a calculator from MIT, but how did you find the stipends to compare it to at these different institutions?

25:13 Alex: Yeah, so it was not super easy. A lot of universities do not make their stipend data particularly public, which is one reason why we’ve also used data from your basically database of self-reported data, PhD Stipends, which is, you know, a great sort of way to get self-reported information about what people are making in different departments at different places. We found that when we were working with the administration to try and lobby for increased wages that self-reported data weren’t as compelling to them as having something where we could point to an official university communication. So, all the data that we’ve collected have been sourced directly from offer letters, from university websites, or from internal university correspondence. So, you know, announcements of raises, for example, that went out to a graduate student listserv.

26:04 Alex: This has its cost and benefits. On the bright side, what this means is that it’s very, very difficult or impossible for administrators or other folks who are sort of less willing to provide increased stipends to sort of just basically wave the results away as badly reported self-reported data, or as sort of potentially not being an accurate reflection of all the quote unquote benefits that accrue to a graduate student. On the flip side, it means that we were then very limited in the amount of data we were able to collect. We’re a small team, it’s about four or five of us who work on this. And all of us are obviously also full-time graduate students. So, this is kind of a spare hours what little free time we have kind of project.

26:51 Alex: And so, that’s part of the reason why, as you’d mentioned that we really limited ourselves to the schools that Hopkins like self-describes as its peer institutions, which means R1, private, mostly Northeast, right? Which also as you pointed out means that this data is looking at the schools that should in theory provide the best of the best in terms of stipends. And the data looks substantially worse if you start looking at schools that, and there are many of them, that pay closer to like $16,000 a year, in some cases, in large metro areas. So, things could be better <laugh>.

27:29 Emily: Yeah, I’m really glad you brought up, like, so my website, my database PhDStipends.com. I say mine, but I just put it up. People can use it how they want, they can enter what they want into it, because it’s, as you said, it’s all crowdsourced and self-reported. We have thought about different ways to sort of verify like what people are reporting, the way that you’ve done for your study. But as you said, it’s very labor-intensive, and you’re asking people to give up very personal information. In my case, to an anonymous website, which is like out there and what protections do they have, you know? So, I think it really does, these are like complimentary approaches, I think. Because PhD Stipends can give you kind of a starting point. And that’s all it’s really meant to be, is like the more people use it, the more people enter, the clearer the picture gets. Yeah, you’re going to have some people write in typos or like people who are clearly making things up, but it’s a starting point. And you’ve, you know, jumped off from that point and done much more in-depth verification, which is wonderful.

28:23 Emily: But as you said, the data set only get so big when you go that route because it takes so much willingness on the part of the participants to let you have access to this information and then for the volunteers to verify it. So, I love that approach you took, and I know there are some other people working, you know, with similar approaches at different universities and different fields around the country. It’s all great work. And I love it. And that’s why I wanted to have you on to talk about this, but yes, I totally can understand. Some people do use PhD Stipends for advocacy work, but I think it’s, as I was just saying, a starting point rather than like the end all be all of what the data can be.

Stipend vs. Living Wage Patterns

29:00 Emily: Are there any other patterns that you want to share with us when you were doing the study regarding the stipends versus living wage?

29:08 Alex: Sure. So, one other thing that we’ve tried to do, and this is still sort of in the early stages, we’ve only gotten a few schools’ data collected so far for this, but we’re also trying to compile some longitudinal data. So, the table at the beginning of the Twitter thread and things that I think, you know, PhD Stipends sort of attempts to do is basically primarily to give like a one year snapshot. Like this is kind of like where things were in this single year without sort of then trying to do the detailed work of trying to figure out exactly what that means when you start accounting for inflation or especially inflation and cost of living in the local area. But one thing that we’ve been trying to do with the data set is now to compile using sort of both either sort of synchronic pictures at different moments of what the MIT data look like, or using right now, we’ve just basically been using data from the consumer price index to look at inflation over time and then tracking the stipends backwards for about five to six years.

30:03 Alex: What we have been noticing is that for almost all these schools, if you look at the, at the four, five-year trend, the overall real wage is declined. So, not only is the situation now that stipends are below the local cost of living, but in fact, we were making more in real terms five years ago than we are now. So, a lot of schools have been sort of touting the fact that they have increased stipends or are trying to increase stipends either, you know, a couple years back, or even now in response to inflation, but we still haven’t even recouped the amount that we’ve lost over the last few years, let alone actually gotten to the point where graduate students are making a livable wage. So, that’s another major trend. This long-term decline is something that we want to do more research on and sort of see how consistent it is, and also try and assess this magnitude in a more systematic way.

Effect of Unionization on History of Stipends

30:53 Emily: Yes. Wow. I guess also another question that I have, and I don’t know if you’ve looked into this at all, is to see what effect unionization and unionization movements have had on that history of stipends, because I would guess that, at the point when a union contract is first ratified, there’s probably going to be a substantial jump in at least some of the stipends at these universities. Maybe they’ve been falling behind in recent years and that jump helps catch them up a little bit, but it may be these sort of not gradual changes, but very abrupt changes when certain outside circumstances like that occur.

31:29 Alex: Yeah. I mean, I think what I’ve noticed from schools that have recently gotten contracts or have been, you know, in the process of getting contracts for a few years is, typically, if you look at the year when the contract is ratified, even if it doesn’t bring them up into sort of like the absolute upper echelon of schools in terms of the pay given to graduate workers, in many cases, because there’s been a many-year delay that added to the pressure that led to the unionization campaign to begin with. A lot of those schools have a very substantial percentage raise. So, if you look at the stipend table that was on the Twitter thread, you’ll notice that Columbia is near the very bottom in terms of relation to local cost of living.

32:08 Alex: Columbia would be even further behind, like closer to, at the moment, humanities and social science programs there are paid about 75% of the cost of living for New York. Without the most recent raise, which was substantial, I think like a 10% raise or something along those lines, you’d be looking at closer to like 68%. So, it’s important to note, when sort of interpreting the effect of unionization, yeah, there are some schools like Brown. Brown is the best-paid program relative to cost of living in the country. And a big part of that is the fact that they have a very strong militant union that has done a lot of great work. But even for schools that you might turn around and say like, well, how is it then that Harvard and Columbia, which have unions, don’t rank higher? There, it’s just a factor of 1) that the cost of living in Boston and New York is so high, and 2) that they actually are getting raises that are outpacing the annual raise of other places, but because they were so far behind to begin with, those additional raises or that super added raise is only just bringing them sort of further out of the gutter, so to speak, not necessarily actually again, launching them into an above cost of living style wage.

33:18 Alex: So, those are the things I would sort of initially note. I guess the last thing I would say about this is that one other effect that we’ve seen that’s happened a lot in unionized schools that is really important is that wages tend to get standardized across the school. And what that actually means in practice is that the folks at the lowest end of the income scale get pulled up to the highest. I’ve heard concerns or rumors that graduate students are afraid that if a union contract passes that wages will “meet in the middle.” That has literally never happened in a graduate student unionization campaign. In all cases, what’s basically happened is, if schools of public health or humanities and social science students at the bottom end of the income scale, they get boosted either all the way up to where the hard science students are, or get boosted up to some arbitrarily set lower level. And we can talk more about the fact that hard science students are consistently paid more than humanities and social science students, and more than public health students. But regardless, the effect is raises for everybody, but really big raises for folks who are at the bottom.

Consideration of Non-Employee Stipends

34:23 Emily: Yeah. So good to hear. Very, very reassuring for anyone who has that concern, or like heard that rumor or anything. Something that has always interested me about these let’s say the stipends that universities claim that they pay their students, or like announcing, okay, everyone in this school is now going to be paid this baseline stipend, is that I believe it’s focused on people who have assistantships, usually. Because they are the employees of the university and that’s where the best and most consistent data comes from. But as you well know, there are many, many, many graduate students who are funded, not because of assistantships or employee positions, but through fellowships or training grants or other non-employee sources of funding. My understanding is that technically, if a union does come into place those people would not officially be part of the union when they have those types of positions, because they’re not employees, and unions are just for employees. But I think at some universities, they found a way to sort of include people who are non-employee graduate students in some of the benefits that may come about with a contract, like, you know, better health insurance, for example. Did you consider these non-employee stipends in your study at all? Or do you have any comments about how they might or might not be included in like these advocacy pushes?

35:43 Alex: Absolutely. So, it is a complicated question, sort of how external fellowships are factored into a bargaining unit effectively. Or how they would be folded or not folded into a filing union. One thing to keep in mind is that basically, if any of your revenue or any of your income is being given by the university, it doesn’t matter if you have an external fellowship, really. That seems to be the consensus that we’ve seen from previous cases. So, for a lot of training grants, especially at places like Hopkins, almost all graduate students are paid above the NRSA rate, which is basically the NIH training grant stipend level, which I think for this coming year is somewhere on the ballpark of $26,000, roughly.

36:27 Alex: At Hopkins, because most people on those grants are then paid a super added stipend on top of that to basically get them up to the School of Medicine level, we have a bunch of people who are on external money who actually would be a part of a final bargaining unit. And at least in our case, when we’re looking at School of Medicine stipends, they’re sort of equivalent across the board. There are places and there are some grants where that’s not the case, right? One of them is the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program. Depending on what institution you’re at and how much money that’s valued at, in many cases that will come out to above whatever the university’s pay is. So, in those cases, many times during NLRB elections, those folks have been excluded, and actually they were recently excluded in the MIT election.

37:18 Alex: One thing that’s important to keep in mind, as you already indicated though, is that if we’re able to push for higher stipends for everybody, right? Then ideally <laugh> we’ll be able to push things above the GRFP rate, and/or make sure to apply external pressure to the GRFP so that it pays better as well. And obviously, our benefits are not often given through the external fellowships. Things like the healthcare access to library resources, additional research funds that are not controlled by a granting agency but are coming from your department from your institution, are still things that we can lobby for. Another thing that we’ve been pushing for at the School of Medicine that’s sort of along the same lines is to provide relocation funds for folks who are moving from other states or overseas to Baltimore.

38:05 Alex: So, those types of benefits, even if we can’t necessarily include someone explicitly in a contract, those benefits that apply to all graduate students enrolled in the program would sort of directly accrue even to those who are not sort of an official part of the bargaining unit and therefore sort of attached directly to stipend benefits. So, these are other things to consider when we’re talking about a unionization contract, we’re talking about benefits as we’ve already sort of been indicating. Stipends are one indicator and are, I think, the most important indicator, but things like healthcare coverage, access to research money, relocation money, things like childcare support. These are all also really important aspects of thinking about what a graduate student needs to survive and also sort of what is and is not made available by their institutions.

Look-Back Formula for Voting

38:58 Emily: Would someone who is, at the moment, not considered an employee of the university be able to sign a union card or vote on a contract? I ask this because at other points in their career as a graduate student, they may be an employee, and it may, you know, very well affect them at that point. But maybe at the moment those things are happening they’re not an employee. How does that work out?

39:20 Alex: Yeah, that’s another complicated question. The NLRB clearly does not think first and foremost of graduate students when they’re coming up with their policies, but they do actually have a workaround for this. The NLRB has something called a look-back formula. So, if you’re a graduate student who goes on and off of external fellowships, for example. So, just as a personal note, right? This spring I’ve been off of department funding. I’ve been using money from the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the School of Public Health. It’s internal to Hopkins, but it’s an external grant funded by the CDC. But for that period, I am not a W2 employee with Hopkins, right? When I’m teaching, I am. But when I’ve been on this fellowship and when I’ve been on, Hopkins provides to graduates in my department basically two years of what’s called fellowship funding, which essentially is just, you know, you’re paid without any TA or assistantship work requirements.

40:23 Alex: Obviously, we’re still working, right? We’re applying for grants, we’re still publishing papers, we’re going to conferences. We’re doing everything except for the teaching or assistantship stuff. So, I always find it a little funny that it’s called a fellowship as if it’s not work. We are actually still doing work, just different work, right? But the point being that, for folks who move on and off of different kinds of funding what the NLRB will say is like over the last, you know, two years or something, were you at any point being paid directly by the university? Especially if it was a W2 employee. And if the answer is yes during any of that period, you are eligible at that point to vote in the election. So, the other thing to, I guess, keep in mind along those lines is that, even if you’re technically receiving fellowship income from the university, so not from NSF or NIH or somewhere else, we’re pretty confident at this point, and again, the legal aspects of this are a little murky, but we’re pretty confident that for all those graduate students, they also count even if they’re not receiving a W2 and even if they’re not TAs or RAs in the same way that other people are. So, basically, if your paycheck is coming from the university, you can be pretty sure, or part of your paychecks coming from the university, you can be pretty sure you’d be included in the final bargaining unit.

41:40 Emily: It’s very interesting. I had not heard that update yet. So, I’m really glad that the NLRB has been examining the special case of graduate students to kind of figure out how to handle those. Because it is so common to switch on and off of external or internal or whatever, you know, employee, non-employee kind of statuses.

Best Practices for Advocacy

41:56 Emily: So, as like kind of takeaway messages for the listener, are there particular best practices that you have identified or put in place with respect to advocacy that you’d like to share with other graduate students, et cetera, who are trying to do the same on their campuses?

42:12 Alex: Yeah, I think one thing is, as we were talking about earlier, to be a little bit agnostic about sort of what approaches work. You know, you should try to talk to faculty, you should try to talk to the administration. Institutional channels sometimes will get the job done, right? However, that’s not always going to be the case. And especially when it’s something as dicey as stipends, where universities, many of them, I won’t say Hopkins is one, right? But many universities are relatively cash-strapped right now and are sort of deeply concerned about sort of their futures and how much money they have. And in situations like that, often, even if there is money out there to basically increase graduate student stipends or priorities need to be reshuffled at the level of the university budget, really the only way to do it is going to be talk to your colleagues. If you can, try to unionize and sort of work together.

43:00 Alex: I think the main thing that’s essential to both kinds of advocacy, whether you’re doing it within the institutional channels or outside of them, or some combination, is that graduate students really have to work together. You know, obviously faculty can be supportive, undergraduates can be supportive, administrators can be supportive, right? But ultimately, like our ability to get what we need as adults and as employees of these universities done is contingent on what kind of pressure we are able to bring to bear. And what data we’re able to bring to bear. And the data are only a starting point, right? They provide the talking points you need, they provide the evidence you need, they provide the ability to do the negotiations, right? But ultimately, we will succeed or fail collectively. And we will succeed or fail on the base of our ability to sort of band together to demand what we rightfully deserve.

43:48 Emily: Very strong message. Thank you.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

43:50 Emily: Alex, thank you so much for this incredible interview! It’s been wonderful to have you on. Glad to hear about all the wonderful work that you and your colleagues are doing. I’d like to finish up by asking you the question that I ask of all my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve already touched on in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

44:12 Alex: I guess I would say to prospective students to, you know, choose wisely. Even a funded PhD does not mean that you’ll be really making the kind of money you’d be making without doing the PhD. So, you know, I think just having your eyes open about both what it means in terms of your financial future to get a PhD is important. And also, you know, also being aware that in some fields, a PhD will significantly improve your earnings potential and in others, it might not. And in some cases, it can even sort of be, frankly, a pathway to downward economic mobility. So, just think very carefully before doing a PhD.

44:53 Alex: For those who have already committed to it. And, you know, I don’t regret my PhD at all. I’ve found this a very intellectually rewarding experience and have really appreciated the chance I’ve had to both do my own research and to work with others, both on, you know history of medicine topics, but also on things like unionization. I’d say the big thing is join your union if there is one, and make sure again, to work with your colleagues. Figure out what people need to get through this degree. It’s a long slog, and it’s a very, very difficult job. But I’d say, you know, get together with your colleagues, make sure that you know, what you need and what they need, and do whatever you can to work together to achieve it.

45:33 Emily: Thank you so much, Alex, for joining me!

45:35 Alex: Thank you. That was really a pleasure!

Outtro

45:42 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This Grad Student Advocates Individually and Collectively for Higher Stipends

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In this episode, Emily interviews Alyssa Hayes, a rising 4th-year graduate student in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Alyssa is a first-generation college student who experienced food insecurity and other forms of financial precarity as an undergraduate. Now that she earns a stipend of approximately $45,000 per year and lives in a low cost of living city, she feels financially secure—and wants the same for all graduate students. To that end, Alyssa shares two advocacy approaches: 1) Ask for what you need. As a prospective graduate student, she negotiated for a top-up fellowship to be added to her assistantship stipend. 2) Share pay information with your peers across universities and use that data to collectively bargain for higher stipends in individual programs. Alyssa and her peers in nuclear engineering are currently gathering this data, including stipends, benefits, cost of living, and university and departmental ranking.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Image for S12E5: This Grad Student Advocates Individually and Collectively for Higher Stipends

Teaser

00:00 Alyssa: I think that like all grad students should feel as comfortable as I feel in terms of my financial situation. I think that I make a fair wage, and maybe I’m biased because of my previous financial situation, but I personally have no complaints about the amount of money that I’m making right now. I feel supported by my advisor and by my department. I feel that I am valued for my labor. And I think that shows through how much they pay me. And I think that everybody should be able to feel that way about their department and about their advisor.

Introduction

00:44 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 12, Episode 5, and today my guest is Alyssa Hayes, a rising 4th-year graduate student in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Alyssa is a first-generation college student who experienced food insecurity and other forms of financial precarity as an undergraduate. Now that she earns a stipend of approximately $45,000 per year and lives in a low-cost-of-living city, she feels financially secure—and wants the same for all graduate students. To that end, Alyssa shares two advocacy approaches: 1) Ask for what you need. As a prospective graduate student, she negotiated for a top-up fellowship to be added to her assistantship stipend. 2) Share pay information with your peers across universities and use that data to collectively bargain for higher stipends in individual programs. Alyssa and her peers in nuclear engineering are currently gathering this data, including stipends, benefits, cost-of-living, and university and departmental ranking. You won’t want to miss Alyssa’s powerful messages peppered throughout the episode!

02:30 Emily: Longtime listeners of the podcast will remember the interviews I’ve published with Sam Hogan, a mortgage originator specializing in graduate students and PhDs, an advertiser with Personal Finance for PhDs, and my brother. Several years ago, I told Sam how I’d heard over and over again about graduate students and PhDs being denied mortgage loans because of their unusual income sources and income history and asked him to look into the issue. Following that request, Sam actually developed quite an expertise in this area and is now the go-to mortgage originator for people with non-employee fellowship income. He even found a way around what we thought was an insurmountable barrier in the 3-year continuance requirement. If you’re considering buying a home, especially if you have non-W-2 income, I encourage you to reach out to Sam for a quote. He has a new website, which you can visit at PhDHomeLoans.com, or you can reach him on his cell phone, 540-478-5803. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s12e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Alyssa Hayes.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:56 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Alyssa Hayes. She is a rising fourth-year graduate student in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. And we have a lot to talk about in terms of like her pay and her money mindset. And I’m really excited for this conversation. So Alyssa, thank you so much for volunteering. And would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

04:16 Alyssa: Thank you for having me! Yeah. So, I’m currently at the University of Tennessee. I did my bachelor’s degree in the same field at the University of Illinois. My current work involves like, you know, fusion engineering, specifically. I do a lot of computational plasma boundary stuff. But yeah, I guess we’re not really talking about any of my technical work today. <Laugh>

Money Mindset Up Until Starting Grad School

04:38 Emily: No, but very related to your experience as a graduate student. So, let’s take it back a little bit and tell me about sort of what your childhood’s like, and specifically how it relates to money and how that sort of developed your money mindset through your childhood and through undergrad, up until you started graduate school.

04:58 Alyssa: Yeah. So, I come from a biracial family, and my father comes from a long line of Americans in the military where, you know, his family was very like blue-collar labor. Like there wasn’t as big of a push to go to college, especially during the time when my dad was growing up in the seventies. And my mom is an immigrant from the Philippines. And her family was not extremely wealthy in the Philippines. And they came here when she was younger to pursue a better life. And she currently works at Walmart and has been for like almost 20 years and has supported my three siblings and me through retail and fast food. So, I was the first person in my family to pursue college. And we lived in an area where we had a lot of, like, there was a lot of really good funding for the school system, even though we weren’t in the nicest part of town. There were other folks who were pretty well-to-do, so I took advantage of everything that I could at that high school. And I got a full ride at the University of Illinois to pursue nuclear engineering. I didn’t have a lot of financial security while I was there, but I didn’t have to worry too much about student debt or tuition or paying fees or anything like that.

Food Insecurity in Undergrad

06:18 Emily: That’s amazing. The full ride to college, and obviously you went after it, <laugh> starting in your earlier years. But tell me a little bit about like the discretion that you had over money. Like, were you budgeting or like, how did you manage it? How did you manage what money you had above that, you know, what’s paying for tuition and room and board and so forth?

06:39 Alyssa: Yeah. So, I was first of all, extremely food insecure and didn’t realize it until I entered grad school. Once a month, I went out to lunch with like a professor who like, he knew I was food insecure, even if I didn’t know I was food insecure, and he would like pay for my food and we would like go somewhere nice that I couldn’t afford to eat at. For the most part, like there were times when like either because I, you know, couldn’t afford to go out to eat as often, but didn’t have the time because I was so stressed out to like make food from home. I like skipped meals often when I was in undergrad. I was very cheap and frugal all the time. I was constantly like thinking about like, I am hungry all the time and like bringing, like, trying to bring snacks with me. Apples were my thing.

07:22 Alyssa: I brought apples everywhere because they were so easy to just grab and then eat on the go. And then it was mostly about trying to make money to pay the bills and to pay rent. My rent, like in undergrad was only like $450 a month. But I worked a minimum wage job in the like plasma lab on campus. And then I worked as a TA as well. So that added stress onto my undergrad. I wish that I didn’t have to have worked so hard in order to like pay to live while trying to be a student. But that’s what it was like. Luckily, I don’t have any student debt now, but I couldn’t really you know, spend the money that was granted for my tuition on, you know, myself or the ability to make ends meet.

08:14 Emily: Yeah. So, I sort of misspoke or misunderstood earlier. You had a full ride in terms of the education cost, but not your living expenses. So, you were working to pay all of your living expenses.

08:25 Alyssa: Yes.

08:25 Emily: Yes. Okay. So that is a little bit like graduate school in a sense, except you didn’t have like a job that you were given. You had to cobble together like multiple sources of income, it sounds like. And there’s more management. You were probably paid, you know, less than maybe the average graduate student is. So, that sounds really stressful.

08:43 Alyssa: I had a little bit of spillover for my scholarships that I had received. So like it paid for like tuition and fees plus a little bit of extra and then like that would go towards rent, but it wasn’t like enough.

Student Loans for Dorm Payment

08:55 Emily: Why didn’t you take out student loans during that time?

08:59 Alyssa: So, I did have to take out student loans during my freshman year to pay for the dorms. Because dorms are a scam. If anyone who’s like not currently in grad school is listening to this, dorms are a scam. Do not live in them longer than you have to. The university says it’s so that way you can you know, help get acclimated to the college experience, but that’s a lie. They’re trying to take your money. I had to take out student loans to pay for those. Other than that, I didn’t take out any other student loans because I was afraid of the debt like piling up. I knew that like one of the types of loans didn’t charge interest until you were done, but the other type of loan did. And I, you know, didn’t want that to accrue while I was in college.

09:38 Alyssa: And I knew that I like had done all my budgeting and I knew that I was able to work to pay for all my stuff. So, I just kind of like, you know, I didn’t think anything was like wrong with the way that I was living. I didn’t see any like problems with like being so frugal or so cheap or skipping meals or missing sleep and stuff. But like, I guess grateful now to past me that I didn’t do that because now I don’t have any student debt. I paid off what little loans I had in like six months. But I did have to like work a lot to get there. But I was also happy doing the work that I did. I enjoyed being a TA and I enjoyed working in a research lab. And honestly, I’m glad that I didn’t end up like working somewhere that didn’t have anything to do with nuclear engineering. So that way I was able to apply all of that to my career trajectory later on in grad school, by having that research experience.

Funding and Finances in Grad School

10:36 Emily: Yeah. This kind of goes to show you like how we aren’t even aware of our own beliefs around money and our own mindsets around money until we sort of consciously try to take a step outside and examine them. And I understand that you can say now, “Oh, past me, I didn’t even know at the time.” You can say things like that because you’ve now reached a new phase in your financial life, which is the graduate student phase. So, tell us about how you’re funded now and how your finances are going.

11:00 Alyssa: Yeah. So, when I was applying to grad schools, I applied to the University of Illinois where I originally wanted to stay because I really loved working for my advisor there. And I also applied to the University of Tennessee because I had, through conferences and networking, I met my current advisor here. And I told both schools that I would stay at Illinois for less. And Illinois didn’t have the power to offer, or like the nuclear engineering program at the University of Illinois, didn’t have the power to offer me more than like the base research assistantship that they offer to like all of the graduate students there. But the University of Tennessee has these like top-off fellowships that they will add to a base stipend in order to get a student to commit to the university who’s maybe deciding between two programs.

12:01 Alyssa: And with just the base stipend, Illinois, I think pays, I might be mistaken on the exact number, but I think they were offering like $26,000 a year. And the University of Tennessee’s base pay at the time was $30,000 per year. We’ve since gotten a raise and now it’s $33K. But the top-off fellowship that was offered to me was $10,000 a year. So then it became a no-brainer. And I was like, I would stay at Illinois for less, but not this much less. And so, now I am making about $45K with bonuses and like a couple of like, you know, service-based scholarships that I get on a somewhat regular basis. So, it kind of evens out to about $45,000 a year with the raise and the top-off fellowship. And so now, I feel like more of a regular adult that has a livable amount of money and I’m not as worried anymore about like, “Oh God, I saw a movie this weekend and now I can’t do anything else fun for the rest of the week.” And so like, I don’t have any of those like worries anymore, but I do still think about them. Like that mindset is always in the back of my mind of like, “Oh, like, is this like a waste of money? I don’t need to be doing this,” or, “This is so expensive,” you know?

$45K Stipend in Knoxville

13:24 Emily: Okay. There was so much in there. So much good stuff that I want to follow-up on. Let’s take it kind of in turns. I want to put a pin in the negotiation part of it. We’ll come back to that in a moment. But let’s focus now on like again, still your money mindset. You just mentioned some of it. You don’t have to be as worried about small joys and extravagances that you allow yourself. So, you’re making about $45,000 a year. Very good stipend for a graduate student, especially in a, you know, lower cost of living area. How, like give us some context about how much that pays for. Because obviously in other areas of the country, $45K is like, “Oh, I’m barely scraping by.”

14:00 Alyssa: Yeah.

14:00 Emily: How does that feel for you right now?

14:03 Alyssa: Knoxville is very affordable to live in. When you’re going to school, like in not really a big city, but more of like a rural part of the country, that definitely helps. Although there’s definitely, you have to balance that with being a person of color, too. So there aren’t other Filipinos, like in this whole city, it seems. I haven’t met any of them or seen anybody else like that’s the same race as me. There’s also a lot of segregation here. And so like, there are parts of town that you can’t go to. So you kind of have to balance that when you’re like, “Oh, if I live somewhere rural, then that’s more affordable to live in,” but there are parts of those areas that also may not be safe for you if you’re in a similar situation.

14:48 Emily: Yeah. I’m glad that you pointed that out because it’s something that I often don’t acknowledge or that can go unacknowledged that people of color in some cases do not have all of the options available to them that White people do, or, you know, other like races. Because as you just said, there are some areas where you can’t live, you have to pay the premium to live in a different area because it’s simply not an option to feel safe, you know, paying the least amount of rent that you could or whatever. So, a very important consideration when people are choosing graduate schools to kind of, to feel out if you are going to feel safe there, and what is the university going to do to support you?

15:21 Alyssa: And while we’re kind of on this, it might also be worth mentioning the current abortion scenario in the United States. If that’s something that matters to you and you have the ability to become pregnant, like a lot of the 26 states that are passing laws that restrict your access to it may also be something to consider because a lot of those contain the rural areas where it is more affordable to attend a university there.

15:46 Emily: Another wrinkle. Yeah. We’re recording this in May, 2022. I don’t know exactly when we’re going to release this. There may be more developments between now and then. But yes, an issue that I think many of us were not expecting to have to consider when we’re choosing graduate school. So, another good point.

Prioritizing Happiness

16:04 Emily: Let’s talk more about the money though. So like, you’re able to pay, you’re able to live a more comfortable lifestyle. Your mindset is still, how is your mindset doing? Like, are you able to splurge on yourself a little bit, or do you still have some of the mindset lingering from when you grew up or your undergraduate experience?

16:22 Alyssa: A lot of it is more, I guess, in the back of my mind, but I have put like a conscious effort into prioritizing my own happiness. Not just in the way of like work-life balance, but financially to ensure that like, you know, spending money on things that make you happy is not wasted money in the same way that spending time on things that make you happy is not wasted time. And so, like I saw two movies this weekend <laugh> instead of one with my partner, because I wanted to and that helped distract me from some heavy things that were going on in my life. And that was money well-spent. Yeah, it wasn’t on a bill, but it’s something that I like, you know, put effort into not feeling bad about that. So, I’ve been dealing with grief this weekend, and I’ve been spending a lot of money, like additional money than I would in any other week on eating out a lot. Just so that way I wouldn’t have to like do household chores, like dishes or worry about cooking while I’m dealing with grief.

17:29 Alyssa: And so like, those are like, you know, that was part of like, I guess, a change in mindset that I noticed where it was easier for me to do that in my current financial scenario, like situation versus when I was in undergrad. Like I had those thoughts in the back my mind of like, “Wow, I’m spending a lot of money. <Laugh> this week alone between, you know, funeral costs and like the additional money I was spending on food.” I’ve easily spent like a thousand dollars in the last four days on not bills, but that was easier for me to accept now and probably even easier now versus like my first year in grad school, when that would’ve been a harder, like mental hurdle to get over.

18:16 Emily: Yeah. And I’m assuming that this simply would not have been an option for you in undergrad to spend in this way. It is not an option for many graduate students, either, who are being paid less. And in our prep for this conversation, you said to me something along the lines of, you know, you’re living well right now given what you’re paid and given the low cost-of-living, and you think that all graduate students should feel this way. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

18:42 Alyssa: Yes. So, currently, like I said, I make $45,000 about per year. And whenever I tell other graduate students that like, sometimes, like I try not to let it like come off as like a brag because of the low cost-of-living in Knoxville, too. But it’s more of that I obviously agree that like everybody should, you know, talk about their wages, especially to your coworkers. Because I think that like all grad students should feel as comfortable as I feel in terms of my financial situation. I think that I make a fair wage, and maybe I’m biased because of my previous financial situation, but I personally have no complaints about the amount of money that I’m making right now. I feel supported by my advisor and by my department. I feel that I am valued for my labor. And I think that shows through how much they pay me. And I think that everybody should be able to feel that way about their department and about their advisor.

Commercial

19:52 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. I have set a big goal for my business and our U.S. PhD community broadly. My goal is for every graduate student, postdoc, or postbac in the U.S. who is not having income tax withheld from their stipend or salary to be offered training on how to 1) estimate their future income tax liability, 2) determine if they are required to pay quarterly estimated tax, and 3) prepare to pay their tax bill or bills through setting up a system of self-withholding. I provide just such a training, which is my asynchronous workshop titled Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. Now, some universities, institutes, or funding agencies already offer such a training, and they have no need to work with me. But others won’t allow their employees to touch the topic of taxes with a 10-foot pole, and that’s where working with me can really benefit everyone. Would you please send me an email and tell me which camp your university falls into—or if it’s somewhere in between? You can reach me at [email protected]. Furthermore, let me know if you want to take Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients for free or think that the cohort coming in this fall should, and I’ll reply with how you can help make that happen. I look forward to hearing from you! Now back to our interview.

Learning to Negotiate

21:33 Emily: I wanted to come back now to the negotiation piece. So, I think you mentioned something like, you know, you told both universities that you would accept a slightly lower stipend from University of Illinois. Tell me like, you even brought up money in these conversations. Like why were you even having conversations with the programs? What gave you the idea that you could talk about this and that maybe there would be more for you there?

21:56 Alyssa: So, part of it was because while I was at the University of Illinois, I got comfortable asking for money. One by being a leader in a lot of the different like student programs and then having to correspond regularly with the staff and the department head there. So, I knew a lot of those people well, and at one point I wanted to go to the Nuclear Innovation Bootcamp in the year 2017. And there was like obviously paying for travel flight costs. I didn’t have to pay for lodging as part of that Bootcamp, but there was also a hefty registration fee and I couldn’t afford any of that. And so, like there was no route to like ask for it to be paid for. There was no like standardized path or form that you could fill out for things to be waived.

22:46 Alyssa: So, I wrote like a little one-page request to my department saying like, this is this program. I really want to go. This is what I’m going to get out of it. Will you pay for it? And then at the very bottom, it said more information about why I may qualify for financial need available upon request. But I didn’t really like talk about my financial situation. I just explained what the program was, and why I wanted to go. And I gave that to them, and with no further questions they paid for everything. I think they even, I want to say they reimbursed my flights, but if I hadn’t bought them, they may have paid for them in advance. I don’t quite remember. But I had realized that like they wanted to support me, and that they were okay with students kind of going the outside-of-the-box route in terms of asking for money.

23:38 Alyssa: And that was when I was a sophomore in college. So, that gave me the confidence, then, when I was in grad school to ask for a higher rate or wage when I was applying to grad school. And they, unfortunately, weren’t able to do it or I don’t, you know, necessarily know all the behind-the-scenes that went on there. And sure, they said no, but I wasn’t at all reprimanded for asking in the first place. Like nothing, you know, bad happened to me. The best that I could have done was ask, even if they said no. So, I’m glad that I did. And it turned out well for me because at the University of Tennessee, I didn’t even know that there were top-off fellowships. But I got one because I was upfront with the University of Tennessee about how I would have, you know, taken the lower offer elsewhere and about how I was considering other schools and kind of in the same way that you’re like, I learned how to like negotiate a car price down from my dad.

24:36 Alyssa: So that was, I guess, a little bit of a privilege that I had because I had to buy a car to like move to Tennessee, because they have terrible public transit here. It’s kind of the whole tell the other you know, person that you’re negotiating with about this other thing that you’re also considering. Make that look nice and shiny. So that way they’ll try to give you a little bit of a better offer. I ended up also getting this laptop and all of the accessories that go with it out of the same deal with my current advisor. Like I asked them to buy me, you know, personal equipment that I could use to like, you know, be a person outside of grad school, too. Like I didn’t have a functioning laptop at the time. And so all of that got thrown in as well.

25:23 Emily: I think that’s such a powerful message, like, and I’m glad that you learned it as a sophomore in college and that you were able to then apply it in your process for applying to graduate school. Like just ask, like, just let people know of your need and let them figure out how they can best, you know, work behind-the-scenes to make that happen for you. So, you got this amazing like top-up fellowship. I mean, $10,000 is a very significant, you know, add-on to an already, you know okay base stipend. So, that sounds amazing. Just, I think this is a wonderful message for any prospective graduate students, or anybody at any stage, really just ask for what you need. Let people know, and especially like you said that you have options and this would help your decision. I think you said earlier, like it was a no-brainer to go with the University of Tennessee once they made that, you know, augmentation to their offer. So, so glad to hear that.

Normalizing Talking About Grad Student Stipends

26:12 Emily: Let’s talk more about stipends for other graduate students as well. So, I understand you’ve recently kind of entered into some conversations with peers about how we can, union is not the right word, but sort of collectively bargain or like share information about stipends. So, tell me more about that endeavor.

26:33 Alyssa: Yeah. So, normalizing talking about our wages is like step one in changing the culture around laborers. So that way we can all benefit collectively. But we kind of wanted to take this a little bit of a step further among nuclear engineering grad students specifically because by going to conferences and networking, not just with employers or other universities, et cetera, but we also spend that time networking with each other. And so, because it’s so common for grad students to kind of see the same people all the time in the nuclear engineering programs, because we’re so small, a lot of us just know each other from like all across the country. And I know that this isn’t something that a lot of other fields have the benefit of because it’s not realistic for like every electrical engineering graduate student to all know each other.

27:31 Alyssa: But at least to know somebody who knows somebody at pretty much any nuclear engineering graduate program is realistic for us. So, we got together at the most recent student conference. And we are currently building a spreadsheet that has everybody’s like gross pay, all of the things that you have to pay for that are related to your health insurance or your academic costs, your fees, and then what your take-home pay is, and then comparing all of that to the cost-of-living based on where your university is, your university’s ranking, and your department’s ranking. So, that way you can kind of compare and contrast. So that way, if there is a department that is ranked highly compared to its university’s ranking, which implies that that department has more power to maybe change the pay that their graduate students are receiving, but those graduate students maybe aren’t being paid well, then they can use the collective sheet to say like, this is where we’re falling right now, compared to how much these other similar programs are paying their graduate students. And we think that you should, you know, value our labor a little bit more and that we deserve to have higher wages. And so, use like that collective information for other institutions to bargain. So that way maybe they can get the same level of financial comfort that I am afforded right now.

29:07 Emily: This is an amazing effort. I totally commend you and your peers for like this idea, and starting work on this. It sounds like you’re in the data collection stage.

29:17 Alyssa: Yes.

29:17 Emily: Is that right? Like you’re building the spreadsheet, putting in all these different factors. I love that you mentioned like ranking of university, because I have some work in this area as well, and I just think about cost-of-living. I don’t think about like how, you know, the university is regarded or their program is regarded. So, I think that’s a really interesting like additional element. I’m not sure when this episode will come out in relation to these other ones, but I have some other podcast episodes slated for 2022 on this same issue of like sort of information-sharing about stipends and bargaining in some manner to increase stipends. So, this is wonderful and it aligns very well with that.

Health Insurance (Non-)Coverage

29:53 Alyssa: The thing that like, the one piece of information that like made it, like click in my brain where I was like, “We need to like, do something more about this and just talk about our pay,” was that one of the grad students that I didn’t even know well, like while I was at U of I, that I was just kind of like chatting with at a social at this conference told me that his health insurance was not covered. And like, mine is, like, I don’t, it’s not taken out of my pay. Like, yes, it’s like technically like, “Oh, like you could have just, you know, they could have just given me the money that they’re using to pay for my health insurance,” but like the University of Illinois’ grad student health insurance is like taken out of their pay. So, that’s like a part of like the gross pay that they advertise. And I was like, that’s not cool. <Laugh> what do you mean your health insurance isn’t covered? So then I asked to have a meeting with the department head there because I like knew him well from when I was a student there. And he actually was the one who gave me the idea. He was like, why don’t you get more of this information from other schools? And then, so we’ll go from there.

30:59 Emily: That’s excellent. And I totally agree, like in PhD Stipends as well, I have a way to enter like what your stipend is, but then like, what are you paying out of that stipend in terms of fees and tuition and whatever. And like for health insurance and other types of fees as well, like that can add up to thousands of dollars a year. So, that’s not some insignificant like, oh, it’s a $20 fee, whatever. This is a really big percentage of like that overall stipend that they’re receiving.

31:23 Alyssa: Yeah.

31:24 Emily: The other thing I’m really excited about for your project too, is like this fellowship that you received is probably one that’s offered sometimes to other students as well. So, it’s good to have both sets of information, right? Like what’s the base stipend and then, “Oh, sometimes this additional funding is available.” Wouldn’t it be great if we could pull everybody up to that level or, you know, that kind of thing? So, I just, if you aren’t already, I would definitely encourage you to include that kind of information as well in the spreadsheet. What different students are being paid, even within the same department.

31:52 Alyssa: Yeah, we did get a raise this year, which took effect about two months ago. So, because of the change in the economy throughout the pandemic, all graduate students in the nuclear engineering department at the University of Tennessee received a 10% stipend raise. So, full research assistants are now making 33 instead of $30,000 per year as the base-level stipend. Additionally, this was through the effort of our nuclear engineering graduate student assembly, which is kind of like also not a union, but a collection of just the nuclear engineering grad students. We managed to through a couple of years actually of pressure convince our department to begin covering our academic fees. So, which also kind of feels like a raise in terms of take-home pay. So, now we no longer have to pay as much and many students don’t have to pay any fees anymore for things like, you know, your basic like academic, you know, transportation fee, student health center fee, recreational fee. So, all of that is pretty much covered now.

33:02 Emily: For sure. And it makes it so much easier to compare apples to apples, right? When those kinds of fees are covered. But I’m sure in your spreadsheet you’ll be accounting for everything. So, I love this idea. I’m so excited for y’all to like move forward with this and hope it comes together in the near future.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

33:16 Emily: Well, Alyssa, it’s been such a pleasure to talk with you and I’m so glad that you volunteered to be on here, and you’ve had so many really vital messages that have come through in this interview. And I’m really grateful for that. I wrap up all my interviews by asking my guests one final question, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve already touched on in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

33:39 Alyssa: I had a similar question asked of me in my most recent D&D session with my friends. Just like we were talking after. And, specifically, their question was, how much of my success is rooted in like just being confident? And that applies to so much in that, like I had the confidence to ask to go to all these different programs, the Bootcamp, to different conferences. And when I’m at conferences, then while I’m there, I’m networking with all these different potential employers and powerful people, like some of my future reference letter writers are people that I’ve only ever interacted with at conferences and have no other like relationship with them. And so, by networking with those people that, you know, that’s how I met my current advisor, and that’s how he learned about my work.

34:42 Alyssa: And that gave me the confidence to then talk to him about my financial situation. And you know, even asking to go to conferences in the first place built my confidence in asking for funding and asking for a raise. And it really taught me that, I mean, the best thing you can do is to at least ask and see if, you know, people will just give you money. Because sometimes they will. So, I don’t necessarily like the mindset of, you know, just apply to everything because it also can take resources and time. But apply to the things that you can, or that you have the spoons to. And it’s a way to try to tackle imposter syndrome is to know that other people have it too, but you deserve to have the confidence, regardless of any imposter syndrome you might have, to put yourself out there.

35:41 Emily: Thank you so much, Alyssa, for those concluding thoughts. Again, it’s been great to have you. Thank you so much!

35:46 Alyssa: Yeah. Thank you! Thank you for having me!

Outtro

35:53 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance…but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.