Personal Finance for PhDs

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Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2023 Edition

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Emily published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 200th episode, and over the last five and a half years, the podcast has featured 252 unique voices in addition to Emily’s. This last episode of 2023 catches up with the guests from Seasons 1 through 11. The guests were invited to submit short audio updates on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of their interview. They also included their best financial advice for an early-career PhD if their answer has changed since the initial interview.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2023 Edition

Teaser

00:00 Samantha: And I talked a lot about saving and budgeting the last time I was on the show, and I still think that’s a really important skill for everyone to have, but I’ve also learned since then that it’s equally important, if not more so, to advocate for yourself and make sure you’re actually getting the pay that you deserve and that you need to live in the city where you’re going to grad school.

Introduction

00:17 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

00:52 Emily: This is Season 16, Episode 8, and today I am featuring many guest voices! I published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 200th episode, and over the last five and a half years, the podcast has featured 252 unique voices in addition to my own. For our last episode in 2023, I thought it would be fun to catch up with the guests from Seasons 9 through 11, and a few from earlier seasons as well. I invited them to submit short audio clips to update us on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of our interview, as well as to provide their best financial advice if that has changed since our initial interview. We have some very big and very exciting updates this year, and I’m confident you are going to appreciate the perspectives that these guests bring. The audio clips in this episode are ordered by when the original episode was published. If you’d like to circle back and listen to any of the previous interviews, you can do so in your podcatcher app or at my website, PFforPhDs.com/podcast. To keep up with future episodes, please hit subscribe on that podcatcher and/or join my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice. You’ll hear an update from me first, followed by the rest of the guests. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e8/. Happy listening, happy holidays, and happy new year! See you in 2024!

Dr. Emily Roberts

02:31 Emily: Hi! This is Emily Roberts from Personal Finance for PhDs. I am of course the host of this podcast and you hear from me in every episode! 2023 started off really rough with the hospitalization of both of my husband’s parents and ultimately the death of his father. For months we were barely holding things together logistically with our household and their household and really leaned on our extended family and local friends. Honestly, I couldn’t get everything done in a timely manner with Personal Finance for PhDs during that tax season, which is my busiest time of year. Thank goodness I had three wonderful people working with me who stepped forward to keep the lights on while I took time away to be with my loved ones.

03:18 Emily: It was a slow climb out of that period but this past summer and fall were really wonderful for me and my family. Now that my younger child is in kindergarten and more independent, we have a really good household rhythm. I read every day, and my family often plays games together. I’m leading two Girl Scouts troops, one for each daughter, which is kind of crazy but enjoyable. We have a wonderful local community. Life is very sweet. Oh, and I started using Asana for my household and personal life, like I do for my business, and it’s been amazing for staying on top of everything without feeling overwhelmed.

03:55 Emily: On the financial side, I stopped making any efforts to budget or actively track our expenses at the start of the year. Our savings rate took a big hit, partially because of inattention, partially because Personal Finance for PhDs made less money in 2023 than 2022, and partially because we paid for a roof replacement and solar panels installation. I finally got back to active expense tracking and planning with our finances a couple of months ago. It feels great to get back to our positive habits now that we have the capacity, and thankfully the wheels didn’t completely fall off because we had pretty good systems in place. If you want to download the manual expense tracker I created for my and your use, go to PFforPhDs.com/tracker/.

04:44 Emily: I am hoping for a better year for Personal Finance for PhDs in 2024 than I had in 2023. If you’re a fan of this podcast and the financial education I provide, I would very very much appreciate you recommending me to a professional development-type person at your university or alma mater. Thanks for listening to my update! If you want to get in touch, you can visit my website at PFforPhDs.com or email me at [email protected].

Dr. Jill Hoffman

05:13 Jill: Hi, I’m Jill Hoffman from Toddler on the Tenure Track. I was on Season 3, Episode 4 in 2019, and then I was also on a Catching Up with Prior Guests episode at the end of 2020, which was Season 7, Episode 16. In the last update, I shared that my family and I were contemplating a move back to the East Coast from Oregon. We were expecting a baby and I was an assistant professor. Since that time, we have moved back to the East Coast, back to my home state of Virginia. The baby we were expecting is now two and a half years old, and I quit my job as an assistant professor right before I was supposed to go up for tenure. So lots of big changes.

05:56 Jill: In my original episode, I talked about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program and student loan debt, as well as me working while my husband was a stay at home parent. And now my husband and I have switched. I’m staying at home and he’s working full time. And because I’m no longer working, I’m not actively working towards loan forgiveness. I actually have, I think about 13 months left, so not that much time at all in the grand scheme of things, but we chose to push pause on that path for now. In total, we have about 73, 000 in student loans left, which is about 10,000 less than where we were at at the time of my original podcast episode. We’re just paying the minimum right now, and that’s our plan with the new save plan. Financially, it doesn’t make sense to try and aggressively pay them down at this point. While being a stay at home parent is my main focus, I’ve also sought out some additional professional opportunities just to use my brain in a different way during the week.

06:54 Jill: I’m actually working in a virtual assistant role with Emily, supporting both her financial education workshops, as well as the podcast. And then I’ve been doing a little bit of coaching for early career academics. And I have a small Etsy shop with some digital products. So I’m dipping my toes in a number of different things and I’m really loving all of it. My plan is to slowly expand the virtual assistant and coaching work, especially once my youngest gets to kindergarten in a few years. As far as best financial advice for early career PhDs, what was helpful for me, and it is still really helpful for me, is knowing exactly what money is coming in and what money is going out. So tracking on a regular basis in a spreadsheet or with an app, I just use a spreadsheet. Just some way to show you where your money, money is going is so helpful. You can find me online at my website, ToddlerOnTheTenureTrack.com.

Dr. Samantha McDonald

07:47 Samantha: Hi, my name is Samantha McDonald. I have a PhD in informatics from the University of California, Irvine, and I joined Emily on the podcast in season eight, episode three, back in 2021. My episode was about knowing your worth and discussing what it was like to make the most money as a graduate student in my department when so many of my peers were struggling with less. I think my trajectory after grad school has been quite different than most. Immediately after graduating, I took a few months off to go backpacking, work on a farm in New Mexico, and travel with my family, just to do things that I just really wanted to do on my bucket list. Then I started my first real job in industry, working as a user experience researcher at Meta, formerly known as Facebook, and I worked there for almost two years aggressively saving, in a similar way to FIRE. The reason why I was aggressively saving during my first real job is really twofold. One, I wanted to keep my standard of living low to not become trapped having to work. I saw quite a few friends and colleagues start doing that right out of their PhDs. And second, my partner Michael and I were preparing ourselves for a multi year seabattical on our sailboat. Michael actually has his own episode that is in season 14, episode nine. Both of us were in graduate school almost until our thirties. As much as it sounded nice to go straight into a full job after school, we, we really wanted to use this time in our lives to take risks and do things we probably couldn’t do once we settled down, you know, like buy a house, have kids and, you know, you need to have full time jobs often to support those higher expenses.

09:23 Samantha: So now here we are eight months later. We’re still enjoying our time off. We sailed from California to Mexico and back, and now we’re gearing up to sail back to Mexico post hurricane season and potentially cross to spend some time sailing in French Polynesia. Um, based on my experience my best advice for early career PhDs is really to live below your means and don’t accumulate debt or high expenses too early. I know it can be easy to feel like you should treat yourself after so much time with low income, but I saw a lot of my friends now feel lost at a job they don’t want, but they can’t leave because they’ve already increased their expenses with cars and house and activities and hobbies and things that, that don’t necessarily make them happy and fulfilled in that same way. My partner and I have a little bit more extreme case of saving up and living way below our means on a little sailboat. Um, but I think everyone has their own passions and, you know, life is short and you need to explore those things. And luckily people with PhDs, uh, will, you’ll never have a hard time finding a job. So as scary as it is to sort of take time off, for me and Michael, it was the way that we wanted to go. And we’re definitely not regretting it. Eventually we’ll have to go back and get jobs, but we are treating money at this point like a commodity for happiness. And right now this is what makes us happy. Thank you so much for having me again. And, uh, if anyone has any questions or wants to contact me, they’re more than welcome to my email is [email protected]. It’s spelled like Sam, Mick five, seven, seven, three. Thanks.

Lucy Bryan from Polygence

10:58 Lucy: Hi, this is Lucy from Polygence. I’m Polygence’s mentor success manager, and I’m so excited to update you all on both Polygence and our mentoring model after my colleagues Jen and Steven spoke on these topics with you all in season 10 on episode 3. One update from us is that we’ve standardized mentor rates to be based on degree level rather than field as an effort to be really transparent with mentors about their pay rate and what they can expect upon degree completion. For instance, if they’re receiving their M. A. or PhD. We now have over 3, 000 mentors in our mentor pool, both graduate students and industry experts. Another exciting update is that we’ve already grown so much from that Season 10 episode, as we now have over 3, 000 mentors in our mentor pool, both graduate students and industry experts. We just looked at a breakdown of how many projects our mentors worked on in 2023 and it ranges from 1 to 15 per mentor. So it’s great to see the flexibility of this role, as each mentor can select projects and the number of concurrent students that work best for their workload. It’s also exciting for us to keep growing and to know that over 3,600 Polygence projects have been completed, which is really a testament to the work of the mentors and also speaks to how excited many high school students are about research and getting to decide what they learn and spend their time exploring.

12:21 Lucy: If you’d like to learn more about Polygence or the mentor role, you can contact me, Lucy, at [email protected], spelled P O L Y G E N C E. org. Definitely check out our website, polygence.org, where you can see many of our amazing current mentors too.

Commercial

12:44 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2023. These pre-recorded educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2023 tax season starting in January 2024, I’m offering four versions of this workshop, one each for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the end users, graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs, can access them for free. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they sponsor one of my tax preparation workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about licensing these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Dr. Sean Bittner

14:29 Sean: Hello, this is Sean Bittner. And I was a guest on personal finance for PhDs for season six, episode 12 in 2020 and season 10, episode 14 in 2021, as well as the 2022 catch up episode. Apologies for the audio. I am taking full advantage of health insurance before the end of the year and had a much needed nasal surgery done recently. Since my last job update, quite a lot has happened personally and professionally, my wife and I both took new jobs. She’s now in consulting and accepted a board seat for the local nonprofit and I now work in technology transfer, joined a new coaching company and just completed my 5th semester as a leadership educator. This year, we traveled to Japan, Italy, and 3 national parks. And as I record this, we’re currently on baby watch as our daughter is expected early in the new year and could arrive any day. For an update on my advice, my only update this time around is there’s truly never a good time for making big life decisions.

15:30 Sean: Everyone that listens to this podcast is smart and intelligent and a planner in one way or the other, but the last few years have really shown me that there’s always risks and rewards and never a perfect way to time something, especially something big. Uh, so I want to just encourage people, uh, fear of the unknown is certainly natural, uh, but, but there will always be reasons to not do something. If you want to keep in touch with me, you can find me on the site formerly known as Twitter for as long as it exists @lifescicoach or on Instagram at Sean without an H. As well as on LinkedIn, I’m again, taking new coaching clients this year, which I’m really excited about as well. So if you’re interested in exploring leadership and career potential, please send me a note. I’d be happy to meet with you. Thanks for listening.

Dr. Nelson Zounlome

16:20 Nelson: This is Dr. Nelson Zounlome, founder and CEO of Liberate the Block. I appeared in season 10, episode 16, um, and since then I’ve had a few changes and updates. So, um, after, uh, that year I left my tenure track faculty position and started working on LTB full time. Um, we’ve been able to expand a little bit. So, um, just recently we actually, uh, published our second book I Thrive: An International Students Guide to Thriving in the US and then we have an upcoming book Lift As You Climb: The Black Book of Academic Encouragement. And then lastly, have been able to publish our asynchronous course, developing a graduate school thrive mindset. So since leaving academia, I’ve been able to, again, focus more on the business, completed some business accelerators to better, you know, just learn business skills, networking, different things like that. I’ve also been able to continue to do some research, particularly just among BIPOC students and other folks in, in higher ed. Also, as a psychologist, I’ve been able to do a little, uh, therapy as well, and so that’s been really cool to have kind of a balance of all my skill sets in my, uh, in my time after academia.

17:46 Nelson: My best advice for folks, again, is really just to start early, not waiting until after your PhD to think about finances, to think about your, um, the life that you want to live, you know, and so the best advice I really have is to take the time to think about your values, who you want to be, um, think about the type of life you want to live, right? The type of work life synergy you want to have, um, being able to cultivate that now. And so I referenced, um, different resources in my life. Episode such as the millionaire next door the automatic millionaire two additional resources that I wanted to highlight were Um, we should all be millionaires by Rachel Rogers a really good book on Just mindset, but also practical ways in which you can start to really Um excel right in in your life. Um, and then the other one is get good with money, uh, 10 simple steps to becoming financially whole by Tiffany Aliche. And so this is a really great, easy guide to just figuring out how to, again, start investing, um, talks about insurance and, and, and different things like that. Um, and so feel free to, to check out my episode, season 10, episode 16, for a bit more information, and I wish you all well on your PhD journey and, uh, getting financially whole.

Maya Gosztyla

19:10 Maya: My name is Maya Gosztyla, and I’m a fifth year PhD candidate in biomedical sciences at the University of California, San Diego. I previously appeared in Season 2, Episode 4 of the show, back when I was a post bacc fellow at the NIH, and I appeared again in Season 11, Episode 1, when I was in my third year of grad school. The biggest thing that’s changed since I last appeared on the show was that student researchers at my university formed a union, and we organized the largest labor strike in the history of U. S. higher education, with 48, 000 of us walking off the job for a total of six weeks. And as a result, we were able to negotiate our very first contract, which included By far the largest pay raises in the history of my program, in addition to other benefits like paid time off, protections from workplace abuse, appointment security guarantees, and a whole bunch more.

20:07 Maya: And so now I have a lot more financial security thanks to our increased pay, and it’s just been a major improvement for my quality of life overall. And I talked a lot about saving and budgeting the last time I was on the show, and I still think that’s a really important skill for everyone to have, but I’ve also learned since then that it’s equally important, if not more so, to advocate for yourself and make sure you’re actually getting the pay that you deserve and that you need to live in the city where you’re going to grad school. And I’ve noticed that grad students at a lot of other universities have been recently unionizing as well, so I’m really excited to see how this changes the financial landscape of graduate school across the country moving forward.

Dr. Jeanelle Horcasitas

20:43 Jeanelle: Hi everyone, this is Jeanelle Orcasitas. I had the pleasure of speaking with Emily in Season 11, Episode 3. where I talked about the multiple jobs I worked during graduate school to pay off debt. Since then, I’ve had a couple of life updates that I’d like to share with you all. The first update is that I sold and bought a new home with my husband, which was really great because we had built up a lot of equity at the time. However, we had to take on a higher interest rate because they had just increased it. We also learned there’s a lot of extra costs that are involved when you’re both Selling and buying a new home and always read the fine print, especially when it comes to liens. We actually had to pay several thousand dollars on a lien we weren’t aware of in order to sell our home. So there was a lot of lessons learned we, we gained in our second round of home buying. The second update I wanted to share is that earlier this year, I experienced a layoff. And at the time it was very shocking and it felt like the rug was pulled from underneath me. But I was really thankful that my husband and I had prepared and we had a six month emergency fund built up. And I was fortunate enough to receive a severance package. And so even though this was an extremely stressful and uncertain time for me, I was really grateful that we could stick to a budget, adjust it as needed for costs that we had a savings in place that could really extend me for a long time as I embarked on the job search.

22:31 Jeanelle: But connecting back to all of the multiple jobs in graduate schools that I had, I wanted to give a key piece of advice, which is always stay connected with folks in your network. You never know when you’re going to need to ask for help. And during this time, I reached out to many of those people I had worked with, and this really helped me land interviews and eventually jobs. This was also a time that made me think deeply about what I wanted from a career. And so I actually transitioned out of tech and went into the dental insurance industry. So I would say after a really odd year of some ups and downs with buying and selling a home and losing a job and then getting a job again. Um, ultimately I’ve learned that the power of saving and just having that emergency fund because you never know when you’re going to need it and when it’s going to come and it will just make you feel significantly lighter and taking on the stress of whatever you’re going through. Thank you.

Dr. Leslie Wang

23:40 Leslie: This is Leslie Wang, writing coach and the founder of my company, Your Words Unleashed, where I help scholars write and publish books that matter. I was featured on season 11, episode 10 of this podcast called This Prof is Taking Deliberate Steps Towards Self Employment. The episode dropped in May, 2022, and I’ve had a lot of exciting changes in my life and career since then. In our episode, Emily and I talked about how I was planning to leave the Academy in a couple of years, once the business became sustainable. But by the time the episode was published, I had actually already turned in my resignation. I had reached a point where I no longer wanted to pretend that I was still committed to academia. And I had also experienced a lot of success in my business, and I wanted to see what I could do with it full time. And I also realized that I was never going to feel 100 percent ready to give up a totally secure position. So I turned in my resignation in April of 2022. And if this gives you any indication of the kind of institution I was at, the Dean’s office never even responded to my resignation email, except to ask my department chair to ask me to return all of my electronics.

24:58 Leslie: I spent the summer of 2022 mentally adjusting to leaving academia, which was very sad for me, even though I had been planning for it for four years. But ultimately it was the best thing I could have done. I’ve been full time in my business since August, 2022, and my business has grown a lot. I started my own podcast called Your Words Unleashed, where I give writing tips and publishing advice, and I’ve done more than 40 episodes and gained a loyal listenership. But for more than the first year, I was really overworking. I was burning out and realized I had taken some bad habits from academia into my non academic work life. So this fall, I got really serious about limiting the number of clients I take on. And I also raised my rates so that I can actually live the kind of life that I want. And because I know people are always interested in the financials, I will share that in each of the first two years of my business, I have surpassed six figures. Which is much more than I made as a professor. At the same time, this does not come with any health or retirement benefits. I would not have been able to make this kind of transition without my husband, who put me and our child on his health insurance. But overall, I’m incredibly happy to be at this point in my life and career. I work only 25 to 30 hours per week and never at night or on weekends. In terms of advice that I have for early career PhDs, I know that a lot of folks are looking to leave higher ed, And you might be struggling and burnt out and you need to leave right away.

26:33 Leslie: But if you do have a steady income from a position, I would advise you to keep it while you’re looking for your next big step. The best thing I could have done was to build my business within the security of my academic job. It gave me the ability to experiment and make mistakes and take risks without risking at all. But if you’re really unhappy, like I was, make sure to set a final deadline so that security doesn’t impede you from taking a chance on yourself. So if you want to connect with me or find out more about what I do, you can find me on LinkedIn under my name, Leslie Wang, or go to my website at www.yourwordsunleashed.com. You can listen to my podcast from there or join my list serve. I send out weekly writing tips and strategies for living a more satisfying life. So thanks again, Emily, for having me on and happy holidays to you all.

Outtro

27:29 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! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2022 Edition

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Emily published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 176th episode, and over the last four and a half years, the podcast has featured 156 unique voices in addition to Emily’s. This last episode of 2022 catches up with the guests from Seasons 1 through 9. The guests were invited to submit short audio updates on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of their interview. They also included their best financial advice for an early-career PhD if their answer has changed since the initial interview.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Teaser

00:00 Sarah: I wasn’t ready to think about my finances until my forties <laugh>. And it’s not too late as it turns out. So, trust yourself, you’ll get there. Do it in your own way.

Introduction

00:19 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance.

00:26 Emily: I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

00:36 Emily: 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.

00:49 Emily: This is Season 13, Episode 9, and today I am featuring many guest voices! I published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 176th episode, and over the last four and a half years, the podcast has featured 156 unique voices in addition to my own.

01:12 Emily: For our last episode in 2022, I thought it would be fun to catch up with the guests from Seasons 6 through 9, and a few from earlier seasons as well. I invited them to submit short audio clips to update us on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of our interview, as well as to provide their best financial advice if that has changed since our initial interview. We have some very big and very exciting updates this year, and I’m confident you are going to appreciate the perspectives that these guests bring.

01:45 Emily: The audio clips in this episode are ordered by when the original episode was published. If you’d like to circle back and listen to any of the previous interviews, you can do so in your podcatcher app or at my website, PFforPhDs.com/podcast. To keep up with future episodes, please hit subscribe on that podcatcher and/or join my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice.

02:14 Emily: You’ll hear an update from me first, followed by the rest of the guests.

02:18 Emily: You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e9/.

02:25 Emily: Happy listening, happy holidays and happy New Year! See you in 2023!

Dr. Emily Roberts

02:35 Emily: This is Emily Roberts from Personal Finance for PhDs. I am of course the host of this podcast and you hear from me every week.

02:44 Emily: On the personal side, nothing can really top the update I gave you last year about finally becoming a homeowner. My family has been in our house in north San Diego county for about a year and a half now, and life is very sweet here. We have really integrated into our neighborhood and community. This year, I rediscovered a pastime from my youth, which is reading—voraciously. Through college, grad school, and early parenthood, reading fell by the wayside for me, but I picked it up again after tax season ended. I haven’t kept close track, but I think I’ve read a few dozen books in the last 8 months, almost all from the library, of course! One that really made an impression on me was Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. I recommend it to anyone who is inclined toward over-saving and expects to have a good income for your career, even if you’re still in grad school or your postdoc. Relatedly, I’ve been inspired to have more adventures and vacations and such with my family, and I’ve gotten back into the credit card rewards game to help fund that.

03:52 Emily: As for my business, Personal Finance for PhDs, 2022 was another awesome year with strong growth. I’ve gained a lot of clarity on how I want to spend my time, and I’m implementing more productivity and time management strategies. In 2022, I attended two in-person conferences and delivered several in-person speaking engagements, which was so so rewarding. I didn’t realize how intense my Zoom fatigue was! Going forward, I’m promoting my live in-person seminars and workshops and my pre-recorded workshops and demoting my live remote webinars. If you want me to teach you and your peers about taxes, investing, increasing income, student loans, frugality, home ownership, etc. etc., please connect me with a potential host at your university. I appreciate these recommendations so much.

04:50 Emily: Thanks for listening to my update! If you want to get in touch, you can visit my website at PFforPhDs.com or email me at [email protected].

Dr. Caitlin Faas

05:07 Caitlin: Caitlin Faas here, helping experts get off the hamster wheel for good, as a master certified life coach. I was on season one, episode number seven way back in 2018, and I also gave an update last year where I was a tenured faculty member, became a department chair, and then left in 2020 to coach full-time and paid off all my debts with my husband, and you can hear those updates.

05:27 Caitlin: But in the past year, I’ve had some huge life transitions that I also want to give you an update on. So my husband and I decided to get divorced in January of 2022, and in April, he died unexpectedly before paperwork was filed, so I became a legal widow. And of course, the grief is devastating and it was something I never wanted to happen, and yet I also prepared for it with him financially. We had created our wills together; the idea of death and either one of us being a widow had been on my mind because I’m a developmental psychologist by training, and it was something I listened to, people who were widows, what they wish people had known, and I’m so grateful I listened, even though the statistics were never gonna happen, that one of us was gonna die before we grew old together, right? And yet it did.

06:42 Caitlin: And so taking the time now, my advice for you, take the time to write down your passwords for someone else. Check in about your financial status and showing it to somebody else that’s important in your life so that they know, I wasn’t prepared with all of those things, we hadn’t taken those steps, but, you know, some of the next financial steps are the legal will. What happens if you do lose someone important to you, will you have the capacity to work? Can you put yourself in a position of you’d be able to take off time if you needed to, if you wanted to? And taking a few minutes now will pay off if it ever does happen. I hope it doesn’t. And yet having awareness and not being afraid of it, not pushing it away, or thinking it would be like the worst thing ever can be so beneficial for your financial health. I’d really like to not have huge updates in the next year, and we’ll see what happens as I prepare for it and ride the waves of life coming at me. Best of luck as your life unfolds this year, too!

Dr. Sam Zelenka

08:05 Sam: Hi, this is Sam Zelenka from Government Worker FI. I talked with Emily in season three, episodes eight and nine about the FIRE movement, financial independence, and retire early. And I wanted to give everybody a big update about how we’re doing on our financial independence journey. About a year ago, I decided to work part-time, and this was possible because we were saving up a ton of money and preparing for full financial independence or leaving the workforce entirely. But, we decided that actually it would be really great if I could keep doing my job, just do less of it. I was able to negotiate working part-time with my employer, and I now still am a PhD, pretty academic type person, doing research, but I only do that part of the time and I have a lot more time to spend with my family and my pets and just enjoy life at a little bit slower pace.

Dr. Zach Taylor

09:15 Zach: Hey everybody, this is Zach Taylor. I’m currently an assistant professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, and I was on the Personal Finance for PhD’s podcast on [season 5] episodes 10 and 11. I can give a couple of personal updates after bouncing around to a few jobs during the pandemic. I finally was able to earn a job that is really a great fit for me at the University of Southern Mississippi, so I’m very happy about that.

09:42 Zach: Something that is just something interesting financially is that relocation assistance provided by institutions. My institution did provide relocation assistance, but when I asked about it, they said that very few people ask about it, and even fewer people actually keep receipts and document their expenses. One suggestion I would give to really early career PhDs who are either on the job market or are looking to relocate, is be very clear with your hiring manager about any relocation costs that they will reimburse you for and keep all of your receipts. I had to actually submit original paper receipts from gas stations and the moving company, and when I bought cardboard boxes, I needed to keep those paper receipts. They would not take electronic receipts. I had to have them printed off in paper from the original source. And so be very, very clear with your hiring manager, about that.

10:47 Zach: But a lot of the advice that I gave about sniping great grocery prices using coupons, I still do that all the time. I actually just discovered that the Walmart near where I live in Hattiesburg, they discount meat every Thursday. And so I usually go and check on Thursday afternoons to see what grocery items have been discounted. Then I buy those and I freeze them, and it’s as good as if it were fresh to me at least. So that is something that I continue to do in a habit that I continue to kind of implement in my everyday life. If you have any questions or want  to get in touch with me, my email address is [email protected]. That’s the letter U texas.edu, and I wish to everyone the best.

Dr. Sean Sanders

11:34 Sean S.: Hi, Emily. I was delighted to join you back in June, 2020, which I believe was episode eight of season six for a fun conversation about my financial journey and especially my desire to retire early. I wanted to send a quick update on what’s happened since we spoke. And my exciting news is that as of early next year, that’s 2023, I’ll be leaving my current job at AAAS and semi retiring. I’m still a little stunned that I managed to get to this point, but here I am. I’ll still lightly be doing some consulting work in my field, but I’m also taking a sharp turn away from editing to become a dog trainer. This has been a goal of mine for many years, and I feel like it brings together my love for dogs with my scientific curiosity. I want to understand how dogs think and perceive their world as a pathway to improving our communication with them.

12:40 Sean S.: I’m also planning to do some volunteering with some local organizations, particularly to help people with some of their basic personal finances. I’ve been thinking about early retirement or semi-retirement for a few years now, as we talked about in my 2020 interview. And I’ve been working hard to save since my first postdoc, really, and wanted to be able to enjoy the benefits of all of that effort before I was too old to do things like traveling and volunteer work and, you know, pursue some other passions. There were really two precipitating events that led me to pulling the trigger and finally making this, this decision. The first was that I felt really burnt out at my job, which I’ve been at for 15 years, and really felt that a change was needed. The second is the long bull market that we’ve enjoyed for the last 10 years or more that has grown my investments to the point that I could feel comfortable making a move to part-time work.

13:44 Sean S.: To be honest, I’m still a little nervous with all the talk of the impending recession, but I’m staying the course and have put some safeguards in place to mitigate any risk of a recession, like having a bit more cash available to get me through the next two years. This is a big move, so wish me luck. I’m excited about the prospect of still staying in touch with my science roots, but also branching out into some new and exciting areas. If I were to offer any advice to early career graduates, I’d say do your best to focus on your long-term financial goals and remember that as the saying goes, time in the market is better than timing the market. So start investing early and try not to get caught up in the daily news cycle. Thanks so much for this opportunity and stay well!

Dr. Sean Bittner

14:41 Sean B.: Hey there, this is Sean Bitner. I was interviewed by Emily on Personal Finance for PhD’s season six, episode 12 and season 10, episode 14. In the most recent episode, Emily and I discussed comparing job offers after defending my thesis, the main components of a non-academic job offer, and how to prepare for the job hunt. Since our interview aired, I’ve been able to complete my accelerator’s first cohort, and I had an opportunity to work with a group of really incredible medical device company founders. I’ve also continued my coaching work and I’ve begun leadership education at the undergraduate level. Here, I’m teaching students about important leadership and communication skills that they can use, not only while they’re in college, but also as they move out into their first jobs. On a personal note, I still love to travel, which you’ll remember from season six, episode 12. Since last year, my wife and I have taken an incredible trip to South Africa, and by the time this recap episode comes out, we’ll be gearing up for a trip to Japan.

15:39 Sean B.: To add on to my advice from previous episodes, I want to again, encourage listeners to be looking for how they can fit their PhD work or their new job into their broader life and goals, rather than trying to squish their broader life and goals into their studies. If you’d like to connect with me, you can find me on Twitter @lifescicoach, on Instagram @seanwithoutanh S E A N or on LinkedIn. I’m also taking new coaching clients, so if you’re curious about leadership coaching and want to learn more, feel free to reach out to me. Thank you again to Emily and her team for having me on the podcast and thank y’all for listening and I hope you have a great holiday season. Bye!

Dr. Travis Seifman

16:25 Travis: Hi Emily and listeners, my name is Travis Seifman and I was featured in season seven, episode four, where I talked about the pros and cons of university housing. At that time, I had just finished my PhD in history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was preparing to move to Japan to take up a postdoc position where I remained today as a project researcher at the University of Tokyo’s Historic Graphical Institute. Life here in Tokyo is good. I feel extremely fortunate, just so lucky to have landed the position that I did and to be able to be living the life that I am now. In contrast to paying a thousand dollars a month for a poorly maintained basic amenities housing in a middle of nowhere California town, I’m now paying 92,000 yen a month, that’s about $650 with the current exchange rate, or closer to 800 and more normal times, for a nice apartment right in Central Tokyo. Excellent, basic amenities, excellent location in one of the greatest cities in the world. I’ve been fortunate too in that I’ve been able to save a considerable amount of money from being on this postdoc. So fingers crossed, depending on what job or lack of a job I may have after this, the academic job market being what it is, I’ll at least have a sizable savings to fall back on, in case my financial situation becomes tight again.

17:46 Travis: I would offer two points of advice to current grad students regarding housing. One, do what you can to investigate research institutes in the area that might offer housing or other alternative housing options. When I first arrived at the University of Hawaii for my masters, East West Center was a mystery to me – a research institute that I had no connection with, no idea about, no sense that I could potentially move in there, and yet I di and I found in the East West Center a wonderful community in a building where I paid $400 a month to live right off campus instead of a thousand dollars a month to live alone, a long walk or bus right away, somewhere out in town. It can be difficult to know what’s hiding in plain sight sometimes right on our campuses or in our city, so do what you can to find these possibilities.

18:32 Travis: Second, organize and agitate. As I record this in mid-November 2022. As you may well know, nearly 50,000 grad students and the like across the University of California are on strike, striking for better pay and better working conditions. When our institutions won’t act on their own to create affordable, pleasant, supportive environments for students and faculty, but instead put other priorities ahead of that, they need to be held to account and to be pressured to change and to do better. I hope that these strikes lead to positive change at the UC and across the country. Good luck to you all and solidarity.

Commercial

19:10 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude!

I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2022. These pre-recorded educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return.

For the 2022 tax season starting in January 2023, I’m offering three versions of this workshop, one each for US citizen/resident graduate students, US citizen/resident postdocs, and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. That third workshop is brand-new this year, and I’m very excited about it.

While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the end users, graduate students and postdocs, can access them for free.

Please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, etc. to request that they sponsor one of my tax preparation workshops for you and your peers. I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this month so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers.

You can find more information about licensing these workshops at PFforPhDs.com/tax-workshops.

Now back to our interview.

Diandra from That Science Couple

20:52 Diandra: Hi there, this is Diandra from That Science Couple and I was on the PFforPhDs podcast season seven, episode 10. I was talking about working before starting a PhD and the financial and career advantages that go along with that. Emily asked me if I could provide you an update with what I’ve been doing in the last year and so in 2022, I completed my preliminary exam and became a dissertator. My research is on diet and lifestyle factors and on the impact that they play in the risk of developing vascular dementia and white matter hyperintensities, and I’m set to graduate in spring of 2023.

21:29 Diandra: On the personal side, this past year, I took a once in a lifetime trip with my husband and parents to Italy and I overcame a major health crisis. Both of these things directly relate to what I talked about in my episode that by having a financial cushion before I entered my PhD program, it was much easier for me to handle an overseas trip and also to afford the healthcare related expenses because I had an HSA and investments to fall back on from my previous employer.

21:57 Diandra: This year, I also launched That Science Coaching and my program is evidence-based nutrition coaching in which I help others to identify food allergies, create a healthy lifestyle, and prevent or manage chronic illness through diet and lifestyle changes. When I was on the PFforPhDs podcast, my best financial advice for early career PhDs was to fight lifestyle inflation. And while I still believe that this is very important, I think you should also keep investing in yourself and in your health. While I was going through this major health crisis, I realized that it’s easier to maintain your health than to regain it, so if there are small things that you can do on a weekly basis, such as yoga or working out for self care, it’s gonna help your mental health and also your physical health. While we work really hard in the lab, I think it’s important to actually unplug and take the time to relax when you’re on vacation.

22:53 Diandra: If you’d like to contact me or follow our blog, we are online at thatsciencecouple.com. We’re also active on Twitter @science_couple and Facebook @thatsciencecouple. I’m currently accepting new clients, so if you’re interested in my program, please don’t hesitate to contact me. To wrap things up, I’d like to thank Emily for asking me to do this update. I hope everyone has a great end of their year, and please keep listening to the PFforPhDs podcast.

Dr. Samantha McDonald

23:25 Samantha: Hi, My name is Samantha McDonald. I was on season eight, episode three and I was discussing in particular in this episode, knowing your worth in an environment that devalues you work, and looking especially at someone who made more money than a lot of people in the the department at that time. Life has changed a lot. <laugh> I got my PhD woo-hoo about a year and a half ago in, I believe it was either March or May of 2021. After doing so, I took a three month break after my PhD as almost like my mini wellness sabbatical. I took a sailing class for two weeks in the Catalina Island to learn how to sail catamaran. I worked on a farm in a seek community in New Mexico for a few weeks, which was amazing. And I backpacked the High Sierra Trail in the Sierra Nevada of California, which is also amazing. It was a great break! I recommend to anyone after their PhD take a few months off. Even my partner spoke to a Nobel laureate who said that one of his biggest regrets was not taking some time off between his PhD and post-doc. It made all the difference in the world.

24:46 Samantha: After that was over, I started working full-time in industry actually at Meta, which was at the time Facebook when I joined the company. I still work for Meta, and I have for the past year and around I’d say three to five months, which has definitely been an insightful experience. Financially I am in a position I’ve never been before with making more money than I ever have or probably ever will in my life, so my finances are doing great. I save 50% of my paycheck still because I’m still in this super save mode. And luckily Meta provides a financial planner, who has been super helpful in making sure I’m making the right investment opportunities when I’m still young, still can take risks, but also figuring out some other plans.

25:33 Samantha: Personally, and the reason why I say Meta is as much money as I’m gonna make ever is I’m actually quitting my job in a few months, starting in January. Not because in particular I didn’t like my job or didn’t like industry, but mostly because I made a promise to my partner that when he finished his PhD, which is gonna be happening soon, we’d take a year off and live on a sailboat that we bought together. That’s happening very soon. It’s very different than what I thought I’d be doing, but we’ve saved up enough money, especially with my tech job that it’s a very cheap way to live financially and have an adventure for a year with his one year sabbatical after his PhD. After that, we’re going to New Mexico for a postdoc for him, and I’ll figure it out. I don’t know what I’m gonna do yet, but there’s something exciting about that, of taking a year off and just taking some time to breathe.

26:23 Samantha: My financial advice is still the same. Keep saving as much as possible, but taking as much time off and really understanding your worth and your value, it’s super important. And just understanding how much you’re worth and knowing that sometimes in industry, you’re overqualified for jobs in ways that you don’t realize that you’re there. So I’ve learned a lot in the past year and a half working in industry and I can’t wait to learn more. Contact info – my email is still the same. You can still contact me. Also, if you’re just interested, Michael and I, my partner, have started a YouTube channel for our sailing adventures, just for us to remember for ourselves and for our family to see. It’s called Sailing Ambrosia, A M B R O S I A, Ambrosia. It’s named after Michael’s grandmother. So if you’re just interested to see our adventures after PhD, it’s there too.

Dr. Jacqueline Kory-Westlund

27:14 Jacqueline: Hello, I’m Jacqueline Kory-Westlund. I was interviewed in season eight, episode eight. In that episode, I talked about how my husband and I managed our work and finances while I was in grad school so that we were able to start a family. Yes, I had my first baby as a fourth year PhD student, and then when I graduated we bought our own home in cash. We’ve continued to choose flexible work arrangements and prioritize our family. And now I’m excited to share that I have a book forthcoming from Columbia University Press, tentatively titled “#PhDone: How to Get Through Grad School Without Leaving the Rest of Your Life behind”. It’s the book I wish I’d been able to read as a student, a pragmatic how to guide on flourishing in grad school, both personally and professionally. And alongside all the life balance tips, you’ll find a whole chapter about grad school finances. You can find me on Twitter @JacquelineKory or on my website www.jakory.com.

Elana Gloger

28:25 Elana: Hi, I’m Elana Gloger, host of Dear Grad Student, and I’ve been on the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast twice. I was on season eight, episode nine where Emily and I did a financial coaching session; season 10, episode 17, where we talked all about me doing a side hustle while in grad school; and I’ve had Emily on my podcast, Dear Grad Student, she was on for episode 27 with another graduate student where we talked generally about grad school finances and episode 56 where we talked more in depth about surviving tax season.

28:59 Elana: Since you last heard from me on this podcast, I have become a PhD candidate. I’ve submitted a really exciting grant and I’m only a year and a half away from graduation. In terms of finances, I have finally almost finished saving up my emergency fund. I’m still throwing a little bit of money in that Roth IRA even though Emily told me not to. It’s just a little bit, and honestly, I’m still fighting a little bit with debt, but I know that that’s what comes along with making $20,000 a year, so mostly I’m trying to make sure that I’m setting up patterns for myself so that when I make a little bit more money, it, you know, it’ll all work out.

29:36 Elana: The best financial advice that I have for an early career PhD is don’t be afraid to budget for things that you enjoy. That way you won’t overspend if you know that you’re allotted a little bit, even with a small budget to start with. If you wanna hear more from me or Dear Grad Student, you can find the podcast Dear Grad Student anywhere on any podcast app. You can check out the website deargradstudent.com for literally everything related to the podcast, including ways to contact me, to support the podcast, and even merch, lots and lots and lots of merch! You can also find the podcast on social media. You can look up deargradstudent on Facebook. We’re @deargradstudent on Twitter @deargradstudentpod on Instagram and now on TikTok, @deargradstudent. Thanks again to Emily for having me twice on the personal Finance for PhD’s podcast. Hopefully you’re all hearing my voice again soon and have a good holiday season.

Dr. Sarah Birken

30:34 Sarah: Hey everyone, this is Sarah Birken. I am an associate professor in the Department of Implementation Science at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. And Emily interviewed me in episode 12 of season eight, and we talked about my early financial decisions in that episode. I’ve always been pretty assertive when it comes to negotiating salary and startup, but I’ve also been very passive with my personal finances. That all had to change when my partner, who is a personal financial planner, and I separated. Since then I’ve gotten very serious about managing my finances and my sister has been helping me since April really get my finances in order using YNAB, the You Need a Budget App, which Whitney Robinson, my co-host from AcaDames has always advocated for.

31:31 Sarah: Since I have been very scrupulously managing my finances, I’ve noticed a couple of things. One is that it’s unbelievably empowering <laugh>. I get to decide what I spend my money on and kind of just accept full responsibility for it. And I don’t have to answer to anyone for my decisions, which is lovely. And also I do have to answer to myself, so it’s caused me to be a lot more thoughtful and dare I say philosophical about what money is for in my life. The other thing I’ve noticed is that I’m focusing much more on managing my startup budget from my position. It’s something I’ve been starting to track as carefully as I do my personal finances and again, kind of bringing in this philosophy of what do I care enough to spend this money on that my institution has provided to me so that I can be an asset to them. I think the only additional advice I would give to early career folks is trust yourself. I wasn’t ready to think about my finances until my forties <laugh>. And it’s not too late as it turns out. So, trust yourself, you will get there. Do it in your own way. You can reach me on Twitter @BirkinSarah. Thanks everybody!

Dr. Lindy Ledohowski

33:22 Lindy: Hi everyone, this is Dr. Lindy Ledohowski. I spoke with Emily in season eight, episode 15, and she titled our conversation “How a Boom and Bust Money Mindset from Grad School Serves this Startup Founder Well”, and what we chatted about was the ways in which being a graduate student prepared me for some of the ups and downs of my post professorial life as a startup founder. I left my tenure track job as an English professor and I co-founded and then led academic writing startup, Essay Jack since I last chatted with Emily, Essay Jack has been acquired and I joined the acquiring company so I can add driving a startup through an acquisition to my resume. And I would say that that boom and bust money mindset that I carried over from graduate school into the ups and downs of startup life for five years into the acquisition and now I am Chief Operating Officer at Wise Prep, the company that acquired Essay Jack, that boom and bust Money Mindset has served me well all along the way. And luckily now I’m at a boom phase in life post-acquisition and we continue with the adventure as Essay Jack is reborn as Wize Writer part of the Wize Prep family of educational resources. So that is my little update since I last chatted with Emily about my post academic life and the way that I thought about finances as a graduate student and how that carried over into the very different world of entrepreneurship and startup life.

Rutendo Chabikwa

35:19 Rutendo: My name Rutendo Chabikwa of the So You Got a Scholarship podcast as well as the Taking Into Account podcast. I was on season nine, episode one of the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. I’m now in my third year of my PhD at the University of Oxford. Financially, I ran into a bit of a hurdle where my tuition was unexpectedly cut and the rug taken from beneath my feet unexpectedly. However, I was able to connect with people in the university who became my allies and advocated for me and ensured that my tuition agreement would remain. And then the second thing that I have done professionally is that I have now reached a stage where I’ve done enough reflection and exercises and enough research for me to figure out that I want to be in industry at the end of my PhD. I do not want to stay in academia. And so as a result, I am now able to put my energies more into doing that, into making those connections, into getting internships, or contract positions that are more aligned with where I see myself. As a result, this has also actually helped my finances because industry positions do pay a little bit more, even if you’re working part-time.

36:39 Rutendo: And so my advice for early career PhDs, it has not fully changed since my interview, but I think with these new experiences that I’ve had, there are two things that I would say. And the first is, within your institution, do find people who are your advocates. Do find people who are your allies, especially if you’re someone who comes from an underprivileged background or from a different country and you are new to this system. Things like getting your funding pulled from you, as I have learned through my own experience, are that these things do happen to people and for others, this can mean that they do not get to finish out of no fault of their own. And so it is unfortunate that institutions do function in this way still, but it is really useful that you find the people around you who can make sure that the agreements that were made for you do stay in place.

37:29 Rutendo: And then the second thing also is that if you’re thinking about splitting your energies between part-time work and doing your project, I would advise that after at least your first year, you start to consider seriously where you want to be in terms of industry versus academia. That way you’re putting your energy into something that actually then helps you with where your next step is and it’s not just something you’re doing because it is useful for the money. I wish you all the best! My contact info, you can find me on Twitter, I am @tedoex. That is T E D O E X and all my information is available there.

Outtro

38:13 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.