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How This Life Sciences PhD Fosters Entrepreneurship

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Marquicia Pierce, who holds a PhD in molecular physiology and biophysics from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from Northwood University. In the ten years since finishing her PhD, Marquicia has worked in various capacities to foster life science start-ups and small businesses, and she is now the owner and principal consultant for Ruby Leaf Media, a science communication company for people who want to turn their tech story into a business story. Marquicia recounts the courses and projects she pursued during graduate school that set her up for her post-PhD career and how she balanced her advisor and committee’s expectations with her career ambitions. She also details the multitude of government, academic, and private sector resources that are available to founders and inventors and the skills and mindsets that a PhD can bring to entrepreneurship.

Links mentioned in the Episode

How This Life Sciences PhD Fosters Entrepreneurship

Teaser

Marquicia (00:00): Get in a great habit of, um, not only just looking at the numbers, but what is the story behind the numbers? If I was to say, have a narrative around this, what did, what did it mean? And it’ll help you uncover what your priorities are. Something that’s not working. Like I, I spent so much money on this, but I don’t know if it’s really working. You’re kind of already gut checking and doing like an audit, if you will.

Introduction

Emily (00:31): 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.

Emily (01:00): This is Season 18, Episode 1, and today my guest is Dr. Marquicia Pierce, who holds a PhD in molecular physiology and biophysics from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from Northwood University. In the ten years since finishing her PhD, Marquicia has worked in various capacities to foster life science start-ups and small businesses, and she is now the owner and principal consultant for Ruby Leaf Media, a science communication company for people who want to turn their tech story into a business story. Marquicia recounts the courses and projects she pursued during graduate school that set her up for her post-PhD career and how she balanced her advisor and committee’s expectations with her career ambitions. She also details the multitude of government, academic, and private sector resources that are available to founders and inventors and the skills and mindsets that a PhD can bring to entrepreneurship.

Emily (01:52): I’m looking for a couple more interviewees to round out Season 18 of this podcast! If it’s been in the back of your mind to do so, this is your official invitation to please volunteer to be interviewed. I love that on this podcast I get to feature PhDs and PhDs-to-be who are almost exclusively regular people and learn and share their real-life stories and strategies. Please go to PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/ and fill out the quick form, and I’ll be in touch over email. I look forward to interviewing you in the coming months! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s18e1/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Marquicia Pierce of Ruby Leaf Media.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:51): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Marquicia Pierce of Ruby Leaf Media, she’s the owner there. And Ruby Leaf Media, as she described to me, is a science communication company for people who want to turn their tech story into a business story. And just in our pre-interview chat that Marquicia and I had, it was so fascinating to hear about her career journey. I know you’re gonna get a lot from this as well. So, Marquicia, welcome to the podcast. Would you please introduce yourself and your company for our listeners?

Marquicia (03:18): Thank you so much, Emily, for having me. This is such a great opportunity, um, just to chat, sit down and chat with you. You’ve been providing such great valuable resources for, uh, a lot of my colleagues, so I appreciate the opportunity. Um, so yes, so my name is, um, Dr. Marquicia Pierce. I am a life scientist by training. My, uh, training was in molecular physiology and biophysics. And, uh, ever since my time in the lab, I, I found that I really enjoyed being able to take those concepts from the lab and bring them out to the community. So, um, as we’ll get into, uh, some of the, the context here, um, my background includes, um, being a military brat who, who knows that community can be, uh, made and you have an obligation to, to bring something to that community. And so, um, I’ve just been able to fortunately, have been able to do that for a lot of different, uh, high tech companies that are started by PhDs and they’re trying to cross over from the lab to, uh, bringing value to, to their community, wherever that is.

Experiences During Grad School That Went Beyond Basic Research

Emily (04:20): And this is gonna be a really fascinating interview, um, on just all the opportunities there are in front of graduate students and PhDs for doing just that, for, um, advancing their careers and translating their work. And this is gonna be amazing, but I wanna hear more about your kind of personal journey as well. So going back to graduate school, can you tell us a little bit about like the, um, the things you did that were above and beyond just your basic, basic, you know, research as a graduate student that were like side hustles or like, like extra projects that you did just experience that you gained that helped you, that helped you along in your career path?

Marquicia (04:54): Absolutely. I love this question. Um, so I did my PhD at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. And during that time, I knew two things for certain. I knew I wanted to incorporate some type of business into what I was, um, what I, what I was studying at the time. I was looking at how vitamin C moves in the brain, uh, on a molecular level. We were looking at different proteins that made that po- possible, if there were any, uh, phenotypes or if there’s any characteristics when you didn’t have these nutrition, um, in your, in your diet. And I love that I could connect that to and translate that to my family, like, Hey, if you don’t eat these particular nutrition, these things might happen. Um, and, uh, I remember very specifically, my, my grandmother had major symptoms of diabetes during the time that I was, um, getting my graduate program, uh, completed. And I distinctly remember one day thinking through, I know down to the molecular level what’s happening with her symptoms and her disease progression, what would happen. But I feel so useless and helpless ’cause I don’t know if there’s a particular innovation or something that could, that could help. And that I think that kind of solidified for me that there has to be a way to take what we’re learning and translate. Um, many people have done that, but that’s when it clicked for me. And so, um, I knew I wanted to incorporate business. Uh, I wanted to get an MBA, but at the time, there wasn’t really a great place to insert that into my, my program. So I ended up, um, auditing engineering, a lot of engineering management courses in the undergrad engineer engineering school, and being able to work with them on their marketing, their tech management courses.

Marquicia (06:39): Uh, I was able to be involved with one of their capstone day for seniors where they were, um, trying to put together a research project, um, around a particular technology. We were working with a small businesses in the ecosystem. Um, uh, I had a fantastic member, uh, mentor around that, Dr. John Beers who, who facilitated that connection. And so in the lab we were doing what we needed to do, but I was auditing courses, um, around that particular thing. I was involved with, uh, tech, tech Venture Challenge where we were tasked with we being other students from the medical school, the graduate school, the law school, the business school. We were all trying to get behind a particular Vanderbilt, um, or small business in Nashville invention and make a case for this could be a business that could be sustainable and provide value to the community. Um, those are, those are things that I think were pivotal to add on. You always wanna have science plus something that you, you, uh, enjoy. And also like creative graphic design types of things. So I was, uh, a lot of those art science, um, classes as well. Uh, but yeah, definitely had a lot of projects while I was getting my PhD that helped spark that fodder, if you will, for, you know, what do I do after I get my PhD.

Entrepreneurial Opportunities for Grad Students

Emily (08:02): And in your, outside of just your own personal experience in graduate school, can you think of other like, types of opportunities that graduate students might encounter that would provide similar benefits?

Marquicia (08:13): Sure. So, um, a lot of the student competitions are a great place to start. If you just want to, to dip your, your foot in. How do I work with other interdisciplinary teams, law students, business students on a project? These could be anything from a hackathon to, uh, which, you know, you spend a weekend trying to figure out a business proposal to, um, auditing a course that even, even though they’re undergraduates, that’s, that’s a great opportunity to kind of bring in some of those concepts that are complementary to your PhD. Um, we had a, we had a, uh, academic alliance that was between, uh, Vanderbilt and the entrepreneur community as a whole that, um, it was called Life Science, Tennessee Academic Alliance, where you could get involved as a, a mentor or you could, you can bring in speakers to your, your class. You could, uh, host this tech venture challenge.

Marquicia (09:08): Um, those are great opportunities if you just wanna see if that, that opportunity is for you. Um, a lot of, a lot of times now that was, that was 10 years ago, uh, I’m seeing a lot more, uh, fellowships or courses that you can take while you’re doing your, your, your PhD that will incorporate, Hey, here’s a small business proposal, a market research, um, uh, project, uh, at, at in Michigan, there is a group called My Lead. It is graduate students, postdoc students that do just that. They work as a small boutique consulting agency where they put together, uh, a market research plan. They dig into the de the details and the data both on the science side and the business side and be, and are able to work with other companies in that way. So, um, those smaller projects, six, three to six months or a semester long, uh, is a, is a great way to kind of get your feet feet wet. With that.

Pushback For Participating in Activities Outside of the Lab

Emily (10:05): I’m wondering, um, did you encounter any cultural in terms of, uh, the field that you’re in, the life sciences, any, uh, pushback to you participating in these outside of the lab activities? I’ve just noticed that the life sciences, um, among the STEM fields would probably be the most resistant, um, to those kinds of things. But it sounds like Vanderbilt itself was pretty well set up to facilitate this. I’m just wondering what your observations were around that sort of like, culture of do we engage with business, do we engage with startups, like from, you know, the research side of things?

Marquicia (10:41): That’s a great question. So I know that there were, there were parts of, um, the community that really was open to, you know, there’s, there’s opportunities to kind of engage in these particular ways. We very often had that same conversation, like, how, how much do I say? I don’t want to necessarily, um, have an update about this in my committee meeting, uh, <laugh>. It could very well in that particular case be, um, seen as a distraction. You know, you’re, you’re here for getting your graduate studies done, you stay in the lab, especially if things aren’t working, it’s very hard to justify, you know, um, yeah, well, I won’t be able to work on it, you know, I’m, I’m trying to do this particular class. Um, I think that’s why auditing the class was really helpful. And, um, uh, the way Vanderbilt was set up, it was, uh, their IGP or the interdisciplinary program was very used to these different departments had courses that was as attached to it that we were, depending on our specific route, able to go to.

Marquicia (11:47): Um, and so there was a little bit more set up for if you wanna audit a class, um, we can, we could help that. But I still have to get permission through the graduate school to audit an undergrad class. And that included a conversation with my PI and my director of graduate studies who very, at the beginning, very naively, I said, you know, Hey, I, I think I would like to get my MBA. They were really open to, that’s a, that’s a great thought, uh, in theory, <laugh>, you know, but not necessarily having a pathway for to, to that happen. But yeah, it was very much, uh, I felt like I’m living two lives, and if, if you’re going over to the dark side of consulting or industry or management of, uh, investment banking, something that in, in included that, it was, it was kind of, um, you have to be very careful and impactful of how, how you were able to ex explain that. Um, you know, this is a class that I’m taking, it will be over at this particular time, uh, for one of the projects, uh, as intern, I have to say, well, I, I would be willing to take a pay decrease because I’m not, I’m not putting in the same amount of hours per week. So it, there were, and whether or not that that’s discouraged or encouraged, um, especially if you’re going on year six, six of your PhD, it, those can be very awkward <laugh> conversations, to say the least.

Resources for Academics Who Want to Start a Business

Emily (13:09): Well, thank you so much for sharing kind of your experience in that area. I hope it’s, I hope it’s encouraging to people who are facing similar like questions of, it’s, it’s worth pushing it through. It’s worth having these conversations. Maybe you don’t need to tell them everything that’s going, you know, tell them what they need to know, but, you know, get your work done and, and still, because these, these, these extra quote unquote experiences are the ones that are the most valuable for your career. I, I would say, we’ll see in your own story how this, um, develops. So can you say anything more about, um, the, the resources that are available for, let’s say, graduate students or postdocs or people who are still associated with academia who want to start a business, how, how the, how academia can be set up to help them do that. Um, and what are like the pros and cons of accessing those resources?

Marquicia (13:54): That’s a really good question. Um, if you are in academia, you do have a lot of resources that say if you were not, and you were trying to get something, uh, into, into the marketplace on your own that you might not be aware of. So first of all, if you’re a student or a faculty member, um, the things that you would want to be on the lookout for is if there are any, uh, connections you have with your tech transfer office. Because first and foremost, you’ve probably signed some contract or you have something spelled out with your, your place of employment that any intellectual property or even idea or anything that you work on is, is owned by the university point blank period. So you’re, the process for being able to, um, if, if it’s connected with your research, bring that into a business, they, they have a process for doing that.

Marquicia (14:47): They usually, the tech transfer office will, will, uh, facilitate. Um, it includes, Hey, I have this idea. It is just here, I’m disclosing it to you. I haven’t formed a company. I have this idea. It’s, it’s outside of my research scope. What information or what types of resources do you have, uh, for, for this particular setup? Um, at Michigan State University where I did my postdoc, there was actually a research foundation that, um, helped if you were a student, a faculty member, or even a staff person that was at, at the, OR alumni that was affiliated with the university, and you want to start a company, they were there for you to provide resources like, uh, entrepreneur and residents would be a person who’s gone through that process. They will help you build out a business plan, build out your value proposition, which basically says, how do I, how do I make a business that creates value for other people?

Marquicia (15:39): How do I monetize it and sustain it? There will also be your guide for, here’s some state resources, here’s some academic resources in terms of money <laugh> to fund either other students, undergraduates or postdocs that can help you work through this idea. And they will actually be the, um, work in tandem with the tech transfer office, um, to say, Hey, this, this is related. This could be something that we would need the university to continue to help fund the research for think medical devices, therapeutics, um, things that it takes a university and maybe a team to research. They, they work together. Anything that has to do with clinical trials, you would have to need, you would have to use a village <laugh> that, that EIR or the entrepreneur residents can help guide you through. Um, so there’s academic ins, uh, resources, so tech transfer office, student entrepreneurship groups.

Marquicia (16:36): Um, I’ve had a lot of students that I’ve worked with that are working with a family company, they’ve been able to go through with their student, um, business groups, the, the business schools there. They have pitch competitions that give very real money, 10, $20,000 sometimes. And then also connections around that. How do you get your marketing out, your packaging, your, um, your, your story for pitching to other investors? Hey, you have this food company, Hey, you have this idea. Who in your alumni network can help bring some of, uh, some insights to this? So there’s, there’s resources there, uh, at the school. And then in the, um, community, you have, um, state resources that wanna see particularly life science, high tech innovations, push their economy forward. So there’s grants on that particular side for, uh, if you’re just in this particular region working on a high, high tech, high growth company, scalable company, which a lot of life science companies are, um, here’s what we can offer to you.

Marquicia (17:38): Here’s the connections, market research, um, legal consultants, regulatory consultants, um, how do you put together a website? Those are, those are resources that are available on that end. And then one last thing, I know I need to be brief, brief about this. There are, uh, government particular, uh, outside of the different accelerate accelerators for those things, there are government funding. It’s called, uh, small Business Innovation research, or S-B-I-R-S-T-T-R grants that can specifically, if you’re connected with the university, they, um, would provide high risk, um, uh, financial, financial resources to high risk, um, innovations. Those take a little bit longer to do, and you definitely want a team to help guide you through that. But those are also, that’s also money that you don’t have to give up equity or parts of your company to access. And I’ll, I’ll pause there.

Commercial

Emily (18:35): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, 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 2024-2025 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Orientations or very close to the start of the academic year would be a perfect time for tax education or general personal finance content. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ 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.

Ownership of Ideas and Technology Created With and Without University Resources

Emily (20:02): Yeah, I think that you led right into kinda the next question, which is like the more, um, I guess aside from technology that was developed under your employment with the university, that would then be, you know, co-owned with the university. Let’s say you had an idea outside of it, not related to directly your work, the university wouldn’t own it. Um, the more kind of help you reach out for, depending on the type of help that you get, you may be giving up, um, ownership in your idea. Is that right? Can you speak a little bit about that? I mean, maybe there’s different, you know, giving up equity is different than getting a grant, for example. Can you talk about some distinctions there?

Marquicia (20:39): Sure. So at the very, um, at the very early stage in early stage in life sciences are, um, say you have a device, a medical device, you have a prototype for that device, but you haven’t tested it out on humans. You haven’t done a clinical trial or you have a therapeutic that you, you’ve maybe tested it out on mice, um, but you haven’t, you haven’t moved it towards, um, seeing if it holds up in, in humans. Most of the time you’re doing that stuff with the university. But, uh, if you, if you aren’t and you’re still in that early stage, um, the, the choices that you have are, you can go for grants and in kind services they call this non-dilutive funding, where you don’t dilute your ownership. And, um, there’s regional and government funding for that. And then sometimes accelerators or, uh, venture venture groups will have a program in which they are developing something or they’re developing co-developing with you something that can fast track that time to the market.

Marquicia (21:42): So some examples of this could be like Y Combinator or, you know, um, uh, Techstars or something where in order to have access to this, this great structure that they put in, uh, and maybe even some funds to get together, they would require a percentage of your company small, it could be many that are between five to 12% of that company. Um, the thing is, if you are, if in, if you’re in the life science space and you’re that early stage and you’re already giving up equity, you have a very long runway <laugh> to go to where every, at every milestone the company gets a little bit more valuable. And if you, you’re already given up equity at those earlier stages, you don’t have as much for the, the really heavy duty milestones, a clinical trial, uh, you know, a a distributor agreement to also incorporate or leverage giving up some of your equity. Um, so it’s, it is a very different, uh, thing for the life sciences or an academic project to, to kind of evaluate these options. Uh, if you’re really early on, you haven’t gotten a lot of the feedback or regulatory spot you could consider yourself early and the latest you can push off giving off a pa- piece of your company, the better because it’ll be valuable hopefully later on. And, um, you’ll still have that, you’ll retain that, um, that ownership.

Common Skillsets and Mindsets Between PhDs and Entrepreneurs

Emily (23:09): Well, thank you so much for giving the listeners kind of a taste of that, um, those decisions that need to be made earlier on. It, it sounds like, um, being, you know, having an academic affiliation can be so helpful because you are in many ways still considered like a learner no matter, no matter what stage you’re at. And so there’s so many resources available to help you along that path. So I’m, I’m curious now about your personal journey and also the journeys you’ve observed in others, um, from, I believe you mentioned earlier that you started your company sort of out around the time that you finished graduate school. You’ve also had a lot of other positions along the way that have, you know, added to your career. Um, and so I’m wondering for you as an entrepreneur and someone who works with entrepreneurs, what kinds of, um, skill sets, maybe mindsets are common between PhDs and people who start and run businesses? Um, like what’s help? What did we learn in the PhD that’s helpful for later entrepreneurship, those kinds of things. And that could be from your personal experience or the people you’ve known.

Marquicia (24:09): Sure. I’ll start with my personal experience. So the very first time I was introduced to like, we have to set up a company around this technology was during my postdoc. So after I left Vanderbilt, I went to Michigan State University under a, a industrial postdoc position where, um, the goal was I was working with two academic re- tenure track professors, <laugh>, trying to get a company up and going and started. And so, um, the skillset that I brought to the table and that I was trying to hone, um, was, was interesting. ’cause I was, while I was getting my PhD, I was also getting my MBA, so I was learning what were some of the frameworks that business people used, how do they talk about how they use a process, and then how do, how does that work in the lab? Or, um, how do I need to translate that from what we were doing in the lab?

Marquicia (25:00): And so, um, I would also often go back to the framework for problem solving and commu- and gr- and great communication were, um, very much similar. They just were talking about different things. So I’ll, I’ll explain. So, um, in the lab I’m working through, okay, is a small molecule, uh, useful. We do a battery of tests to distinguish why, um, based off a couple of characteristics. It might be this one is, um, it works well with cells, it’s less toxic and, you know, um, it’s, it’s easy to make. I’m being arbitrary. The way I would translate that story, um, going through my, my MBA type of framework would be, well, what value are we creating and, and specifically, who is it for? So the molecule, these, these features that we have that we were very, um, we’re trying to, trying to point out and be distinct about, now I have to turn them into benefits.

Marquicia (26:01): Well, uh, it, it’s this type of molecule that means that it’s, it’s less toxic. What does that mean to our business uh, story? Um, the people who would use it, the physicians or even the patient themselves. Well, that means that if we can keep it within the cell, it’s not messing around with your, your gut and causing you nauseous or, you know, killing other healthy cells, that means that you could take less of it. And, you know, that means for the physicians, they might adhere to the, to the drug cadence a little bit better for the patient. It means that I’m not getting upset stomachs as as often, I don’t have to, you know, get as many injections. Those are the types of communication skills where you, you are working through the same rigorous process, but you’re just trying to communicate it in a little bit different way. Um, that you, that you see when you’re filling out that story as a, as a PhD, well, I’m doing this study who, who’s in my audience? Or who’s, who’s my audience? Usually it’s your community members, right? So they wanna say they wanna see what happened, what are you doing next? And then, you know, what, what can we help you with? Same thing with a, a VC <laugh> or a, a grant writer. You have to say, what was the background, um, in their particular words, what are you working on? What is, what’s the value that you’re creating? And then where can we go from next? What’s the big milestone? So you’re, you’re able to think through a structure, uh, that’s very similar. It’s, it just needs to be translated a little bit different. Um, but being able to communicate that is, is a strength. Uh, being able to work with multiple teams that are very bright people, but they don’t work where in the same lab and the same methods and tools that you work with, you need to be able to talk their language.

Marquicia (27:41): You have to do that in, in the business world as well. And the scientists and engineers who are able to cross that gap or the ones and coachable for doing that, understanding that, okay, this is a different language. You can apply the, the practice of it, but you have to say it in a certain way. The ones that are open to learning that those are the ones that can convince other people that this is something of value. Get on our team, give us funding, give us resources, uh, that, that helps them to move that, that tech forward.

Emily (28:10): That’s fascinating. Thank you so much. Was there anything else you wanted to add on that question about skills or mindsets that transfer?

Marquicia (28:18): Um, the only other thing is that, uh, usually when I talk about my PhD and I, and I hear other people’s story and they, it comes off very linearly. We can only say one thing at a time. We did this and then we did this, and then we did this. But in reality, your, your skillset that you’re picking up with these different experiences, they aren’t a straight line. They look more like a Gantt chart. It’s like, I was trying this and then I got, I got into graphic design by being the newspaper editor for the department or something like this. And then I, that kind of went to see what policy was doing. So I volunteered a semester at this and you know, you don’t really know if they overlap or if it will lead to that big next step, if you will. But, um, that’s okay.

Marquicia (29:00): It’s, that’s what makes the journey yours is how you find out what’s create, um, how, uh, what you resonate with and the skills that you learn and these offset project or offshoot products or something that you, I was just interested in. Those are the ones that, that when you’re talking to a hiring manager or a, a program manager for that next big gig, those are the things that will resonate with them too. So, um, uh, just know that it won’t be a straight line. You’re not gonna be able to line up, uh, everything until you’ve kind of stay taken a step back and said, well, well actually, that set me up really well for this. I didn’t even know I liked doing this particular thing. So that’s, that’s all I would say for that.

Ruby Leaf Media

Emily (29:42): Absolutely. It’s just a great encouragement to, um, devote I would say a certain amount of time, a certain consistent amount of time throughout your PhD to these, like outside of the lab type activities, um, just so you can explore yourself and explore your environment and figure out what you like. And, um, as you said, you don’t know where it’s going to lead, but that’s a reason to just experiment. And I certainly did this, I didn’t do this as much in my earlier years of my PhD, but certainly by the last couple of years I was more like actively reaching out and trying different things, including the things that led to personal finance for PhDs. Um, because I wanted to figure out where I wanted to go next, and I knew I wasn’t gonna get there by just like keeping my head down and like staying in the lab all the time. Um, that wasn’t where, uh, I was gonna be headed, so. Okay. Would you please tell us a little bit more about Ruby Leaf Media and how people can get in touch with you if they would like to follow up?

Marquicia (30:31): Sure. So I, I started Ruby Leaf Media, um, shortly, like around the time I was finishing up graduate school because I wanted to continue doing these small projects around market research or, you know, putting together a, a industry report and getting paid for it <laugh>. So, uh, basically I, I started Ruby Leaf Media to, um, have that vehicle for that and I really wanted a place to infuse some creativity. Uh, at the time I was really, um, interested in how can you turn, uh, something that’s really technical into something that could be very beautiful and inspiring to your, the people that are closest to you, your family, your, your, uh, community. And so, uh, create creativity versus, um, you know, just being very defensive and, and, um, tactical about what you’re saying. I wanted to kind of merge the two. And so being able to have my own company that worked at that intersection of, uh, storytelling that businesses usually will have to do in some type of, some shape of way was my, my reason for getting started.

Marquicia (31:41): Um, today I work with, uh, a lot of ecosystem partners, accelerators, um, academic universities or academic institutions, I to, I should say, that are trying to instill some of these ideas, um, in some of these concepts and just some of this creative, um, mentor learning or peer group learning, if you will, uh, with their, with their portfolio companies or with their, with their founders. And so, um, being able to, to provide structure for that, either through a program or being able to give them tips on how do you pitch, uh, for a particular funding opportunity, how do you put that story together? That’s what, that’s, um, what my team and myself are, are really interested in doing. And we’re really interested in being able to do that for a lot of different, um, providers so that you can get that group learning experience. Um, right now, uh, the best way to look to, to figure out and see all of the different companies that I’ve worked with actually is actually my LinkedIn profile. <laugh>.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (32:48): Very good, thank you. The last question that I ask of all my guests is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

Marquicia (33:01): Um, the advice part, uh, it kind of goes around budgeting. So graduate students, uh, well, when I was a graduate student, we got paid once a month and, um, I think probably a lot of graduate students started doing this. They’re doing something similar, but it really helped me got get into the idea of, um, a little bit longer term planning than two weeks or, or even one week, like what are some of the goals that we have for this particular month? IE what bills do we have to pay? What are we trying to get, get done? And, um, it set the habit of budgeting month by month and then, um, being able to bring that over to my business. Budgeting is absolutely one of the, I mean, I feel like a lot of your resources kind of talk, talk, talk through this, but, um, just getting a great habit of, um, not only just looking at the numbers, but what is the story behind the numbers?

Marquicia (33:59): Uh, just kind of walk through. I I, I kind of like when I go through my budget, like, okay, if I was to say, have a narrative around this, what did, what did it mean? And it’ll help you uncover what your priorities are. Something that’s not working. Like I, I spent so much money on this, but I don’t know if it’s really working. You’re kind of already gut checking and doing like an audit, if you will. Uh, and, and it’s, and it’s really helpful with business ’cause it’s like, I’m paying for all these subscription services, or I’m trying, I’m trying to get this marketing campaign off the, off the ground. I think it’ll be done with this quarter, but I’m already 15% into the budget. Did we do what we needed? Just kind of talk it out, <laugh>, just have a narrative around, around your finances and just, just say it out loud. We’ll help you uncover, you know, what’s, what’s working, what’s not working, what are some of your plans? Like, if you find yourself saying things over and over, it’s like, that’s, I keep saying this, uh, that’s, that’s been helpful for me.

Emily (34:55): You know, I, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that suggestion before. Like, not only within the podcast, but like in all the personal finance, you know, material that I read. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say, you know, in the budgeting reflection process to tell yourself a story and to create a narrative around how did this period of time go? Did I accomplish what I wanted to accomplish? And I find that to be such a good suggestion and I think I’m gonna start doing this <laugh>, um, because it feels very like non-judgmental. Like it’s, it’s just this is how things went. I’m gonna review that. I’m gonna tell myself the story of it, and next month I have the chance to start over again and make a different story next month if I want to or tell the same one if I thought it went really well.

Emily (35:37): And so, yeah. Yeah, that’s so creative and, and I obviously it plays back into this whole interview that we’ve had and the importance of communication and what you do now. So like, it shouldn’t surprise me that this advice, uh, you know, came from you in particular, but I think it’s, that was, that was really amazing. Thank you so much. Um, Marquicia, this has been such a fascinating interview. Um, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast and to share kind of all of these wonderful, you know, experiences you’ve had and the resources you’ve been able to, um, tap into and just suggestions for other people who want to go on a similar path. Thank you.

Marquicia (36:08): Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate what you’re doing and this is great. I wish I had been listening to your podcast when I was a grad student.

Outtro

Emily (36:24): 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.

This PhD Works Part-Time After Reaching Financial Independence in Austin Texas

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In this episode, Emily interview Dr. Corwin Olson, who completed his PhD in aerospace engineering and achieved financial independence (FI) just a handful of years later. Corwin argues that using a traditional IRA is typically advantageous over a Roth IRA, even for a grad student, if they have aspirations to retire early in the 0% marginal income tax bracket. Corwin and Emily walk step-by-step through his family’s finances and his money mindset from the time he finished his master’s in 2009 with a “$0 net worth” to when they reached FI in 2021. Corwin tried out unemployment during the pandemic, but ultimately returned to work a part-time schedule because he still wanted to use his engineering skills professionally. Corwin’s story highlights how a PhD can achieve a highly satisfying job and work-life balance through a combination of financial freedom and career capital.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This PhD Works Part-Time After Reaching Financial Independence in Austin Texas

Teaser

Corwin (00:00): It’s not about not working. This is what I tell everyone I meet who has not heard about FIRE or FI much before. It is not about not working. It is about control over your life. If you are financially independent, then you get to dictate what you do, like broadly across your entire life. I really wanted that control over my life, especially since we wanted to have another kid and we did. Uh, and so when, uh, our kid number two came along, my wife dropped down to halftime and then, uh, about six months later, I also dropped to zero time. And then I went back to work halftime this spring. It’s a perfect, um, application of FI. We decided that we were gonna do something different and that gave us the ability to do so without stressing about money.

Introduction

Emily (00:55): 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.

Emily (01:24): This is Season 17, Episode 9, and today my guest is Dr. Corwin Olson, who completed his PhD in aerospace engineering and achieved financial independence (FI) just a handful of years later. Corwin argues that using a traditional IRA is typically advantageous over a Roth IRA, even for a grad student, if they have aspirations to retire early in the 0% marginal income tax bracket. Corwin and I walk step-by-step through his family’s finances and his money mindset from the time he finished his master’s in 2009 with a “$0 net worth” to when they reached FI in 2021. Corwin tried out unemployment during the pandemic, but ultimately returned to work a part-time schedule because he still wanted to use his engineering skills professionally. Corwin’s story highlights how a PhD can achieve a highly satisfying job and work-life balance through a combination of financial freedom and career capital.

Emily (02:21): This spring, I’m bringing back my 15-minute introductory calls! This is a chance for you and I to meet one-on-one. I want to hear your current financial questions and challenges. If I can provide some quick value by answering a question or pointing you to a resource I absolutely will. These calls are a way for me to keep a pulse on what’s going on financially in our community so that I can address whatever comes up through my seminars for universities and the free content I create. I used to offer these calls years ago to everyone who joined my mailing list, and they were so fun and valuable to both of us! I would love to meet you, so please sign up today at PFforPhDs.com/intro/. By the way, we’re taking a short break from publishing podcast episodes between Season 17 and Season 18. You can expect the next episode to drop on June 3, 2024. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s17e9/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Corwin Olson.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:35): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Corwin Olson of Engineering Your FI. Corwin is a PhD in aerospace engineering and he is now financially independent. And we met just a couple weeks ago. We’re recording this in November, 2023. We met at FinCon 2023, which happened in late October, and we ran into each other first at the taxes subgroup interest area, and I saw, um, his name and he saw mine and we knew we had to connect further. Um, so I’m just really excited to have a fellow engineer PhD on the podcast who is excited about personal finance and specifically fire. We’re gonna learn a lot from Corwin today. Um, so Corwin, will you please just introduce yourself, um, and your family to us a little bit further?

Corwin (04:20): Sure. Uh, married family, uh, two kids young on <inaudible>, two and seven. Uh, born in Dallas, Texas. Uh, but I’ve lived in Texas most of my life. So I’m currently in Austin, Texas. Uh, got my bachelor’s and master’s at UT Austin, university of Texas at Austin Aerospace Engineering back in the aughts. And uh, I also was fortunate enough as an undergraduate to become a certified NASA instructor, so that was a lot of fun. I got a lot of good leadership and speaking skills from that. Uh, worked to Washington DC for a few years and worked a company that did navigation for a big NASA mission, which was a lot of fun. Went back for my PhD in 2012. Uh, same school UT Austin and I worked on autonomous optical navigation around small bodies like asteroids and comets. Uh, then finished up my PhD in 2016 and continued on with UT as a researcher in one of the labs here at ut. And it was towards the second half of my PhD program. And then after getting my PhD that I got a lot more interested in personal finance and fire and discovered that whole community

Defining Financial Terms

Emily (05:24): Emily here breaking in during the editing process. Since Corwin and I about to jump into some heavy financial nerd-speak, I want to take a second here to define terms for new listeners. 1) FIRE stands for financial independence retire early and FI stands for financial independence. People in the FIRE movement strive for early financial independence so that they have the option to stop working, and by early I mean perhaps in your 30s or 40s. 2) An IRA is an individual retirement arrangement, and it is a tax break that the federal government offers to incentive investing for retirement. In 2024, you can invest up to $7,000 in an IRA if you’re under age 50 and have taxable compensation. When you open an IRA, you can choose a traditional version or a Roth version or both. With a traditional IRA, you get an income tax break on the money you contribute in the year of your contribution. The money then grows tax-free, and you pay ordinary income tax on the withdrawals in retirement. With a Roth IRA, you pay your full income tax on your contribution, and then the money grows income tax-free and you withdraw it income tax-free in retirement. The standard advice is to contribute to Roth accounts when you are in your lower-earning years and a relatively low income tax bracket and switch to traditional when in your higher-earning years and a relatively high income tax bracket. Corwin is going to argue that people who want to retire early should really prefer to contribute to traditional accounts, and that includes grad students in the 12% federal marginal tax bracket. OK back to the interview.

Contributing to a Traditional IRA vs a Roth IRA in Grad School

Emily (06:49): Now, you said something very provocative to me at FinCon, which was that I, I may butcher what you said, but it was something on the lines of pretty much everybody should just be using traditional retirement accounts. And maybe you were saying that in the context of people who are interested in pursuing FI. Can you re restate what, what caught my attention during our conversation?

Corwin (07:07): Well, I think my main motivation was to emphasize how much better traditional is than a lot of people think. They think, oh, I wanna pay my taxes now, might be larger later. And from everything I’ve read for lots of different places, especially in the fire community, if you do the math, it consistently shows that traditional seems to come out on top.

Emily (07:30): Of course, my follow up question to you at that time was what about the grad students Corwin? Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. So that is what you have worked on in the few weeks since we left FinCon preparing for this interview. So let’s talk now about a grad student kind of specific scenario. So we’re talking about someone who’s in graduate school, we’re gonna make the assumption that they’re in the 12% marginal tax bracket. I’ve always kinda said, uh, virtually every grad student I’ve ever spoken with, if they’re investing in an in an IRA, they’re using a Roth. It’s just like the popular option by far and there’s reasons for that which we’ll go into. Um, but you we’re just gonna do the math for us. So yeah, please tell us now like the scenarios that you were looking at and kind of the outcomes and where people can read your full post about this.

Corwin (08:13): Sure. So, uh, I did this most recent blog post on engineeringyourfi.com, traditional Roth versus traditional IRA contributions in grad school. And I put the Python code that I used to generate all these results in the post. You can go download it, take a look. I know a lot of grad students know Python, so that’s good <laugh>. Um, the broad strokes conclusion is generally, you know what people have said for many, many years. It all depends on your input versus output tax rates, right? So if you are a hundred percent confident that you’re gonna be withdrawing your money in a 24% marginal tax bracket later in life and you’re in grad school now and you’re in the 12% tax bracket, then yeah you should just put it into Roth if you’re totally sure of that, right? But I think what I like to push for is that actually, especially if you’re at all interested in financial independence at an early age, retiring early, taking sabbaticals, um, then actually it can make a lot more sense to go after traditional because it is actually a lot more feasible to have a 0% tax bracket is a FIREd person, early retired person, uh, by taking a advantage of the standard deduction and the really large typically, um, 0% long-term capital gains bracket. So I did a lot of plots and I showed, you know, not just the values of the traditional versus Roth, which is deceptive, right? ’cause you haven’t paid taxes on the traditional but also the cash out value of each. And there’s some really cool nuances and fluctuations after you hit 60 or 59 and a half, things simplify a lot, right? There’s no 10% penalty. But in general, um, I still would prefer traditional because I think with our expense levels we can very easily have a 0% tax bracket and it’s quite beneficial for us to go do that. So a lot more detail in the post though.

Emily (10:00): Yeah. So what I was kind of thinking through when I was looking at these results here, which are basically like, well, okay, you’re looking at your 12% current marginal tax bracket that you would presumably be paying as a graduate student versus when you want to withdraw from this account. Maybe that’s before retirement age, maybe that’s after, um, what is your marginal tax rate going to be? Then you looked at three assumptions, which was zero, as you’ve just been mentioning 24% and also 12%. Um, and once you actually pay the tax on this money, once you get it outta the traditional account, um, it was sort of, it was even right just as good if you were withdrawing it in the 12% tax bracket, right? Same, same. Um, if you manage to get down at that 0% tax bracket, then there’s a clear advantage for the traditional and if you’re a managing to be withdrawing money in the 24% tax bracket, there’s an advantage for the Roth. But what I was thinking about and maybe what could be a thought exercise for the listener is what is your tax bracket going to be in retirement? Because when you say something like 24%, like that might be your tax bracket in your, your peak, you know, earning years, working years for your family, something in that range. But a lot of people live on much less money in retirement. That is to say they have to withdraw much less money than they were earning because maybe they had a high savings rate going on. Maybe their expenses have dropped later in life because their kids are outta the house or whatever the reason is. Um, so it’s very hard to sort of predict what, what is your tax bracket going to be later in life? Is it gonna be as high as it is in your working years? Is it definitely going to be lower? Um, and especially sitting from the position of a grad student when you don’t really know what your career is going to be. So definitely like for those of you who want to nerd out about tax rates and would be open to the possibility of maybe not doing a Roth IRA during grad school, maybe doing the traditional, definitely check out Corwin’s post at Engineering Your FI. Um, but I want to talk further now about your personal story and why for you that 0% tax bracket, oh, the traditional would’ve been the better choice, um, was is something that you have, have, you know, achieved in this at a relatively early age. So yeah, let’s talk more about your like personal story. So you told us earlier that you worked for several years before pursuing your PhD. You weren’t into the fire movement at that time. Um, so were you doing things like contributing to your tax advantage retirement accounts? Like or was it something you didn’t even think about at that time?

Pre-FIRE Finances

Corwin (12:15): Yeah, so I was fortunate to get my master’s in 2009. Went down to a net worth of $0 <laugh> because I spent all my savings going through a big backpacking trip. But my uncle sent me this article, snail mail of course, you know, back in 2009 and it’s my Uncle <laugh> and it was this money article about how you should invest in index funds. And I’m like, Hmm, okay, what are these things? The markets had just crashed, you know, they were very low valuations. So I was like, you know, I should probably do this. At the very least, I uh, wanted to match my 401k for my employer, right. And my wife had started working around the same time. So we did that, but we also had to save for a wedding and we lived in Washington DC very expensive. So at the time we were not focused on maxing out our savings rate, but we did know we needed to start investing and that paid off quite heavily because the markets were so down. We started our careers. We were lucky to get jobs <laugh> in 2009, right when the market, the economy was, uh, suffering heavily. So yeah, we were fortunate

Emily (13:12): So you had a savings rate.

Corwin (13:14): Yeah, right. I don’t even know what it was. It was definitely under 50% <laugh>.

Emily (13:19): So. Okay. So let’s kind of fast forward to when you started your PhD. I think you said that was 2012, right? Yes. And so what was your mindset like at that time around, I mean, I’m presuming you took a pay cut, right? Uh, but maybe your wife maintained her income. Like just talk us through kind of the, the shift in household finances that occurred when you started your PhD.

Corwin (13:37): Sure. So I was very fortunate that because of my work experience and grades and all that, I was able to get this really nice NASA fellowship and I also was able to get a really nice UT fellowship. So I made a pretty nice salary in graduate school, 45K a year. Uh, so it is possible to do that <laugh> for the, uh, the folks who are listening out there. Uh, it’s, you know, not super common. Usually you’re looking at close to 20k, although maybe that number’s higher now because of inflation, you know? Um, but you can make a bit more money with these fellowships. That’s why I strongly encourage all grad students to go after them. Um, but yeah, I, uh, I was more into minimalism back then ’cause I didn’t know about fire and so I thought, okay, maybe this is how I need to, to live my life, be minimalist <laugh>. But yeah, it was still, you know, finances were not, were always on the back burner still at that point.

Emily (14:28): So you were still saving, but it was not a, a major focus until a few years later, is that right?

Corwin (14:32): Right, right, right.

Post-PhD Finances and the Financial Independence Movement

Emily (14:33): Okay. So let’s talk about when you were finishing your PhD. Um, what was going on with your family overall and then how your finances changed when you got that post PhD job?

Corwin (14:42): We were pregnant with my first child. Uh, and so he was born three months before my dissertation <laugh>, which was quite rough. And you know, my wife and I are thinking about what we wanted to do after I got my degree and she was enjoying her job. She wanted to continue there. I was thinking about the business, small business, thought I might do something entrepreneurial. And it was when I discovered the FI movement, it was a Mr. Money Mustache article as it is for so many people. Uh, that really launched me down that, uh, community path, uh, to find out about all of that. And then I realized, actually I think that’s what I want most out of life right now, <laugh>. So I was fortunate that there, um, was a high paying engineering job that I could take here in Austin, a a really good lab here. So, uh, I decided, well, I think that’s what I want. Also, we have a baby coming and this would be nice to have that stability for that. Maybe a little less stress <laugh> a few less hours. I always told people my easy job was going into the office, right? Uh, so that was where we decided, okay, let’s just do two full-time jobs and let’s really ramp up our savings rate. So we ramped it up to, I think on average about 70%. Um, and one of the reasons I was able to do that is I was very fortunate that I had access to an additional retirement account, 457B, which hopefully some of your listeners are familiar with. So we maxed out that we maxed out my 403B, my wife’s 401k. That helped a tremendous amount with getting that kind of savings, right? So, yeah.

Emily (16:17): Wow. I just, I wanna probe a little bit further on like, okay, you, you’ve had this career already, you’ve just finished your PhD and you decide I don’t wanna work anymore. Or like, I don’t wanna have to work anymore in a, in a relatively short period of time, right? ’cause most people, you finish a PhD, you’re looking at 30, 40, 50 year career after that point. But that is very antithetical to like the MMM like mindset. So what exactly was your goal and what was your motivation for pursuing that goal?

Corwin (16:45): So it was really about the latter thing you just said and not the former thing. You said it’s not about not working. This is what I tell everyone I meet who has not heard about fire or fi much before. It is not about not working. It is about control over your life. If you are financially independent, then you get to dictate what you do like broadly across your entire life. So my wife took advantage of that by essentially creating a new role within our company. She’s like, I’m not as enjoying this as much, but I would like to stay with y’all. I like the people I’m working with. I’d rather do this. And they said, oh, okay, well let’s say yeah, <laugh>. So she’s continued to do that and she really likes it. And I also really wanted that control over my life, especially since we wanted to have another kid. And we did. Uh, and so when, uh, our kid number two came along, my wife dropped down to halftime, and then, uh, about six months later, I also dropped to zero time. And then I went back to work halftime this spring and we could talk a lot more about that <laugh> as well. But it’s really just the, I mean, it’s a perfect, um, application of FI. We decided that we were gonna do something different and that gave us the ability to do so without stressing about money.

Emily (17:59): So this is just a very short timeline and I know you, you know, you had been saving since like 2009 at a lower rate, but really we’re talking like 2016 when you started your post PhD job, um, to, it sounds like about 2021 when you were able to really change like your work lives. Um, I mean that’s only five years. Like even the most aggressive, like fire people talk about 10 years, right? Not starting from zero. Um, yeah, so like this is just, it’s just amazing. I mean, I know the 70% savings rate, like that’s what did it, right? That’s a really, really high savings rate.

Corwin (18:31): Well, market the markets too-

Emily (18:32): But I’m just marveling over this short timeline. Mm-Hmm,

Corwin (18:34): <affirmative> Yeah, the market’s really exploded. If it had been a bad or even mediocre market during that time, we, we would not have done that. I mean, it was just because the stock market, we didn’t do anything other than bland vanilla total stock market index funds. So we didn’t pick stocks or anything like that to try to get lucky with, you know, which ones we’ve chose. So it was good fortune as well, big time.

Emily (18:57): I think in some ways your story is relatable, like you just said, using index funds. No crazy inaccessible investing strategies. Uh, furthermore, as you mentioned earlier, you took a straight W2 job, you didn’t, you know, strike out on your own and start the business. There can be upside to that. There can also be downside. Um, and so in, in that way it’s relatable, but come on, a 70% savings rate, like that’s the part that’s like, how are you doing this? So I want you to give me a couple of like structural things like how, how your life is that helps you achieve or at that time, right from, from those incomes you had then that 70% savings rate. I know you mentioned you use the pre-tax retirement accounts, that’s awesome. But it doesn’t, uh, change your actual spending. So like how are you keeping the spending down? Like where do you live, what do you drive? Like these kinds of things. Yeah, right.

Expenses with a 70% Savings Rate

Corwin (19:40): So we’re fortunate that we live in Austin, Texas, which historically has been a lower cost of living. Now it’s changing. We bought our house in 2013, which at the time we thought, oh, this is way too late. You know, we’re gonna pay so much more money than we would’ve a year ago or whatever. But our house is doubled in value since then. Our mortgage is so much lower than it would be if we bought in Austin now. Um, and we’ve also been consistently frugal. We were both raised pretty frugally, so you know, our five year spending inflation adjusted is around 50K ish. So now, uh, that does not include daycare. Uh, daycare is something that we do pay for, but that’s gonna end in like two or three years. So we kind of set that as a lump that together on the side kind of deal.

Corwin (20:28): Um, but it’s been primarily keeping expenses down. Uh, we do a lot of things like travel hacking, which I love, you know, figuring out ways to pay for travel without, ’cause if we didn’t do that, our spending would be a significantly higher. Um, and just, you know, variety of things. I’m always optimizing perhaps obsessively <laugh>. Uh, so yeah, it’s, it was something that we were able to uh, just continue to work at. We got Mint mobile for example, and that slashed our cell phone bill dramatically. We never even knew about it beforehand. And so it was just consistent, you know, inflation things go up. But every year we kind of go down for us a bit as we found optimizations for various things. Now I think we’ve pretty plateaued essentially. Um, we just bought a new roof, so <laugh> that brought up our spending quite a bit.

Corwin (21:20): Uh, but yeah, I mean it’s, I think that a lot of people are scared by the 50% or higher numbers and I’m always telling people, you should save at least 50% of your income. And I usually get eye rolls or stares or okay, this guy’s like off the wall. I dunno, I’m not listening to him anymore, but, which is bad, right? <laugh>. But I think it’s still something that I love to see people achieve or at least work to achieve. Because if you do the math, you’ve seen it probably before these various plots, like from zero, how long it takes to get financial independence. If you’re at 50% it’s 15 years. So, and higher percentages don’t shave that many more years off ’cause of that exponential growth. So I feel like that’s a nice sweet spot done with mandatory work in a decade and a half, I feel like that really gets, speaks to a lot of people.

Corwin (22:09): So I’m always pushing that, you know, try to get to 50% even if you’re not there, try to get there because you’ll gain so much more power over your life so much faster as a result. And that was really what was important to us. That’s what motivated us this entire time before we discovered fire. You know, my wife and I would be like, well is this important or not? We didn’t have like a unifying goal, so, you know, that caught us on the same page so much better. So fire’s good for your marriage for a lot of reasons. I think <laugh> also, I think, you know, money conflicts are one of the big things that drive a lot of marital stress. So that was another thing that was important to us. So, yeah, I don’t know if I really answered your question, but we just try to keep expenses down general.

Emily (22:48): Yeah, I think the key answer in there was the home purchase in 2013, but yeah, furthermore not upgrading, right? Because I know, you know, this is the temptation when you have your first baby or your second baby is we have to live in a bigger place. We have to drive a bigger car, a newer car, like there’s lifestyle inflation that’s, that’s baked into those like sort of um, life transition points, family transition points. And so at least with respect to your home, you’ve clearly, um, avoided that temptation of of lifestyle inflation.

Corwin (23:15): It’s hard though. We wish we had another room in this house all the time. <laugh>, especially when grandparents come to visit. This is my office slash guest room. So you know, when uh, when uh, we’ve got visitors, I lose my office and that’s annoying. But you know, it’s okay.

Emily (23:32): Do you think you’re gonna stay?

Corwin (23:36): Probably. Uh, so our son’s in elementary school now and I think if we were to buy a new house, we would probably need to move to a different neighborhood, different area. He’d have to change schools and it doesn’t seem like it’s worth it. We’ve thought about doing an add-on as well, so especially with interest rates the way they are now. So we’re, we’re camp mortgage. We’re team mortgage, so, uh, we’ve got a pretty low mortgage as well, so, yeah.

Benefits of Financial Independence

Emily (24:00): Yeah, so it sounds like you’re gonna try to find a way to stick it out in the same house and, and keep that mortgage. That’s amazing. Um, okay, well I wanna talk more about like the, the benefits you’ve experienced of the, the degree of fire that you have now, which was, you mentioned that you, your wife went to half time, you left your job for time, now you’re back working part-time. Can you just talk about how, um, this FI achievement slash the mindset stuff enabled you to find that like satisfaction with your work and the control over how you work?

Corwin (24:26): Yeah, so I, I was not, I was an unemployed bum for a year and a half and, uh, <laugh>

Emily (24:27): Stay home dad <laugh>.

Corwin (24:33): <laugh> I prefer an unemployed bum because it gets people like what, uh, but I think that after a while I also realized, you know, I spent close to 20 years developing all these engineering skills and it’s like I was doing a lot of other projects that were fun. I worked on this site engineering your FI and that was fun, but I also felt like it just felt so, uh, wasteful, I guess is the best word. Like not use those skills anymore. I missed a lot of the friends I had at the lab that I worked at. And so, um, I had lunch with my boss slash friend, a former boss slash friend from the lab. And you know, he told me there’s some really cool stuff going on, you know, would you be interested in maybe come back? So I spoke with him, I spoke with some of the other management and we greeted on this really nice halftime deal where I always get to leave by two o’clock.

Corwin (25:19): I always leave by two o’clock to, to pick up my son from school. We bike home from school. That was something I always wanted when I was a kid to be able to, you know, go home with my parents bike home, whatever, right? So I was like, that’s very, very important to me. And uh, it’s allowed me to continue working on my site. Other things, projects, just logistics at home. So it’s been really, really nice. My wife is same. She gets to volunteer at the school a lot because she’s working halftime. So it’s been a really nice balance. I wrote a whole blog post about the pros and cons of halftime part-time after fire because, you know, mathematically you don’t need to <laugh>. Um, so I tried to uh, lay out those ’cause I wrote so many pros and cons list <laugh> before I went back, so yeah.

Emily (26:06): Yeah, I have a similar work schedule. My business allows me to work about halftime same as you. I work kind of while my kid is in school and then we get the late, you know, the latter part of the afternoon together. Um, which I mean that flexibility is, is kind of like invaluable as a parent, honestly. Like, um, it’s, it’s very, very difficult once your kids get into elementary school to figure out how you’re gonna run everything if you have like two traditional nine to five like schedules. So I definitely see the appeal there, but like I was just saying, there’s multiple ways you can achieve this, right? Business ownership, working part-time being totally fi, um, maybe just having an alternative kind of work schedule. Like all these different possibilities are there, but the more, as you were saying earlier, the more kind of confidence you have that you don’t need your job <laugh> in exactly the format that you have it right now, the more that gives you the ability to negotiate for what would really work for you, which is so beautiful. So you don’t have to be all the way FI to get there. Um, you happen to be, but you can just be like on the path and be secure enough that, you know, you can take a risk with that kind of ask.

Corwin (27:07): Yeah, yeah. I talked, one of the other articles on my site is, uh, something called Flamingo Fire Flamingo Fi, which I was a big fan that first time I heard of it. It originally came from a blogger in Australia actually. And when I first encountered that, I thought this is a great balance of FI versus, uh, not being so aggressive with your savings. Early on, their philosophy was save up to halfway to the FI point and then, uh, work however much you need to to cover expenses. And then about a decade or so you’ll be traditional FI. So it’s more aggressive than coast fi, less aggressive than standard fi. Mm. And so I thought that’s a really nice balance. And so I feel like we’re kind of the fat flamingo fi version because we’re at standard fire closer to that. But with these halftime jobs, we more than cover our expenses and we expect, you know, probably within, you know, half a decade or so, something like that, we’ll probably be more of the fat FI level, whatever that means. So, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s nice to have these different levels and different ways to have power over your life. Big time.

Emily (28:12): I’m thinking about the phrase live like a grad student, live like a resident, you know, that like, um, live like you’re still a trainee even afterwards. Now. I think that really applies in your case because you had the very nice stipend. I mean, 45K in 2012 is like really, really, I was making like 28 K in 2012. Um, you have that like nicer sort of level of income while you were in graduate school plus your wife’s job and everything. Uh, but it sounds like you probably about maintained your lifestyle, um, even with increases in income aside from the additional expenses for childcare and so forth that come with the kids. Does that sound about right?

Corwin (28:44): Yeah, yeah. Roughly, if anything, we lowered it. Mm-Hmm. Because we found various ways to stop wasting money <laugh> on things like cell phone bills and other things. I found that you could call these companies that could compare your insurance rates across a whole bunch of different companies and, you know, always found it’s the lowest rate, et cetera, et cetera. You know, it’s like the more you know, knowledge you gain the, the faster the snowball starts, right? So that was a, you know, a big thing that we, you know, I always try to keep it in mind inflation <laugh> as well, because sometimes it’s going up, but you’re still going, you’re still doing good compared to inflation, especially recently. But, uh, but yeah, we definitely strove to not inflate after the PhD for sure.

Commercial

Emily (29:31): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, 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 2024-2025 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Orientations or very close to the start of the academic year would be a perfect time for tax education or general personal finance content. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ 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.

Corwin’s Book: Engineering Your PhD

Emily (30:58): Since you were just mentioning, we were just talking about your excellent stipend and so forth, you have a book, right? That’s relevant to graduate students. Can you tell us about that?

Corwin (31:06): Sure. Uh, so this is something I wrote back in 2019. Uh, it’s called Engineering Your PhD, an Actionable Guide to Earning Your Graduate Degree in Engineering. I had looked around online and I found books that were designed, written for PhDs and how to get your PhD the best <laugh>, but not a lot for engineering. There’s like maybe one or two others. And I had all this knowledge in my brain from when I got my PhD about how to do various things that I really wished I’d known before I started graduate school. So it was really more of like a passion project, like let’s get this into a more permanent form. Something I can hand to my kids one day if they wanna go to graduate school and say, Hey, engineering, at least you know, this is the collection of things that I thought were important when I finished up. So yeah, it’s on Amazon now and uh, um, I will say it’s not really my focus anymore to focus on academia. I’m much more interested in FI and fire and personal finance and things like that. It’s been a while since I was in academia. Now that’s hard to believe, but, uh, yeah, it’s still I think a well-written book according to my very biased opinion <laugh>. So if anyone interested in, uh, joining, uh, interested in checking that out, you’re certainly welcome to.

Emily (32:20): Editing Emily breaking in again! Corwin very generously is offering Engineering Your PhD free for download for five days after the publication of this interview. If you’d like to grab it, please go to PFforPhDs.com/S17E9/ and you’ll see the Amazon link in the list of links near the starts of the show notes. OK back to the interview.

The Future of Corwin’s FI Journey

Emily (32:43): So thanks for telling us about the book. Um, I wanted to ask one more question before we get to our final one, which is what, what does the future look like, right? You’re, you’re, you’re at FI, maybe you’re gonna continue building towards a fatter version of FI. You, you have your halftime work schedule. Like do you anticipate making any changes or are you just gonna cruise to a traditional retirement age at this? Like what do you think?

Corwin (33:04): I don’t know. That’s a good question. So for the foreseeable future, we’re gonna continue doing our part-time roles. I think that’s a good balance for us with young kids right now. But things could change in the future. Maybe we decide we wanna actually ramp up, we want to strengthen our careers, we wanna get more into what we’re doing in our jobs. Maybe we wanna go the opposite direction and do less or focus on entrepreneurial activities. You know, we live here in Austin, Texas where it gets very warm in the summertime. So I think we’ve toyed around with the idea of living elsewhere during the summer times when the kids are out of school. Uh, so that’s something that might be of interest to us, but that’s, you know, more like the summertime versus the rest of the entire year. So, you know, we could take sabbaticals from our, uh, part-time roles for a couple months, get outta the heat and then come back. That sounds really nice. Uh, and then who knows, you know, once my daughter graduates from high school, uh, in 16 years <laugh>, then, you know, the world’s our oyster. We might go elsewhere, we might go to Colorado or depending how hot the earth is at that point we may have to go further north <laugh>. Um, so yeah, we’ll, uh, we’ll have to see what happens.

Emily (34:15): Okay. I just love how like calm and like chill that answer was just like, I don’t know, we’re doing FI. We’ll see where it goes. We’ll do what we want. Um, and that’s really what fire affords you. Um, especially fire in, you know, professional fields like you have where you have so much career capital as Cal Newport would say by this point, right? You can deploy it in different ways, right? Um, so I love that.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (34:36): Okay, so let’s get to our standard question. What is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? It could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or it could be something completely new.

Corwin (34:47): So a few things that are very standard boilerplate pieces of advice. Well, maybe one’s not so much. First thing is track your expenses. I mean, if you’re not tracking your expenses, that is the foundation for everything. If you have no idea how much you’re spending, then you’re not going to be able to make almost any progress on lots of different things, especially if you wanna pursue financial independence. ’cause that’s gonna tell you how much money you need to save. That’s gonna tell you your savings rate is all kinds of things. Uh, and you’re not gonna be able to reduce it if you don’t know how much you’re spending. Uh, another thing is, like I mentioned earlier, I’m always pushing for a 50% savings rate, if not currently, then aspirationally trying to get there because it’s such a powerful thing for your finances and getting to financial independence within a couple decades.

Corwin (35:30): Uh, also a big fan of not getting complicated with investments. Put everything into a low cost stock market index fund, like V-T-S-A-X. First thing I do when I look at a fund is go straight to the expense ratio. <laugh>, it’s the first thing I do. But the last thing I would say is maybe a little less, um, uh, traditional, which is I encourage people to build their own tracking systems, their own financial tracking systems. There’s so many tools out there, just an infinite number of tools you can pop your numbers into and get all these different things. But I feel like if you do your own thing, you’re building the skills up to track your finances that you have that ultimate customization for what you actually want, right? Even if it’s just spreadsheets, you know, that’s, that’s perfectly fine. It’s usually free. You’re not paying anything. Again, that’s good for your savings rate, right? Um, but I do recommend trying out some other tools as well, uh, to see if the numbers line at least closely or roughly <laugh>. So yeah, that’s be my top pieces of finance advice for grad students.

Emily (36:35): I really love. Well, but the first and the last one, right track and also build your own, um, tool for doing so and, and doing more than just tracking because at the moment that we’re recording this finance internet is a buzz because Mint has announced they’re shutting down their, uh, budgeting feature and they’re kind of transitioning over, I think completely to Credit Karma stuff. So I’ve been a mint user for like, I don’t know, like 13 or 14 years now. And not that I’ve been completely reliant on it, but to the degree that I have my own stuff going on, I’m really happy for that now. ’cause now I’m like, okay, what do I do? I have to like download all this data. It’s gonna be like unusable CSV files, like what is going to happen with this like track record? So, but as you were saying, like there’s other great tools out there. Like you need a budget, it’s so popular, but there is a yearly fee to it. And so if you don’t want to have that kind of subscription, build your own stuff, it’s not, I don’t know, it’s not that complicated. I guess it depends on how great you are with like, you know, spreadsheets and stuff. But, um, so I love that advice of just like, be ready for these services to shut down on you. It’s literally happening to me at this moment. Yeah. So don’t be totally reliant on outside, you know, um, apps and so forth.

Corwin (37:40): Yeah, I think if you’re smart enough to get into a decent graduates program, then I think you’re smart enough to create a spreadsheet that can track your finances at least at a crude level that you can be fully in control of <laugh>. So yeah.

Emily (37:54): Yeah. Um, I’ll take the opportunity to plug something of mine in the show notes. I’ve literally not announced this on the podcast yet, uh, as of this recording. But I made an a simple Excel spending tracker that incorporates a couple of my like philosophies about how to manage money, which are to, um, spend what you earned last month, <laugh>, like don’t spend what just came in, like wait until the next month to spend it. Hmm. Um, and also to incorporate, um, sinking funds or targeted savings like into that, that system. So I don’t know, people ask me for a long time, like if I could just send them a simple spending tracker and I finally made one a few weeks ago in response to someone at a speaking engagement who wanted it. So go to PFforPhDs.com/tracker if you wanna download that and take it and make it your own and build it out and have it do other things and take my ideas, discard my ideas, whatever you like. But if you want a starting point, like there’s a starting point for you Corwin, um, it’s been a such a fascinating conversation. I’m so excited for how your life has unfolding and how the PhD has played a role in that. Um, it’s so excellent and thank you so much for sharing your story with the audience and coming on the podcast.

Corwin (38:57): Thank you very much.

Outtro

Emily (39:08):  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.

This PhD’s Path to FIRE Has Evolved with Lifestyle Design and Having Children

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Amanda, a prior podcast guest who is on the path to FIRE. Since our last interview, Amanda and her husband moved to the Twin Cities and had two children. Amanda recounts the exciting start to her FIRE journey when she was a postdoc and contrasts it with the boring middle of pursuing FIRE now with long-term jobs and a growing family. Amanda and Emily discuss the extra expenses that come with children—and those that don’t have to—and how emergencies and other expensive projects mean that the progress made toward FIRE is different each and every year. Amanda and Emily conclude that pursuing FIRE really is more about the journey than the destination and all the benefits you experience along the way.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This PhD's Path to FIRE Has Evolved with Lifestyle Design and Having Children

Teaser

Amanda (00:00): Know that your life has phases and make the most of the phases you’re in. You know, I think as as I started learning about finances, I felt so eager to be in some of the phases that I saw other people. And I felt so frustrated being at the beginning or not having the kind of income or options that I wanted. And, you know, as I’ve been on this path for a while, I’m just learning that every phase of life has, uh, some really beautiful benefits and great things you can do. And then there’s things you aren’t working on. And it’s okay to not be accomplishing every goal, uh, all at the same time.

Introduction

Emily (00:46): 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.

Emily (01:15): This is Season 17, Episode 6, and today my guest is Dr. Amanda, a prior podcast guest who is on the path to FIRE. Since our last interview, Amanda and her husband moved to the Twin Cities and had two children. Amanda recounts the exciting start to her FIRE journey when she was a postdoc and contrasts it with the boring middle of pursuing FIRE now with long-term jobs and a growing family. Amanda and I discuss the extra expenses that come with children—and those that don’t have to—and how emergencies and other expensive projects mean that the progress made toward FIRE is different each and every year. Amanda and I conclude that pursuing FIRE really is more about the journey than the destination and all the benefits you experience along the way.

Emily (02:04): The tax year 2023 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. I do license these workshops to universities, but in the case that yours declines your request for sponsorship, you can purchase the appropriate version as an individual. Go to PFforPhDs.com/taxreturnworkshop/ to read more details and purchase the workshop. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s17e6/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Amanda.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:13): I am delighted to have back on the podcast today, Dr. Amanda. She joined us in two previous episodes, season one episode 11, and season five episode 15. So we’ve seen a couple of snapshots of Amanda’s, uh, financial journey so far that she’s been, um, so generous to share with us. And we’re gonna get another update today after a few years. So there’s been a lot of changes. Amanda is on the path to FI or fire, financial independence and early retirement. And so we’re gonna talk a lot about what that looks like for a PhD today. So Amanda, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. It’s a pleasure to see you again. And will you please introduce yourself a little further for the listeners?

Amanda (03:50): Sure. Happy to be with you again, Emily. Uh, I am Dr. Amanda. I am currently an assistant professor in education. Uh, something kind of unique about my current position is I work fully remote, so I live in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota and I work for a university that’s out of state. But my students are EDD students, so they’re doctoral students in education, they’re teachers, school administrators, principals, they have full-time jobs, so they’re doing most of their program online. So I go to campus when they have their on-campus residency type stuff. But otherwise we’re all online and it works great for me. I love teaching online. I do a lot of dissertation support over Zoom. Um, so me sitting with headphones in a setting like this is, uh, kind of how I spend my days and I really like it.

Emily (04:42): And if you wanna hear more about that, the second episode I referenced season five, episode 15 is where Amanda talked about her job search and how she strategically moved to the Midwest, et cetera, for at least partially financial reasons. So I’m sure we’re gonna hear more about that too. Um, anything else you’d like to share with us?

Amanda (04:57): Uh, I have two young kids, which I believe last time I was on the show I, I don’t even think I had either of my kids. So I’ve got a one and a 4-year-old now. And, um, one of the things I really like about my remote position is it’s flexible. It allows me to spend a lot of time with them, uh, and be there for them. So that’s really great. My daughter goes to a nature preschool now in our neighborhood, which we just absolutely love. And then my son is, he spends most of his days with his grandmas.

Emily (05:28): And that was, as I recall, one of your reasons for moving there, right? Your proximity to family.

Amanda (05:32): Yes. So my situation was I had my, uh, husband and I had moved from Los Angeles where I was a postdoc at USC and he was a technical director in the USC games division. And then I took a position, uh, way across the country in Ohio and we get to Ohio and we move there and my job’s going great, I really like it, but he’s not finding the right thing. And then the perfect job for him, he designs educational games and Twin Cities public television, uh, PBS and the Twin Cities post this job where they’re looking for somebody to lead their digital and games content for, uh, it was a new show at the time. Now it’s Hero Elementary for anyone who has littles who watch Hero Elementary.

Emily (06:16): My kids love that show.

Amanda (06:17): Yeah. And we love it too. And it was just the perfect job. So that also happened to be 10 minutes away from where my family was living, and we knew we were kind of wanting to start a family, so it was like, you have to apply. And then my university was great, like things were going well, and they said, do you wanna try something remote? And this was pre pandemic, so it was a little experimental at the time. Now I feel like this is not an unusual scenario, it was at the time, but it’s worked really well. Um, so we’ve been doing that a lot of years and it just continues to work. Great.

Emily (06:50): I love this lifestyle design. Um, I’ve been listening to a lot of Cal Newport recently. Are you familiar with him? Yes. Yeah. So I’ve, I’ve read a few of his books. I’ve been listening to his podcast and he’s all about this like, I can’t remember the acronym, but it’s basically lifestyle centric career design, something like that. Um, but basically doing exactly what you’ve just, um, exemplified is getting enough career capital, in your case, the PhD, the professorship, um, to be able to leverage it to get the lifestyle you want at the point in your life when you need it, which for you was, you know, this opportunity for your husband and the, and the kids coming and all of that. So like, ugh, I wish he did interviews ’cause you would be a great interview for his podcast, but I don’t think he does that sort of thing.

Amanda (07:26): I mean, it is scary. Like when we were doing it, I remember thinking like, I agonized for weeks over trying to figure out how to ask if I could go to remote. But thinking I’m a first year professor, I was even just a few months in really, because this all happened within really right after we moved, um, we moved to Ohio in late July, August, and over Thanksgiving I helped my husband move to the Twin Cities ’cause he was starting there. So he was only there a few months, but I remember thinking like, I don’t have this capital, we can’t do this. How am I gonna ask? And then they brought it up and I remember feeling so relieved and thinking I probably could have asked, but I think sometimes as grad students, we, I know at least I felt like there was a way you’re supposed to do things.

Amanda (08:12): Like we were trained in sort of the R1 research world where it was like, you are going for a tenure track job. That is what you are going to do. You’ll move anywhere, do whatever it takes you to, you know, and especially as a couple, like you gotta find that dual hire. And I spent my whole time as a postdoc feeling like, I don’t know if this is what I want. And just, it probably took me a few years of listening to a lot of financial podcasts and lifestyle podcasts to really get comfortable with saying, what if we don’t do that? What if we did something different? What if we, this is crazy, try to live where we wanna live, which for us, you know, is the Midwest where family is, and we actually really like it here. We like the seasons. It’s not for everyone. The winters can be brutal, but, um, it took a while to get to feeling like we could make those choices.

The Beginning of Amanda’s FIRE Journey

Emily (09:03): Yeah, I see what you’re saying, because you might not think right, getting out of grad school, getting outta your postdoc that you have any career capital at that point. But honestly, if they made the investment of hiring you as a faculty member, like yeah, it’s a big investment for them too. So, and you were just ahead of the curve, right? Because everyone’s doing the remote like thing now, so it’s all worked out. I’m so glad to hear that. Let’s get into the topic for today. We’re gonna talk about your journey to fire and how the moment you’re in this, what they call the boring middle phase. So I want you to back up a little bit and describe to us what the beginning of the journey to fire looked like when it was exciting and no longer boring like it is now. Um, and we did get some of this in that first interview that you did back in season one, episode 11 about how you read Ramit Sethi book and started making some changes and so forth. So we got a little bit of that story, but describe to us a little bit more completely what, what you think of as the exciting beginning to the fire journey.

Amanda (09:54): Yeah, I guess I would say it kind of started for us when we moved to Los Angeles after finishing grad school because that was the first time we had, uh, jobs that weren’t assistantships. So we, we had a little bit of money and we very intentionally decided to, um, try to then hit, uh, you know, some of those higher savings rates we were reading about. So when we got, we lived in a really nice, uh, condo in la but it was small. It was only about 700 square feet. And we, um, our biggest expense then besides rent was doggy daycare because we’d been talking about adopting a, a pup, uh, all through grad school. And it was like, no, no, no, we’re doing this, we’re doing this now. Um, so we were paying for doggy daycare, but otherwise we just like to be outside.

Amanda (10:41): We did our own cooking and so we were really intentional about trying to keep our costs down and then hitting our student loans really aggressively. And we were, we were in school far enough back where we did have those like 7% interest rates that you’re seeing now. And so it was enough where we were looking at that going, we’d really like to pay these off. And so, um, you know, that was just something we really focused on is not, um, not blowing up our lifestyle too much when we were starting to make it was postdoc money. It wasn’t crazy money, but it was more than we were, more than we had when we were grad students.

Emily (11:15): Yeah, I think that’s one of those important messages about those career transition points, right? I mean, you, you hear the live like a student thing, but for people with PhDs, it’s like, you were living like a student for a really long time, but please, please, please just hold on, do a, a couple of lifestyle upgrades like you got the dog, but like, don’t go crazy with it when you’re still only making postdoc salaries or after that because you can really make some good traction against your financial goals. And especially if you’re feeling behind by that point. Um, you being immersed in the personal finance like community, you probably did feel behind, I would imagine, even though like objectively speaking, you weren’t . Um, but like having those kinds of influences, you were probably really eager to get started with the savings goals and the, and the student loan repayment and all that stuff, and that you Oh yeah, you can really make good progress on that when you’re keeping your lifestyle low.

Amanda (11:57): I remember looking at those compound interest, uh, charts and thinking, what have we done with our twenties ? Oh my gosh, we’ve been in school, we haven’t made any money, you know, now we’re 30 and we’re just starting. Oh, we messed it all up. And it took me a while to go, okay, you know what? It is okay, 30 is not that old. But I, I do think that sometimes that can happen to those of us in academia who do spend a long time in school and you know, oftentimes people have a lot in loans too, so it can feel like, um, it can feel like you’re starting from behind. We actually, um, we have this little lifestyle. We just run this little Etsy shop. Um, it’s tiny. It doesn’t make a lot of money, it’s just a lot of fun. We have a laser printer and we make game tokens and wood coasters, but we named it 30 below zero because at 30 years old our net worth was below zero. And it was just a reminder for us of where we’re starting. And so it’s the name of our Etsy shop. It’s just kind of funny, but we did, we felt behind.

Emily (12:58): So you were talking about that exciting beginning of, okay, we finally have some salaries, , where we can make, you know, some progress toward these goals and a simple lifestyle. I mean, Los Angeles is expensive, the rent and so forth. But you said other than that, in the doggy daycare, you kept things pretty reasonable. Um, was anything else sort of, um, exciting or different about that phase of your fire journey?

Amanda (13:19): Yeah, I would say we did something kind of different with our wedding. Uh, you know, that that was a good example of us seeing what do we value? Let’s not do what everyone else is doing. What do we wanna do? So we were living in San Pedro at the time, which is right, just a few miles from Catalina Island, and we could see Catalina Island when we would go on hikes with our dogs. You know, you’re looking off at the coastline and there’s the island. So we decided to get married on Catalina Island, but we just did this small immediate family. So we flew our parents and siblings out and that’s it. We had this tiny little ceremony, super charming on Catalina Island. We all, we booked them all, uh, rooms in the same hotel and we just spent a couple days hanging out there on the island, hiking, eating out. Um, but we never did a big thing with DJs and catering and that just, it didn’t feel like what we wanted at the time. And so that was an example of us just saying, okay, what do, who are we and what do we wanna do? What are our values? And how do we live this FI thing while also being true to who we think we are?

Emily (14:25): Hmm. Yeah. I can see how that does fall into the exciting beginning part of the journey because you’re taking this new step with your relationship, um, you’re, you know, combining things maybe in a way you didn’t before and thinking about your values and how you really want your life to look through this period of transition. And so that, that is an exciting time of really being able to think through and set some new patterns and and so forth and, and do something a little bit counter-cultural, like what you’re saying. Um, yeah. Anything else you wanna add about that period?

Amanda (14:52): Uh, no, not a whole lot. We just, we continued to do that. Um, when I started the faculty job, we, you know, I think a lot of people when they start a faculty job, especially I think in the Midwest, in a place where houses are affordable, it’s like, well, I have to have a house. But we just, in the first year we’re like, we don’t know this place yet. We’re getting to know this area. So we rented a modest apartment. We, um, this was a, a fairly rural area, so we were getting our groceries at Walmart, which was kind of new to us, but like doing our own cooking. And then when my husband took the job in the Twin Cities, he actually lived with my parents for a short time until I moved there. ’cause for a while we were in different states. Um, but we, at that time, we had a really aggressive savings rate because I was living by myself doing yoga with Adrian and walking the dog free entertainment, playing video games and cooking at home. He was doing the same thing, new job, living with my parents. So, um, at that time it was just kind of exciting to watch those student loan balances go down and feel like we’ve, we’ve got this, we can actually do the things we’ve been reading about doing.

Retirement Accounts and Student Loans

Emily (15:57): Yeah, that is very exciting. Okay, so you’re watching the student loan balances decline, you were also saving for retirement. Is that, is that true? Can you tell me like the mix of accounts that you were working with? Yeah,

Amanda (16:05): Yeah. Um, USC was kind of unique because, uh, my husband was working as an employee of USC and I was a postdoc, so he had access to their retirement savings and a match. And I didn’t as a postdoc, I don’t know if that’s changed since then. Uh, so we were, um, LA the la he was paying into his 401k and as soon as we actually, even as grad students, we were trying to max out our Roth IRAs or at least contribute to those. So we really did start right away when we were reading about this stuff as like, all right, let’s a Roth, we can do a Roth, you know, it’s not that much money or let’s just do what we can. Um, and so it was just starting to add to that. Then we added, um, when I started as a faculty member, I eventually got access to a 403B at my institution. So yes, we are definitely investing for retirement and trying to get that going while also getting the student loans paid off.

Emily (16:59): Now I’m curious because we’ve been talking mostly about the pre pandemic time period, but did you make any different decisions with the student loans when the administrative forbearance came into play?

Amanda (17:09): We had them paid off by then, actually. So, um, yeah, we went real aggressive real fast. Neither of us had, we both worked through college and grad school, so neither of us had, um, the sort of terrifying balances that you hear about some people starting with, which is good because, uh, you know, we are, we’re in tech, but we’re in ed tech education, so we also, um, you know, weren’t gonna be making the kind of crazy money that you kind of need to make to pay off those six figure, uh, loan payments. So it really didn’t take us more than a couple years to get those paid down. So I believe by the time the pandemic hit, we had already paid off our loans.

Emily (17:49): Okay. So student loans eliminated starting, or, you know, continuing and accelerating their retirement savings. And did a house purchase come into play at some point there?

Amanda (17:57): Yes, we bought a house at the very end of 2018. Um, our daughter was born in June of 2019, so kind of right around the time I moved from Ohio to the Twin Cities area, we bought a house, um, in the neighborhood where my parents live.

Current Finances, Lifestyle, and Non-Traditional Housing Decisions

Emily (18:14): Lovely. You mentioned your daughter born in 2019, and then your son’s about three years younger. Um, so let’s, let’s fill out the lifestyle now in terms of what your finances look like. What, what your lifestyle looks like. Um, now that you’ve got the job set and the kids are present or on the way, like what does this phase of fire look like?

Amanda (18:34): It’s slower and more boring. Uh, you know, if I’m being honest, um, we did, uh, upgrade the house and part of that is because my husband’s mom lives with us, she helps us with childcare. So we wanted to have a nice space for us. And what we did, this is, uh, kind of non, another non-traditional thing we did, we swapped houses with my parents, so they lived right in the neighborhood, but they were, uh, you know, they’re kind of thinking about retiring, they’re looking to downsize. ’cause they were still in kind of the home they’d raised, uh, my sister and I in. And so they had more space than they wanted and we were, uh, as we were thinking about having a second child, we were like, ah, this, we could do this. It’s gonna be tight. We could finish the basement and create these rooms. And it just sort of worked for, um, my parents were happy to buy the house that we had bought, which is a little bit smaller, but in the same neighborhood. And we bought, uh, the house that I grew up in or I moved when I was a kid, but, you know, somewhat grew up in, uh, you know, from my parents. And so it is a bigger house. Um, you know, there are, you know, it’s a, the expenses are a little higher for sure, but, um, yeah,

Emily (19:46): How, I don’t know. I just, I’m so tickled whenever I hear about families that are able to do these kinds of things for one another. There are some people in my husband’s family who have done something similar with their, um, children and it’s just, it’s so, it’s so lovely that you get to have that proximity and you get to live this more, a more communal lifestyle than is really, you know, typical for most, um, Americans. So it’s great to hear. Um, anything else? What, what’s going on now with the, the boring middle? You’re adding kids, you’re adding expenses related to the kids.

Amanda (20:13): Yeah, we pay for preschool now. Uh, we’re trying to contribute a bit to 529s and, you know, everything’s just a little bit more expensive, you know, this, this bigger house costs a little bit more. Um, we’re in Minnesota, the heating and cooling costs, especially the heating costs are, you know, they, they add up for sure. Um, I’ve become a little bit more into health and nutrition since having kids, and so I definitely buy bougie or groceries, , you know, we, uh, just quality of food, you know, we don’t eat out a lot lot. We really do cook at home, but, um, definitely we spend a lot more on groceries than we were spending a few years ago, but that’s, it’s an intentional lifestyle choice. Um, you know, for us, we are pursuing fire, and we can talk about this a little bit, but there isn’t a point at which we feel like we need to reach it. It isn’t like, oh, we really want to be completely fire by 2035 and, you know, um, it’s just sort of a direction that we’re heading rather than a very specifically defined goal.

Emily (21:20): I’ve, I’ve noticed with our family too, you know, we, we have kind of a, you know, a, a similar trajectory. We have two children, we own a house now. Um, we’re compared to when we were renting, even when we had the two kids, we were still renting for some time when we were living in Seattle. Um, an 850 square foot apartment with the four people. Oh. And then the pandemic started , so that was fun. Um, so like the housing cost for instance was a massive upgrade to go from that apartment to like the house that we purchased, but that’s because it’s a lot bigger. There’s just a ton more to like maintain. There’s a lot more considerations you have as a homeowner than as a renter. When you look at these like estimates that are occasionally put out, I guess, that are done yearly of like the cost of raising a child, you know, birth to age 18, a really, really big, big chunk of that estimated expense, which is like $200,000 or something.

Emily (22:06): A really big chunk of that is the housing expense , because you have to find room for this extra human that’s in your family or more than one human that’s in your family now. So that’s, I think, you know, you can, you can decide to be like frugal in a lot of ways if you want to, when you have children, like maybe you, um, you know, make other arrangements for childcare. You don’t spend as much in that area, but the housing is like, maybe it doesn’t come when they’re a baby, but eventually you’re gonna have to have a bigger space to accommodate those extra people. Um, so that’s been, not, not exactly surprising, but just like it has a really big effect. Like we for instance, don’t make, aren’t making nearly as much progress with our savings as we may have expected with the nice salaries that we have now because just, yeah, a lot of our expenses are a lot higher than it was for just two adults.

Amanda (22:47): Yeah. And my husband was just showing me this graph of uh, a graph mapping what people are spending on housing. So median rent and mortgage payments with uh, US household incomes and oh, that’s it. It’s a depressing graphic to look at. I mean the real reality is, is even if you’re doing everything right, uh, it’s, especially depending on where you live, housing is going to be a really substantial part of what you’re making. It’s fairly unavoidable. And like you said, when you have kids that space is just kind of non-negotiable. I mean, you know, there are a handful of families you hear, oh, you know, we have five kids and we still live in whatever square feet. And you know what, some people make that work, but I think for the vast majority of people you do kind of elect to say, ah, you know, maybe we won’t be saving as much as we would in a really ideal world, but this space helps us live a life that, you know, is calm and happy and feels right to us in the time.

The FIRE Journey with Children and Car Buying Decisions

Emily (23:49): What are the other ways that adding these children to your family has affected your fire journey?

Amanda (23:54): We still try to, um, you know, look for wins where we can. So, um, you know, I said we spend a lot more on grocery than we used to. ’cause I just really care about the quality of food. We don’t care that much about cars. I work remotely. My husband works part-time remotely thanks to the pandemic. So he went from having a job where he was in the office five days a week to now he’s only needs to be in the office a couple days a week. So we have two kids, but we only have one car. And right now, while our kids are little and they aren’t in a lot of activities, that works great for us. So we have a, um, completely paid off car. We paid off our car. That was another thing you asked about pandemic expenses in 2020, we made the last payment on our car.

Amanda (24:37): So now we don’t have a car payment and we’re not looking, uh, to upgrade. Like we didn’t feel the need to get a big SUV as soon as we had kids. And I know that’s something that a lot of Americans, it feels like a very American thing to do. Like we’re having a kid, we need an SUV, we are really happy with our economical hybrid and we’re still happy with it. So that’s one way we’ve tried to control our expenses. Like I look at what’s happened with the cost of cars in the past few years and uh, they look a lot like rent and mortgage payments. Look not that long ago, .

Emily (25:10): Yeah. I want to underline this strategy as well. It’s, it’s something that, that I’ve noticed too really common that you upgrade a lot of things. Some people upgrade a lot of things pretty much immediately when they, they know a child is on the way or once the child arrives, whether that’s the bigger car or the newer car or the bigger housing arrangement. Even if a baby is very, very small and you don’t necessarily need that right away. Um, although eventually of course you do. And some other thing, other like lifestyle upgrade as well, like same for us. Like we actually have, our car is a 2003, we’ve been, my husband’s owned it that entire time, so it’s over, you know, it’s 20 years old now, it’s a sedan. Um, and yeah, I think we were maybe thinking about switching out the car before the pandemic and then like you said, because of what’s happening with prices, we were like, whoa, let’s put the brakes on that.

Emily (25:54): Like, we don’t wanna engage in this market right now. Yeah, now my kids are five and seven and they’re getting to that stage where you said they have more activities, they have more stuff going on. We’re thinking maybe we do either need a larger primary car or perhaps a secondary car. I think what’s gonna happen is we’re gonna keep the 20-year-old car as a secondary car, right? Add, yeah, just add another, um, maybe bigger, maybe the same size of car. We actually just invested in solar panels, so we’re probably gonna get an electric car for that next, um, step. But it’s like we, we put it off, right? We put it off until this stage when it’s like, okay, it’s really, really seeming like it’s necessary at this point. And I mean, I cannot tell you like how much savings that is over the years. It’s probably multi thousands of dollars each year, if not like, perhaps $10,000 in that first year. And just delaying that expense every time. You can delay a big expense, you can stretch out the time that you use, you know that item over, you get more and more value and you’re able to direct your money elsewhere.

Amanda (26:48): I think there’s a choose Fi episode where they look at driving a car for, it’s not even a crazy amount of time. It’s like 10 or 15 years for the car, but not upgrading as soon as you’ve paid it off and just continuing to drive it. And they look at that over an adult lifetime, just that one decision. And I think ultimately they get at a million dollars or close to a million dollars just in the savings of not constantly having a car payment or driving the most expensive vehicle you could possibly afford.

Emily (27:18): It’s absolutely a huge difference. And like you said, lifestyle makes a big difference here. ’cause like my husband and I both work from home that we walk the kids to school, like we don’t really need, we don’t really drive except for like going to errands and driving the kids to their activities sometimes. So it’s not even, yeah, it’s just, we don’t put that many miles on the car, I guess is what I’m saying. Now sometimes it’s convenient to have two, but we’ve been doing a lot of biking recently. We’ve been doing some Ubering when we do need the second car and that feels expensive in the moment, but when you think about it over the long term, it’s so much less expensive than owning a second car that you rarely use.

Commercial

Emily (27:52): Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

Emergency Fund

Emily (28:42): Now you mentioned, um, in our, uh, pre-interview communications that you are at the moment very grateful for your emergency fund. So can you tell us more about why that is?

Amanda (28:53): 2023 has demanded a lot from our emergency fund. Uh, literally on January 1st, I was driving the kids home from Target and our car broke down and it turned out it needed pretty much the most expensive possible repair for that car. And it’s a hybrid, so it ended up being about $6,000, which is it. We had kept up the maintenance. They had just told us a few months before that this car was in great shape. Uh, we were not anticipating any car expenses, there was nothing we’d been deferred. So it was a real surprise to us. Uh, but given what had happened, as we just talked about to the cost of cars over the pandemic, we were looking at it and going $6,000 doesn’t even get us that far to a comparable similar vehicle. And so we decided to do that repair and uh, you know, luckily we had the emergency fund, so we were able to, uh, pay for that.

Amanda (29:51): Uh, fast forward just a few months later in the summer, uh, we found out our dog needed a pretty substantial surgery. And again, we’d, we’d worked hard after spending down some of that emergency fund to build it up, uh, you know, even over those few short months. And it’s just, we felt so good being able to not have to consider whether we can afford that surgery. Um, you know, and just, and not needing to worry about financing, but knowing we could focus on, yes, let’s do this procedure. Let’s get her the care she needs, let’s get her feeling better. And so that was just phenomenal for us. And you know, that was a good reminder. I am very happy to live below my means so that when things like this happen and things are going to happen like this in life, we just don’t need to worry about it.

Amanda (30:39): It’s, yes, we have this money, we’ll pay for this surgery. Um, and so that was just, um, really, we were very grateful to have the money to not have to worry about the cost of that and to just be able to pay for it in one fell swoop. And then, uh, just last month we decided to do an installation project. So we had new installation put in an erratic, we did a, a home energy audit in the summer and found out that we have about five inches of attic installation and they recommend 15 here in Minnesota. So, uh, you know, given the severity of our winters, we were like, yep, we’d better do this right away. Let’s get that insulation taken care of. So that wasn’t an emergency, but again, just having savings and having the fact that there’s a good chunk of money every month that we just put away for stuff that we know will come up later has just been so fantastic for us this year.

Emily (31:35): Yeah, that, that really speaks to the, um, utility and the stress relief that comes with having margin in your life. That’s financial margin, that’s time margin, that’s energy margin. Not everybody has that. It’s, it’s difficult to, to intentionally get your life to the level where you have margin in those areas, but when you do and then those things come up, you’re so, so grateful that you did that advance, you know, work and, and design and so forth to, to have that happen. Um, I like to say regarding emergency funds, that an emergency fund is what stands between something bad happening in your life and something bad happening in your life and there being significant financial consequences for it. Um, like your dog’s, um, surgery for instance. For instance, um, so like you, if you hadn’t had the money, you, you may have had that really tough decision about what do you yes.

Emily (32:22): Do you lose this, this pet and do you lose this Yeah. Member of your household. Um, but you didn’t have to agonize over that because you had the money. So it just provides so much, so much peace. And I lived for a long time with very scant emergency fund because I was in grad school and I was focused on other things, but like I, we have much larger one now and it, it does afford a lot of peace of mind, especially with the extra responsibilities that come with the home ownership and the car ownership and the kids and all the stuff that we’ve been talking about. So it definitely needs to sort of scale with your lifestyle.

Amanda (32:52): Yes, it does. We definitely have more set aside and uh, more things come up for sure. But yeah, I personally am happy to slow down on things like vacations or uh, you know, we just talked about cars, you know, if we had another car that’s money that probably wouldn’t be in that emergency fund. And just for me, I sleep so much better at night knowing that money is there for whatever is going to come up where we’re going to need it. And you know, I know not everyone, um, comes to that same conclusion. Um, and I think that post pandemic, there’s been a lot of this, um, you know, YOLO mentality and I totally understand that, that people are wanting to prioritize experiences, but I just have to say personally, I’ve landed on, I’m much happier with, um, some money just being there and waiting for what we need it for.

Emily (33:48): And the thing is like the expenses of the emergencies, whatever they’re gonna happen, whether you’re prepared for them or not. And so putting in that earlier effort at whatever stage you’re able to, to build it up then buys you the peace of mind indefinitely going forward as long as you can maintain the fund because again, the emergencies are gonna happen, but it’s whether or not it’s how you feel about it and how you can approach it, that is making all the difference. And again, it doesn’t have to be like a continual sacrifice for decades to maintain that emergency fund. ‘Cause again, once you build it up, all you have to do is pay for those emergencies. You would’ve paid for them anyway somehow. So I’m curious about that actually, because you said something like you worked hard to build the emergency fund back up after the first, you know, depletion of the fund for the car expense. So I’m just wondering like how you did that. Was it changes in your spending? Was it reducing your savings rate in other areas? Was it working additionally? How did you do that?

Amanda (34:37): Yeah, it was largely, um, cutting back a little bit on the percentage we’re putting away for retirement. Um, you know, there was a point during the pandemic where we maxed all those accounts out and that felt really great. This is not a year where we’re maxing out Roth HSA and 401k, 4 0 3 bs. Um, I would love to have another year like that. Um, but this isn’t that year and that’s okay. Um, you know, ultimately we just decided, and, and we didn’t stop contributions. We just kind of cut, cut back a little bit on that percentage to get the emergency fund back up to where we felt comfortable with it.

Emily (35:18): Uh, once again, I see a parallel in our stories here because we maxed out our available retirement contribution room for the first time ever in 2021. So that was like 2 401Ks, my employer side of my 401k and two Roth IRAs. We did it again in 22. In 2023. This is not happening again, . Um, because as I mentioned, we had the solar panels which we’re paying for upfront, like we’re not financing them. So we had to pull that money partially from savings and partially from cashflow to be able to do that. And so that alone, plus I just mentioned we may have a car purchase in our future, like yeah, uh, we’re still doing like one 401k, we’ll still do the two IRAs, but how much we contribute to that second 401k is not too clear at this point in the year. We’re recording this in, um, October, 2023, by the way. So, but that hap that’s, that’s how life is. I mean, it’s not all like perfect numbers on a spreadsheet, like perfect numbers in your financial plans, same thing happens every single year, right? You have to adapt in some ways. And now that we’ve had that taste of like what maxing out felt like those couple of times, I’m pretty sure we’ll get back to it at some point.

Amanda (36:18): It feels good, right?

Emily (36:19): Just not 2023

Amanda (36:20): Mm-Hmm, Well, congrats on the solar panels. That’s a bucket list project for us. And, uh, you know, to be able to pay for it without financing, it is not something that many people can say. So congrats to you.

Emily (36:31): Yeah, and that was, uh, it, it’s not all thanks to us, it’s partially some leftover parental gifts from when we bought the house. We got some gifts, we didn’t spend all of it on the down payment that is now being redirected to a literal investment in the house. But here in southern California, like our electricity bill is really outta control. So like the solar panels clearly are an ROI within just a few years. So it’s a, it it is literally an investment as well as, um, just like something we want to do.

Amanda (36:56): Yeah, I I was just hearing that, that the ROI is very good in California with your high energy costs, pg and e and um, and abundant sunshine in southern California.

The Future of Amanda’s FIRE Journey

Emily (37:06): Yeah. And I can only imagine it’s gonna get worse in terms of energy costs. So it’s, it’s again, looking long-term planning kind of thing. Um, so yeah, we’re excited about that. Okay, so we’re talking about the boring middle of five. We got the kids, we got the kids’ expenses, you know, you’re doing your best you can on your 401Ks, you know, managing with life’s, you know, circumstances that are thrown your way. What is the future of your fire journey? Or maybe like you mentioned earlier that you’re not looking for like a specific super soon end point. You’re very happy with your lifestyle in many ways. So like why do you still identify with pursuing fire and what do you think might change when you get to that official where financially independent point?

Amanda (37:45): Yeah, we don’t have a specific destination, but what we are pursuing is options and flexibility. We just know for us, uh, that someday, you know, thing things happen with life and with jobs and with health. So one day, maybe one of us, we’re both happy with our jobs right now, someday, maybe one of us is in a toxic work environment. Maybe, uh, something happens with our health or the health of one of our kids, or maybe one of our kids develops some really interesting crazy hobby that, uh, you know, might require some kind of specialty training or some travel or something like that. We don’t know. But, um, we want to be able to say yes to things that life will throw at us in the future. And so for us, this FI journey isn’t about we want to move to Portugal or Thailand in 2035. It’s, we want to be able to say yes to opportunities and to never have to stay in a situation that that isn’t good for us. We always want the option to be able to make changes so that we can, uh, just live a happy, supportive life that’s good for us and good for our kids.

Emily (39:03): I, I feel like the fire movement broadly over the past few years has moved in the direction of what you’re describing. It, it, you know, 10 years ago it maybe felt much more, um, boxed in , right? Like, this is my savings rate and I have X many years until I get to this point and I’m quitting my job. And that whole attitude, and as more and more people attempted that journey, they realized that maybe the journey couldn’t look exactly like that, or maybe they didn’t even want the end point that they had imagined like earlier. Um, so many people I think are attracted to fire because they’re unhappy with their job in some way. And if you do the work of getting into a job that supports your lifestyle, as we were talking about earlier, then there’s not such a strong impetus to get out, you know, ASAP.

Emily (39:45): But like you said, that things can change with your job and with your health. And so I think it’s so smart to not, and this is what we’re doing too, like not count on I’m gonna work till I’m 72, I’m gonna work till I’m 65, and my finances depend on my ability and the market’s ability to keep providing me with work opportunities until that point. Um, and I don’t know, our, our listeners right now are probably somewhat younger than we are, but I’m 38 and I’m, I’m not exactly, I’m not tired, I’m not slowing down, but I can see in the future that I don’t necessarily want to live this way for many, many, many more decades. And that, you know, going, seeing what our parents have been going through health wise and other people around us, like, you can’t, you can’t count on that necessarily. So, like you said, just to give yourself options earlier and earlier is, is a great gift.

Amanda (40:27): Yeah, that’s exactly how we feel. And I do think you’re right, the FI community has sort of shifted in that direction, and I always struggled with this idea of what’s your fi number and your FI date, because it, there were just so many assumptions about, uh, a consistency of your spending. Um, you know, something that I’ve learned over the past few years, I mean, what my expenses looked like as a grad student were nothing like what they looked like as a postdoc or anything like what they looked like right before we had kids. You know, now we have kids, we support our kids. Um, my mother-in-law lives with us, like life changes every year. And so I don’t know what my expenses are going to be in a few years, and that’s okay. But I do know that having built up a net worth isn’t something I’m likely to look back and go, wow, I really wish I hadn’t done that.

Amanda (41:17): So, um, yeah, we’ve never been able to pin down exactly what, um, you know, specific, um, I’ve never calculated a fi date or a fi number because there’s just too many assumptions in there that I’ve never felt comfortable saying. I know what those assumptions are, but we know that life will provide us with interesting opportunities. My husband and I are both lifelong learners. You know, we’re in education, we love to learn new things. I can’t rule out that one of us might wanna do a complete career pivot, go back to grad school or something someday. If, if that’s something one of us wants to do, I hope we’ll be able to do it.

Emily (41:52): Exactly, exactly. Similarly with us, like I’ve never calculated, well, I’m, I don’t, I don’t call myself like on the fi journey, but I’ve also never calculated a fi date or a FI number because like, frankly, my husband and I bought the house we currently live in and we are not planning on living here. Once our kids are out like well outta the house, we’re gonna downsize, and who knows what that’s going to look like. So like, even when you draw closer and closer, um, to achieving that, you know, what you think might be the net worth goal of, you know, achieving fire, um, you can still make big changes and, and you may need to, and especially with the, the family unit that keeps evolving with time. Um, like you said, there’s just, every year is different. And so yeah, we may be on the journey , um, for a while. There’s not really like an end point necessarily. And so many people, again, in the fire community who maybe they did leave their jobs, they find that they’re still earning money in just other interesting ways. And so it’s like, well, you didn’t even need to reach that number necessarily. You just needed to reach, uh, coast Five, for example, or some other point where you felt comfortable changing your work situation.

Amanda (42:51): Yeah, I think it’s a very rare person in the fire community that someone retires and stops earning money, at least from what I hear in the books and the podcasts. No one knows that person. They aren’t really out there. So yeah, people find things to do. Oftentimes that comes with some kind of an income or, you know, financial incentive. Um, but again, to have the ability to pursue that, to take a risk on building a business or go back to school to learn a new skill, whatever it is, um, we just wanna be able to say yes to it in the time that it feels right.

Emily (43:25): I love it. I love the vision, I love the description of your lifestyle. Sounds lovely to me. But, you know, , we found many common commonalities between us during this episode. The listener may, uh, not want a lifestyle that looks anything like either one of ours, but the whole point here is just that you can use your finances to help you achieve that lifestyle, whatever it is that you, um, most desire it to be by having that margin, having that savings rate and the things that we’ve talked about so far. Thank you so much, Amanda. And is there anything else that you’d like to add before we conclude the interview?

Amanda (43:55): No, just thank you for your time. I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to talk to you to catch up a little bit on your story as well.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (44:02): Absolutely. And let’s, let’s end with the question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another PhD? And that can be something that we’ve touched on in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

Amanda (44:14): Yeah, I would say this is something that we’ve touched on a bit. Um, know that your life has phases and make the most of the phases you’re in. You know, I think as, as I started learning about finances, I felt so eager to be in some of the phases that I saw other people, and I felt so frustrated being at the beginning or not having the kind of income or options that I wanted. And, you know, as I’ve been on this path for a while, but still have a long way to go, at least to that, you know, completely financial in independent space, um, I’m just learning that every phase of life has, uh, some really beautiful benefits and great things you can do. And then there’s things you aren’t working on and it’s okay to not be accomplishing every goal, uh, all at the same time.

Emily (45:02): Hmm, absolutely. And that, um, extension of our discussion reminds me of, uh, the book Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. Have you read it? Oh my gosh.

Amanda (45:09): I have not, but it seems like everyone in the community has, so it’s most definitely on my reading list because I’ve, I’ve yet to hear someone say it hasn’t transformed their thinking and just changed how they’re approaching, uh, their life and their values.

Emily (45:24): It absolutely did for me as well. I would say that was like my book of 2022 that like changed my thinking. Um, and this isn’t necessarily about specifically tying financial goals to different life stages, but just tying things you want to do to different life stages. And it really made me think differently about the opportunities that were available to me when I was in graduate school, for example, um, or out of graduate school, but before having children and what, uh, regrets I have from those times. But also what I’m glad that I took advantage of because I could see that, you know, opportunities close as you move through different phases of life. And so it’s just, um, I don’t, it wasn’t like a sad book for me, but just really helping me think about how to maximize the stage that I’m in now and thinking about what can be put off until later stages of life in terms of, um, accomplishing them, whether that’s with your finances or in other areas. So I do highly recommend that book, um, to every reader. It may make you feel better actually about the, the stage that you’re in if you’re still in graduate school or something like that. So thank you for the thought. Thank you for the opportunity to plug one of my favorite books. Um, and Amanda, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.

Amanda (46:25): Thank you, Emily.

Outtro

Emily (46:35): 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.

Can You Earn Money from Publishing a Scholarly Book?

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer, a developmental editor with Manuscript Works specializing in authors publishing with scholarly presses. Laura has personally published two books with university presses and has a third under contract and has worked with hundreds of other authors. Laura describes why a prospective author would choose a scholarly press over a household-name publisher or self-publishing. Laura and Emily systematically discuss how publishers earn money, how authors earn money (directly and indirectly) from their books, and the costs of publication. While publishing with a scholarly press is primarily a labor of love, Laura gives ranges and examples of how much an author might earn from royalties and an advance, if any, depending on the type of book they publish.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Can You Earn Money from Publishing a Scholarly Book?

Teaser

Laura (00:00): But if you have research that is applicable in industry or policy, or places that have kind of other kinds of funding, you can command more money than you ever would make from the book itself, in speaker’s fees, or consulting fees or things like that. So, you can sort of think of the book as a strategic investment in your reputation and your platform that then would allow you to expand higher goals In other venues.

Introduction

Emily (00:34): 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.

Emily (01:02): This is Season 17, Episode 5, and today my guest is Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer, a developmental editor with Manuscript Works specializing in authors publishing with scholarly presses. Laura has personally published two books with university presses and has a third under contract and has worked with hundreds of other authors. Laura describes why a prospective author would choose a scholarly press over a household-name publisher or self-publishing. Laura and I systematically discuss how publishers earn money, how authors earn money (directly and indirectly) from their books, and the costs of publication. While publishing with a scholarly press is primarily a labor of love, Laura gives ranges and examples of how much an author might earn from royalties and an advance, if any, depending on the type of book they publish.

Emily (01:53): The tax year 2023 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. I do license these workshops to universities, but in the case that yours declines your request for sponsorship, you can purchase the appropriate version as an individual. Go to PFforPhDs.com/taxreturnworkshop/ to read more details and purchase the workshop. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s17e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:58): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer, who’s the owner of Manuscript Works. Laura and I kind of met on Twitter. She was recommended to me by another past podcast guest Dr. Katie Peplin. And Laura is a developmental editor of sorts. And so we’re gonna get into more of that line of work. And actually in preparation for this interview, I read her excellent book, the book proposal book, which is all about people publishing books with scholarly presses. So that is the subject for our interview today. Laura, would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Laura (03:30): Yeah, I’m so happy to be here. Um, so yes, my name is Laura Portwood-Stacer. For the past nine years, I have run a company called Manuscript Works, where I help authors, um, navigate the book publishing process, specifically scholarly authors. Um, building on my background as an academic, um, I got a PhD. I published my dissertation as a book. Um, and now I’ve moved on to helping others navigate that process, which can be very anxiety provoking and you know, there’s not a lot of guidance out there, so I’m trying to fill in that gap.

Scholarly Publishing, Trade Publishing, and Self-Publishing

Emily (04:02): Yeah, and so any listeners who want to go down this route, certainly again, I’m recommending the book proposal book. I found it very, very enlightening. Um, but we’re actually gonna be talking more today about the financial side of this because of course this is a personal finance, um, podcast. And because, um, that was left a little bit vague, I think, in your book, so I’m gonna see if you’re willing to share some, uh, more specific numbers or number ranges with us, um, as we’re going through the interview today. Um, so first of all, I just wanna help the listener understand the distinction between what we’re calling a scholarly press and then the publishing industry that they may be more familiar with, and then the self-publishing industry. So can you just tell us a little bit about how someone who thinks they would like to publish a book at some point, how they might know which is the right route for them to go?

Laura (04:47): Yeah, so I’ll say, uh, scholarly publishing is, um, sort of a narrow subset of the larger sort of traditional publishing industry, and it’s really focused on a certain segment of reader and a certain, um, distribution channel. So your readers, if you’re publishing with a scholarly press, your readers are going to be other scholars, um, people who are doing research, who are citing previous research in their own research, who are building on your research to write their own books or their own articles or, um, grants or whatever it is they’re doing. Um, and, and the distribution would be mostly directly to other scholars who might, you know, purchase from a publisher or purchase from an online retailer. Um, and institutional libraries, public libraries, um, uh, places that are sort of invested in furthering scholarly knowledge, right? So the focus is on scholarship, not necessarily on entertainment or, um, you know, personal improvement or the kind of things that you might pick up a book from Barnes and Noble for. Um, it’s really has sort of a professional scholarly bent to it. Um, whereas probably most of the publishers you’ve heard of that are household names that are not university presses. Um, they’re gonna be more focused on commercial books that people are, you know, just gonna wanna spend money on buy as gifts. They’re not necessarily serving that, um, intellectual purpose in the same way. There are some books that cross over from like scholarship to, um, a more broad audience. Um, and we can talk about where those kinds of books get published. Um, uh, but, but yeah, so that’s sort of the distinction between a trade publisher and a scholarly publisher. And a trade publisher, of course, is gonna be mostly selling in bookstore online retailers. They’re focus is not gonna be libraries or universities. Um, and then self-publishing is sort of a totally separate avenue. Um, and you know, I guess the difference there is that the, the distribution is kind of all up to you as as the publish as the writer. So you would need to find your readers. Um, you’re not sort of tapping into that built-in infrastructure of a scholarly publisher or a trade publisher.

Emily (07:19): I see. That makes total sense. And what really, I mean, maybe this is obvious to other people, but what impressed me with reading your book was like, oh, I’m really seeing how much work the publisher is putting into each one of these books that goes out. And of course, the audience that they have in mind, like you were saying earlier, and that is in the self-publishing realm, completely up to the author whether or not you’re going to invest in other people to help improve the work and and so forth. But that’s all part of the, the process when you go with, um, either a scholarly press or a trade press, right?

Laura (07:51): Yes. Yeah, and I’ll say that’s, you know, often there’s a perception among scholars that, you know, presses just profit off of our work and, and we provide this for free and we don’t make any money off of our books, so what are we getting out of it? But one of the big things you get out of it is that infrastructure that is already in place at the publisher where they know how to peer review the books, improve the content, um, produce the book so they look nice, then distribute it to the places that are most likely to buy it. All of that stuff is like, happens on the publisher’s end. Yeah.

Emily (08:23): Absolutely. Thank you so much for clarifying that. Okay. Now I wanna hear a little bit more about your books that you’ve published. Sure. What the process is kinda like, and then also what you do now for clients.

Laura’s Book Publishing Journeys

Laura (08:33): Yeah, so I have published two books to date. Um, I have a third under contract. Um, so my first book was a revision of my doctoral dissertation. Um, pretty typical straight straightforward process there. Um, I pitched it to a small independent publisher that got, um, absorbed by a larger commercial academic publisher. Um, so it was ultimately published with that larger publisher. Um, you know, it went through peer review. I did not receive an advance for that book. It has made minimal royalties, you know, a little bit over time, but not much. Um, but I wrote it for, you know, career reasons to just sort of get my research out there to make me more attractive on the job market. You know, kind of the typical reasons that a scholar would try to publish their dissertation. Um, my second book, which uh, was published, let’s see about eight years later, was the book proposal book, um, which is, um, it’s, you know, it’s a practical how to kind of book, uh, it’s, it is sort of research based in that it draws on my own sort of personal experience helping authors get their books published and write book proposals that impress the publishers they want to impress. Um, and you know, I did some research into the publishing industry to sort of inform that, the advice that’s in that book. Um, but, you know, it’s a different kind of, readership has a different kind of purpose. That book has been much more lucrative than the dissertation based book. Um, and we can talk about some of the reasons why, uh, if, if you want to get more into that. Um, and then my third book is currently under contract, so that means that I’ve written a proposal, I’ve pitched it to my publisher. Um, they have accepted it based on the strength of the proposal and on my previous, um, book with them. Um, and I have received part of an advance for it. I will receive the advance in installments, um, but I have not received any royalties for it yet because the manuscript has not been completed, uh, completely revised and approved and accepted for publication. So the book is not in production yet. We’re still a ways out from that.

Emily (10:48): Yeah, that’s fascinating. Um, I definitely wanna talk to you more about the financial aspects of this in a moment, but now I just wanna hear tiny bit more about how you serve your clients because I think it helps the listener to understand that you’ve not only had this personal experience, but you now have like the professional experience of helping, um, shepherd other people through this process.

Supporting Authors From Proposal to Publication

Laura (11:05): Yes. Yeah, so I mean, of course the personal experience is really helpful because I know the emotions that an author goes through. I have all those same anxieties, um, you know, about pitching my work to publishers and making a good impression and all of that. But I would say, um, the, the help I’m able to offer really comes from having been through this process with other people, um, in a wide variety of disciplines. Um, so I, uh, I basically help authors kind of distill what their book is supposed to be into a book proposal, help them write it in a way that is going to connect with publishers, that’s gonna speak to what publishers are looking for, which is not necessarily the same thing that academics are thinking about, um, when they’re thinking about their research. Um, and then, uh, you know, then I’ve, I’ve seen the process follow through where they actually get the contract and the, the offer and then get their book published. So, you know, I do online programs, so I’ve worked with hundreds of authors, um, who have been through this process. So getting to see sort of the different nuances and how it works at different publishers and, and all of that has been really helpful for getting that broad view of how it works.

The Financial Side of Publishing a Book

Emily (12:16): Awesome. So I wanna dive into a little bit more of the, the money aspects now, because that, of course your, your book is taking people step by step through the whole process. Um, but I want to just get some more details about like what people can expect if they <laugh> for financially if they decide to publish a book through this kind of press. I wanna start on how these books make money and how authors make money from them. So am I correct in assuming that money is made from these books by selling these books? Is that the direct way money is made by the publisher?

Laura (12:48): Yes.

Emily (12:48): Okay.

Laura (12:49): Yes.

Emily (12:50): Now, what do the authors get <laugh> after the publisher sells you books? You’ve mentioned advances, you’ve mentioned royalties. Can you define these a little bit further and talk about sort of the scope of what these contracts look like? ’cause some people get advances, some people don’t, maybe the royalties are different amounts for different authors. Like what’s the range here?

Laura (13:06): So yeah, so publishers, you know, even university presses, which are nonprofits, um, so, so they’re not necessarily trying to make a profit, um, but they are trying to stay open and they do rely on book sales to stay open. You know, I think there’s a misconception that they are just funded by their universities and some receive some funding from their universities, but that amount is of course shrinking, uh, with austerity and everything, um, you know, in university administration. So they really do rely on selling their books in order to stay open and keep performing their service to the scholarly community. Um, so, so that’s one reason why they are looking for books with a readership of hopefully hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people will wanna read each book that they put out. Um, so, and, and they are investing tens of thousands of dollars in producing each book. Um, and a lot of that goes toward the labor or the editorial labor, the production labor, um, but also materials, um, you know, everything that goes into making the book as a product. So, um, they are recouping that investment, um, in the form of the, the sales of the book. And in most cases they will share some of that, you know, recoup with the author in the form of royalties. Um, so the author would typically get of small percentage of whatever profit the book makes. So, so yeah, so they’re always sort of calculating, um, projecting profits and losses for each book. And based on that, they may think about, okay, what can we afford to share with the author and still break even on this book, or still even make a little bit of money that we could invest back into our press to help publish maybe some of the books that aren’t gonna sell as well. Um, and that’s where they’re figuring out, you know, how much money they’re gonna share with the author. And, and in advance is, um, the amount of money the, the publisher would give an author upfront before the book even starts selling copies. Um, and that is basically just an incentive to get the author to publish with that press. Um, so that is most likely to come into play when the press believes they have to compete for the book with other publishers. Um, and they’re also going to have to project pretty significant profits from the book, you know, so they’re not sinking even more into it without some prospect of getting it back out. Um, so, so advances, you know, scholarly publishers do sometimes offer advances again under those conditions where they think the book’s going to be profitable and they think they have to compete to land this author. Um, and the range of those advances varies a lot. It could be just in the low hundreds, more of like a token kind of thing. It could be a thousand dollars a and I’m speaking from experience of having worked with people who got advances for their dissertation books. Um, so it does happen. Um, but I would say the range has been from like a thousand, maybe 2,500, maybe $5,000. Um, that would be an advance that might be available. Not common, I would say, but available, um, depending on the project. Um, for, you know, people who are more established in their careers, they have a big name they could choose to publish with a trade press, but they have chosen a university press instead. Um, people who are writing a textbook or something that is likely to be widely adopted, not just read by a few hundred people but read by tens of thousands of college students, um, or, you know, scholars who are gonna use this book for some practical purpose. Um, that’s where you can get a higher advance maybe more in the five figures. Um, it’s not unheard of for a six figure advance to come from a university press, but that would be pretty rare. That would be them competing with a trade press that might be more used to dealing in those kinds of numbers. And they’re gonna expect that book to really pay off for them to help them keep the lights on for all the other books that they sell.

Emily (17:45): So, fascinating. Thank you for telling us those like orders of magnitude for the, the different types of books. That’s really, really helpful. Um, so let’s say, um, whether or not an advance was given, um, I think you said something like when the book sales exceed the costs that have been invested, then royalties are shared with the author. Is, is that correct that royalties don’t come from book number one, but only once costs have been recouped?

Laura (18:11): No.

Emily (18:11): Okay.

Laura (18:12): Um, not exactly. Um, so yeah, it’ll be written into the author’s contract, uh, and, and I’ve seen various types of offers. Uh, some university presses will say, okay, no royalties on the first 500 copies, say, um, ’cause they know they’re not gonna break even until they’ve sold 500 copies. Um, I would say that’s a less common than a royalty from copy one. Um, but you know, the press, it might not break even until later on, but they’ve factored in the fact that they are going to compensate the author something for sales of the book. Um, so, so yeah, it’s really hard to know what that break even point is, but, but publishers are like, you know, they have a lot of data points and they are really projecting out into the future optimistically hoping they’re gonna get to that break even point. Um, but the author will likely seal some money before that point. Probably won’t be a lot of money, but some money.

Emily (19:15): Okay. Let’s, I wanna get some orders of magnitude again. Sure. So let’s say for the example you gave earlier of like someone who’s trying to publish work arising from the dissertation that they wrote, um, that kind of book. How much money would they think they might make in the first year, let’s say? Are we talking two figures, three figures, four figures, five? Like where, what is the order of magnitude there in royalties?

Laura (19:41): Uh, uh, so it’s, um, it’s really hard to generalize, I’ll say. Um, but, so, uh, maybe some other numbers will kind of help this. So let’s say your book, um, retails for, I’m gonna say $20 just for simplicity’s sake, but most academic monographs are gonna be priced a bit higher than that. Um, but let’s say it’s $20, the way that the publisher calculates the royalty, you are likely going to see a dollar or less from each sale of that book. Um, let’s say there’s a, um, sometimes publishers have, um, a library version, a library edition that is, is actually priced at a hundred dollars. Um, ’cause they know only libraries are gonna buy it. They’re not trying to sell that to like your average academic reader, but they are gonna sell it to a library that’s gonna, you know, let dozens of people read it. Um, so they’re gonna sell that for a hundred dollars and the author might see $5. Again, it depends on the, the royalty structure that’s set up in the contract, but so you might see $5 from the sale of that book. So, you know, most academic monographs that begin as dissertations, they’re, you know, they’re gonna sell to a few hundred people realistically. Um, so, you know, let’s say a hundred libraries buy your book, that would be great. That’s a lot of libraries. Um, buying just, you know, a new monograph. Um, so let’s say like very optimistically, you’re getting $5 a copy that’s 500 bucks, right? Um, you know, let’s say 200 individuals buy your book, that was, you’re getting a a dollar a copy on there’s another 200 bucks, so that’s what, $700, right? And you’d be having a good year if you got $700 in your first year, um, you know, you’d be doing, you know, well for an academic monograph. So, uh, yeah, it’s not, not a lot of money.

Emily (22:02): Okay. I’m so glad we know like the order of magnitude, that’s exactly what I wanted. Uh, do you mind me asking, what about a book like yours that’s more, those this practical kind of guide? I know the, uh, what you wrote is part of a series from, uh, Princeton University Press, right? So like, can I have an example either of your book or, or similar books like that?

Laura (22:21): Yeah, yeah. So, um, and I do wanna say all of those numbers were just hypothetical and made up. So it’s not to say like the typical book sells makes $700 in royalties that I’m just, you know, putting it out there. Um, so yeah, so for a book like mine, which is sort of, um, positioned as, um, not, it’s not an academic monograph, you know, it’s not research based in that way. It’s going to be used by many more people than somebody who might just wanna read, um, a very specific, you know, narrow piece of research because it, you know, scientists could read it, humanity scholars, social science, people at all stages of their careers. You know, people who are, um, just finishing a dissertation and wanna publish their first book, people who wanna publish a second or third book, people who are mentoring those people, people who work at publishers, you know, so just have a much broader audience. So, um, the sales expectations for that are much higher, um, and have that it has played out that way, you know, compared to my dissertation book. Um, so I’m gonna try, I’m gonna try and think of, um, the numbers of sales. I think the first year it sold about 6,000 copies, I wanna say I don’t have the royalty statement right in front of me. Um, and the second year it, uh, I don’t think it sold quite that many, but it stayed up there. It was like four to 5,000 I wanna say. Um, and I’ve just gone into the third year, so I don’t have the, the numbers for that yet. So, so that’s a much higher number. And so that has led to, you know, higher royalties. It’s still not by any means the majority of my income. It’s still sort of supplemental income, but it is in the thousands of dollars as opposed to the hundreds.

Emily (24:16): Yes. Very, very good. Thank you so much for doing all this. Yeah. Like, um, order of magnitude and just like level setting and I, I really appreciate that

Commercial

24:25 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

Costs Associated with Publishing

Emily (25:16): I wanna talk more now about, um, not how the authors are making money, but the costs associated with publishing. You mentioned earlier that a publisher could be investing tens of thousands of dollars for each book that they’re putting out there. So can you tell us like, what, where are those costs coming from? Obviously I understand printing the book and so forth and there’s labor. What, what are the different maybe phases, uh, different types of people who have their hands on the book, what their different jobs are? And then I, I read in your book sometimes the publisher is gonna pay for these costs, but then also sometimes the author might pay some of the costs of, of this process. So can you kind of break that down as well?

Laura (25:52): Yeah, so, so the costs that the publisher is going to incur, you know, the, it’s the editorial labor, the editor that you’re emailing back and forth with the person who is, um, sending your manuscript to peer reviewers, wrangling those peer reviewers, then getting the reports. Then, um, you know, inside the publisher they’re making, um, presentations and pitches for your book that you might not even be aware of as the author, but the editor is doing all of that labor to get the publisher on board to say they wanna publish your book, all of that. Um, and that, that doesn’t even include like giving you feedback on the manuscript itself. Some acquisitions editors are able to do a little bit of that, um, but most don’t really have the time to give that kind of attention to the manuscript. Their, their role is more of a project manager, um, and, and an advocate for the project within the press. Um, so that happens within the press. Um, then, you know, there’s, uh, the, the production, so designing a cover, um, type setting the manuscript, so it looks like a book that can be printed on pages. There’s some design that goes into that as well. Um, most scholarly publishers do engage their own copy editors and proofreaders, um, where they would, you know, make sure the final version is like stylistically correct and grammatically and all of that. Um, uh, and then there’s the marketing and the publicity and, and all of that that goes to like making sure people know about the book and wanna buy the book. Um, and that’s not even getting into the, like the physical production of the book, which in my understanding is beyond the tens of thousands of dollars, the tens of thousands of dollars is just to get to that first proof electronically that they can then use to print the book and ship the copies and all of that. Um, so, so yeah, there’s a lot that’s going on there that is heavy on labor and so that just, um, incurs costs. Um, and of course none of that is what the author is also investing. So if you want deep feedback on your manuscript, that often doesn’t come from the publisher. It would come from a freelance developmental editor, um, somebody like myself, uh, or you know, my freelance colleagues. Um, and that money would come out of the author’s pocket usually. Um, and that could cost thousands of dollars, um, depending on sort of the level of feedback you’re looking for and how experienced of an editor you want and all of that. Um, there are also some costs associated with, um, the, you know, if you want images in your book, um, do you need to purchase the permission to reprint those images from whoever owns the rights? Um, if you want tables and diagrams, those have to be professionally drawn. Um, you might have a mockup, but then somebody’s going to have to draw that and make it look good enough to be in the book. So you might pay somebody to do that. Your publisher might hire someone to do that or have someone internal do that. They might pass that cost along to you. Um, since that’s sort of a choice you’ve made to include that in your book. Um, if you are citing, um, copyright protected material, you often need permission depending on how you’re using it. Um, that’s another thing the author is often expected to cover. Um, and then open access costs. Some publishers, you know, have, uh, infrastructure in place and they cover the cost of the open access. And when I say they cover the cost, they’re getting a grant or a subsidy or something to be able to do that. Um, um, but some will ask the author to pay a subvention, um, to, in order to make it possible to give the book away for free, essentially, thus, you know, reducing the revenue that might be expected from the book. Um, so, so i, I don’t know if that even covers everything that you asked about, but those are some of the costs that go into making a book and some of which are born by the author, some by the publisher.

Emily (30:07): Well, for example, in one of the later chapters of your book, you mentioned creating the index and you recommended yes, getting a professional to do that. That was something I was like, I never would’ve thought that was something that really would require like to do it. Well, it would require a professional. And so, and again, that’s a kind of cost I think you mentioned would probably be on the author most likely. Yes. So I was just kind wondering in general. Yeah, I mean you answered that very well. Thank you so much because it’s a little bit mind blowing just as a reader to understand all the different, um, people and elements that go into the production of a book.

Laura (30:39): Yeah, yeah. So the index thing, indexing thing is a great point. So yes, while presses often do cover a copy editor and a proof, not a proofreader, they’ll cover a copy editor. They will ask the author to proofread the proofs, the typeset proofs, and then the author might decide they wanna hire a professional proofreader or they might just do it themselves to make sure there’s no errors. Um, but the index is almost never covered by the publisher. It is something you can negotiate sometimes, again, if you have like an attractive project and they’re the publisher’s trying to get you to sign with them, um, sometimes they will cover it or um, charge it against your royalties. Um, but often you do, the author does need to provide the index, which again, you can DIY it and you get what you pay for kind of, um, or you can pay a professional indexer, which could cost a thousand dollars or more. Um, yeah, so it’s an investment the author makes in hoping it just makes her a better book product that people will use and cite and all those things we want for our books.

Emily (31:41): And I believe I also read in your book that sometimes this is what an advance is used for. Like the author might try to negotiate for an advance knowing that those are, there are cost coming down the line that they can use in advance to cover. It’s very different from the way I think of an advance, like in a, you know, larger household name publisher kind of situation. Um, and maybe that’s like just naive of me just not understanding much about the publication process. So I am getting the impression that we’re not making a living off of these books <laugh> maybe until you’ve published one every year for your entire career, maybe that layered by then you would have enough. Um, so given that, um, if authors are not really making that much money, you know, maybe hundreds or few thousands of dollars, um, per year directly from their books, how are they able to use those books to leverage into their careers, to earning more money, advancing their career in other ways? How does the books serve them in a, a less direct monetary way?

Laura (32:37): Yeah, I love this question because this is really what it’s about for scholarly books. It’s the book itself is an investment of labor, of time, of possibly money, um, that you’re hoping will pay off in some other arena, not necessarily directly through, you know, your royalties or in advance. And I do wanna say there’s a little sidebar, like commercial publishing is not that much more lucrative. Yes, we know about the celebrities who get the six figure advances or more, um, but most people who are writers who are just, you know, writing trade books also have another job. Like they’re not making their complete income off of writing their books. Much like academics who, you know, often if they’re writing academic books have an academic position, um, where they’re making some a salary, you know, that is their main source of income. And so the investment of writing an ac academic book is often for that job. It’s, you might need to write a book in order to um, you know, pass your three year review or go up for tenure. Um, a book might be an expectation in your field, so you’re not writing the book ’cause you’re gonna make money on the book, you’re writing the book because you hope you can keep your job, um, as a part of having published that book. Um, and you know, I’ve worked with authors who already have tenure but are wanna go up for full professor, which is a significant, um, raise, uh, in income, you know, in their salary and they can use the book toward that. So they see the investment of the book as paying off indirectly in that other way. Um, there’s also, um, you know, other sort of financial opportunities that could come from having written a book. So if you are invited to give talks based on your research, um, you know, giving talks at universities doesn’t always pay that much. It sort of depends on how in demand you are and, and how much funding those universities have to pay speakers. But if you have research that is applicable in industry or policy, um, or places that have kind of other kinds of funding, you can command more money than you ever would make from the book itself, um, in speaker’s fees, um, or consulting fees or things like that. So, um, you can sort of think of the book as a strategic investment in your reputation and your platform that then would allow you to command higher fees in other venues.

Emily (35:14): Yeah, I spoke with, uh, an author recently, actually, she was self-published, um, who described her book as like a business card, like going out into the world in front of her and opportunities come back to her because people are reading and using the book, right? So it’s not necessarily about that money that’s made directly. That’s nice, that helps. But as you said, there’s much more opportunity could be depending on, on the subject of the book on the backend through these other mechanisms. Um, but yeah, thank you for giving us that like wider picture of like why people would go through this process, which clearly is very time consuming and, and very full of labor and, and not, um, immediately seeing much ROI financially from it. Um, yeah, that’s great. Yeah.

Laura (35:55): Yeah. And I’ll say, uh, you know, many scholars, intellectuals, you know, they just have an intrinsic desire to share their knowledge and what they have found and what they’ve spent these years studying and discovering and concluding. Um, so I would say the majority of people I work with are, the money’s a bonus, you know, but what they’re really trying to do is just like, get the work out there. Um, and the book is the way they do that.

Emily (36:20): I’m wondering, do you ever work with people who are not academics? Like I sometimes hear people describe themselves as like independent scholars or something like that. Like are, would they still be a type of author who would publish with Yes. Scholarly process?

Laura (36:33): Yes, absolutely. I do work with many, um, independent scholars, people who have know, retired from academic careers or, um, just decided not to pursue one for whatever reason. Um, I would say, and those are the people who are sort of the most, I intrinsically motivated to share the work, um, because yeah, like what’s the gain for them? They’re not really getting paid to write the book, getting paid much. Um, and, and any payoff from it would come like later down the road. So, um, I, you know, I have many clients who are in that position. I will say it’s, it’s, you may have a bit less to invest in the book, you know, if you don’t have funding from a university, uh, you know, a research grant or something like that. Um, so, uh, yet you, everyone has to sort of make their own calculation of what it’s worth to them to invest in the book upfront.

Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer’s Contact Information

Emily (37:29): I see. Well, Laura, this interview has been so insightful. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and letting us know, um, all that you’ve learned and all that you’ve experienced through this publishing process. Would you please let people know how they can get in touch with you if they’d like to follow up?

Laura (37:44): Yeah, so I have a weekly newsletter, um, that’s probably the, the easiest place to find me. It’s the manuscript works newsletter. If you go to newsletter.manuscriptworks.com, um, you can get that, that shares lots of knowledge about scholarly book publishing and also some, you know, brief announcements of programs that I offer and um, ways that I support authors. Um, yeah, so that’s probably the best place to find me, but, uh, my more general home on the internet is just manuscriptworks.com.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (38:14): Excellent. And I’d like to conclude with the question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for an early career PhD grad student, someone recently out of grad school or a postdoc? And that could be something that we’ve touched on in the course of this interview, or it could be something completely new

Laura (38:30): To understand the publishing ecosystem and where the money flows in and where it flows out and how much is gonna flow to you and be realistic about how that all works. Um, so I would not expect, I would not treat a book as, uh, a direct financial investment. You know, it may be a financial drain in many ways, but you think about the sort of broader context and, and what it might do for you.

Emily (38:54): Very good. I really think we’ve either done that in this interview or given people a really good head start on that process in the course of the interview. So Laura, again, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for agreeing to come on and um, I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Laura (39:06): Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Outtro

Emily (39:13): 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: 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.

This PhD’s Social Mission Pulled Her from Academia into Entrepreneurship

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Rasheda Weaver, the founder of the Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory. Rasheda studied and taught social entrepreneurship as a graduate student and faculty member and along the way launched her own social enterprise out of her research and work with social entrepreneurs. As her business grew, she felt pulled toward full-time entrepreneurship and eventually left her faculty position. Rasheda and Emily discuss the financial steps that Rasheda took while still in her full-time job to give herself runway when she went full-time in her business, including opportunities uniquely available inside academia. Rasheda describes her weekly schedule in detail and how much time and money she allows herself to invest in physical and mental health and her growing business. If you are passionate about a social cause, don’t miss this interview—even if you’re not currently pursuing or planning to pursue entrepreneurship!

Links Mentioned in the Episode

S14E6 image: This PhD's Social Mission Pulled Her from Academia into Entrepreneurship

Teaser

00:00 Rasheda: It was just like everything just started to come to a head because I started getting a lot of speaking engagement opportunities that were paying thousands of dollars. And then the Bootcamp was doing well and then, you know, it was just all these different things happening, and I was teaching four classes as an academic. I just felt like I was being pulled in a lot of directions, and I could still do the teaching that I was doing in the classroom for Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory. It’s just a different format. Sometimes it’s online, sometimes it’s in person, but it’s the same thing with a lot less stress.

Introduction

00:34 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 14, Episode 6, and today my guest is Dr. Rasheda Weaver, the founder of the Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory. Rasheda studied and taught social entrepreneurship as a graduate student and faculty member and along the way launched her own social enterprise out of her research and work with social entrepreneurs. As her business grew, she felt pulled toward full-time entrepreneurship and eventually left her faculty position. Rasheda and I discuss the financial steps that Rasheda took while still in her full-time job to give herself runway when she went full-time in her business, including opportunities uniquely available inside academia. Rasheda describes her weekly schedule in detail and how much time and money she allows herself to invest in physical and mental health and her growing business. If you are passionate about a social cause, don’t miss this interview—even if you’re not currently pursuing or planning to pursue entrepreneurship!

02:00 Emily: We’re within one month of the deadline to file your annual tax return, pay your quarter 1 2023 estimated tax, and finish contributing to your 2022 Roth IRA. If you want some help with two or more of those actions, this is a perfect time to consider joining the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. Within just your first month of membership, you can take my tax return preparation workshop and estimated tax workshop, complete the Open Your First IRA Challenge, and attend our next general discussion and Q&A call to ask your questions directly to me on April 11, 2023. This can be the month that you really get on top of your finances! Again, go to PFforPhDs.community to check out all that you gain access to with the membership… and join us today! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s14e6/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Rasheda Weaver.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:12 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Rasheda Weaver. She is the founder, creator, owner, CEO of the Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory. She’s also a former faculty member. So Rasheda, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. And would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

03:30 Rasheda: Yes, it’s my pleasure to join you. Thank you Dr. Roberts for having me! And so my name once again, Dr. Rasheda L. Weaver. And I’m currently the founder and CEO of Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory that I also call WSED. And I’ve been a faculty member for over five years and have taught over 1,000 students globally. I started my career at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont as an assistant professor of community entrepreneurship. And most recently I worked for Iona College for the last four years. And I was their first assistant professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at their Hynes Institute. And that was started with the 15 million grant in 2017. And so I came on and literally I was the only faculty member, so I helped build the teaching, the research, and the whole service programming.

04:15 Emily: Fantastic! And so, our kind of topic today is your journey from academia into entrepreneurship, but it’s so interesting because it’s like your academic topic of social entrepreneurship is also like you’re living it, right? So it’s like a meta thing going on here.

04:29 Rasheda: Absolutely.

Defining Social Entrepreneurship

04:29 Emily: So, can you tell us a little bit more about like what is social entrepreneurship and why do you think that grad students and PhDs should understand this and explore it?

04:38 Rasheda: Yes. So, social entrepreneurship is a process of using business to combat social problems, societal issues like hunger, poverty, inequality, disease. Any kind of major social issue. And it’s really organizations that, a social enterprise is an organization and it can be a nonprofit organization or for-profit, but we’re often seeing a combination of both. So, somebody has a for-profit business that they use to make all this money, and then a nonprofit that they use to funnel the money into different charities or social causes and things like that. And so, I’ve been studying this. It’s a new field, so it’s been around for 40 to 50 years. And my book, Social Entrepreneurship: A Practical Introduction, actually comes out December 15th, 2022. And it’s called a Practical Introduction because the majority of the world does not know this term. And it’s really important for graduate students and PhDs, in particular, to know this term because many of us already, if not all of us, have a social issue that we’re very passionate about.

05:39 Rasheda: That’s why many of us become social scientists like the both of us. And when you understand how, you know, entrepreneurship can be utilized to fulfill the same goals that you’re trying to fulfill in as a PhD, but you could actually sustain yourself with it, I think that’s just very, very important for PhDs to understand and graduate students. It also provides an alternative career path for academics that maybe want to pursue entrepreneurship or have a different kind of vision for what they envision their career to be like, or what they envision life to be like. And I’ll talk about that a lot today. And you know, social entrepreneurship just paves the way for us to do that.

06:21 Emily: I’m actually struggling to think of an example of a PhD who maybe would want to start a business where it wasn’t socially motivated, almost like can almost anything fall under this umbrella?

06:33 Rasheda: Yes. But it would have to be positive social change. Because I always say that social change, you know a riot can be social change <laugh>, but it has to be positive, something that uplifts community advances, human and community development. So I would say the majority, if not all PhDs are already working towards some kind of societal change anyway.

Do Solopreneurs Count?

06:53 Emily: Yeah. I’m thinking of myself now. And certainly there’s a, I want to better the lives of graduate students and postdocs and PhDs as like part of the mission for like my business. So, I’m actually wondering a little bit more about the entrepreneurship term within social entrepreneurship. Do I count as like a solopreneur single-person business? Or is it only like enterprises?

07:14 Rasheda: You do! You most definitely count and especially because your mission is to, you know, improve the financial well-being, essentially, of PhDs. And that is very important I think as a PhD, I understand the importance of that, but I think maybe the majority of people might not understand it. But what you’re doing is you’re helping people that are literally contributing to society in a positive manner. Literally building generations upon generations of, you know, future professionals and leaders for our world. And you’re saying let’s take care of yourself financially because finances affect our holistic well-being. It just does.

Starting Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory

07:52 Emily: Absolutely. That’s how I think about the mission of like I and what I do on the financial side of things. It’s like supporting and bolstering and helping all these individual PhDs with all of their dreams and their missions for how to better our world because, and they’re so talented and I just want them to be able to do their work and contribute and like, and of course, the finances being part of that is something that can enable them to, you know, live those dreams out and yeah. So, that’s <laugh> my motivation for being here. Let’s talk a little bit more about your business and how and when did you start that?

08:25 Rasheda: Yeah, so I started Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory in 2018, 1 year after finishing my dissertation. So, my dissertation was the first large-scale study in the United States of social enterprise business models. So, their social mission, how they make money, and what legal structure they incorporate under, so the perfect way to help you design a social enterprise. And I found all this data, and I had literally mapped 1,200 social enterprises across the United States. And so I said, well, this information should be public. And I first just started it as a public database. And so, it’s sort of like an accident that happened that turned out to be now my full-time career because I made the database public. But then I realized in order to have this website and to have the URL and to own the domain and all that, I have to finance that and I was doing it out of my pocket.

09:12 Rasheda: So, I started selling the database in order to cover those expenses. And then once I started seeing what was happening with the people that were using the database, like they’re starting companies that are helping them make six-figure salaries. And I was like, “Wow, okay. Like, I didn’t know that could happen.” And then, so I started doing more, but then other people, entrepreneurs started reaching out to me and saying, “Well, we’re social entrepreneurs. We really need to learn how to make money. Like the database is wonderful.” And that was great for academics and people that know how to use like email databases for business. But the average entrepreneur wanted to know how can I help them with their finances? How can I help them design a social impact model that enables them to maximize the impact they’re having on their local communities? And so, I developed the Ready, Set, Launch Social Enterprise Bootcamp during the pandemic actually because people started reaching out to me. And that’s a five-day online bootcamp. It’ll be in person in 2023. We’re doing it in Italy, but it’s a five-day bootcamp that literally trains entrepreneurs how to design organizations with a strong financial mission as well as a strong social mission.

10:19 Emily: I love to see that progression over those years of like, you turned your dissertation into something useful for the broader community outside of academia. And then you listened to the people who were using it and understood what their needs were and understood how you could take one more step to fulfill those, and then you did it again, and so forth. And I’m sure you’ll keep iterating that way.

10:39 Rasheda: I’m doing it again now with the coaching <Laugh>.

10:41 Emily: Yes, exactly.

10:43 Rasheda: Because after people have taken the Bootcamp, they’re like, well, well some of them just missed me because they missed the Bootcamp. It’s a really good environment, and someone to do coaching. But now they’re asking for a longer program, which is like a monthly training program where entrepreneurs can meet with me and I’ll help them throughout the month and we figure out one task that they’re working on and we’ll work on this throughout the month. Month two, we do another task. And so, they’re coming to me with these issues that they’re having as entrepreneurs, and I’m just delivering solutions, essentially. Which is what social entrepreneurs do. We deliver solutions to social problems,

Transitioning from Faculty to Full-Time Entrepreneur

11:15 Emily: This sounds like so seamless to me <laugh>. But you had another job when you started this. Like, I can feel that like this business was pulling you, “Oh, you can see how your work is being applied and helping all these people and this is wonderful,” but you still had this other job. So like, how did you make this transition, especially financially, from being a faculty member and having this side business to doing the business full-time?

11:37 Rasheda: Yeah, I love that you used the word pulling, because it really was. Because I would be in the classroom and I can see the impact that I’m having on students in the classroom and I love that as well. But at the same time, I remember in spring 2022, it was just like everything just started to come to a head because I started getting a lot of speaking engagement opportunities that were paying thousands of dollars. And then the Bootcamp was doing well and then, you know, it was just all these different things happening. And I was teaching four classes as an academic and then the grading and you know, I love teaching classes, but there’s so much more to academia and the service and being the only faculty member for my institute. I just felt like I was being pulled in a lot of directions, and I could still do the teaching that I was doing in the classroom for Social Enterprise Directory, which is, I’m doing the same thing, it’s just a different format.

12:27 Rasheda: Sometimes it’s online, sometimes it’s in person, but it’s the same thing with a lot less stress. And so, it really was sort of pulling me and then I think, you know the pandemic inspired me to also just like think about life a lot differently. Like, what do I genuinely want? I want peace, I want relaxation, I want financial prosperity. When the pandemic hit, I started saving money like a crazy person. Like I’m like, I don’t know if this is going to be like the next Great Depression. And so, I went from saving like $600 from my paycheck to $800 to sometimes a thousand dollars per paycheck. Just in case something were to happen to my job and I needed to do entrepreneurship full-time. And I started just dreaming a bit more. But then when I realized that, you know, what the pandemic allowed me to do and the pulling that was happening to me at the same time, it just allowed me to sort of push me into maybe what’s really my destiny. Because I always actually wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I went into academia hoping to do more research. And like I said, I was teaching four classes, so there’s not a lot of research happening there. I was still able to maintain it, but I was losing myself as an individual in the process.

13:36 Emily: Yeah. Wow. Okay. I actually want to back up a tiny bit and like, before you left your full-time position, you know, we’re in the midst of the pandemic, so it’s a strange time already. You mentioned you upped your savings because you were concerned about financial security as so many people were at that time and still are <laugh>. So, were there any other steps that you feel like are worth mentioning in terms of how you really got the business off the ground in scaling up and so forth that you did financially while you still had your full-time job?

14:04 Rasheda: Oh yes. A lot of this happened during my first year on the tenure track when I was at the University of Vermont. So, they had a really great startup package and well, I was able to negotiate that, so you have to negotiate your startup package. I think you should be very, very strategic about how you do that. And I negotiated one that was very you know, it just directly aligned with me taking steps to further my dissertation research. And I planned a whole social enterprise day party where I invited scholars and social entrepreneurs from all around the country to come help celebrate the introduction of Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory. Not at that time realizing that it would’ve been a business idea, just an output of my research and a resource to my field. And I think that’s so, so important because we’re not just academics.

14:49 Rasheda: We are a part of a whole entire field as academics and that we can contribute in so many more ways than we realize. And so, I never just thought of myself as, you know, I’m going to use this startup package and it’s just going to fund what I do at the University of Vermont. I thought about it in terms of the bigger field overall. Because this is a journey, a life journey, and I’m committed to the field for life essentially. Also, one thing I took advantage of different funding opportunities. So, a lot of campuses now will actually have entrepreneurship funding for faculty. And I’m seeing this more and more. And University of Vermont had developed a program like that. And so, I was able to literally use some of that funding to commercialize Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory.

15:34 Emily: That’s fantastic! And definitely, I mean it’s so great to think about academia as like an incubator. I mean, sometimes it’s literally they have like incubators for small businesses, but you were able to use your position as a faculty member and your access to these resources to sort of incubate your own business. And I love what you’re saying about like the continuity here between yourself, your business. Like you weren’t thinking of yourself as just a faculty member, you’re thinking about yourself as a contributor to this field and you’re still doing that. It’s just, you have a slightly different title in the way that you’re doing it. And so, it does make sense to me that investing in you and your business is still in alignment with that phase of what you were doing inside academia. Does that make sense?

16:17 Rasheda: Absolutely. Yeah.

16:18 Emily: Yeah. So, I still see alignment there. Is there anything else that you want to share with us? You know, we’re talking about these steps that you took prior to leaving your full-time job. Anything else you want to share with us about this transition from full-time academia with the side business to that full-time business owner?

Understanding Root Causes of Issues

16:34 Rasheda: Absolutely. I think one of the things that all PhDs have in common is that we are really adept at studying the root causes of why issues occur, right? We’re studying, in order to do our dissertation, we have to look at the history of the problem that we’re trying to address in our dissertation or the question that we’re trying to answer. That is the same thing all entrepreneurs do, social or not. Because they have to find a problem, and they have to develop a solution. But what PhDs do differently is, we find the deep root cause and the history of that problem. And because we’ve done that, once you’re trained in entrepreneurship, you can see the holes that exist in the market and you can fill them. All you need is entrepreneurial training to fill them. Because you already have the understanding of the problem, you have a better understanding than the majority of the planet has. And so, I just want to empower you to really understand that.

17:24 Emily: Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And can you talk a little bit more about how that applied to your business and your journey?

17:29 Rasheda: Yes, because I could see those problems so clearly, and I always saw, you know, entrepreneurship, it’s not like the field of psychology, for example, where psychology is the mind. It’s something that you can’t really touch. I’m working with entrepreneurs, or nonprofit organizations, or any organization. And so, my work directly has an impact on someone else. And so, I can work with them and I can learn from them and talk to them and apply my work to them. And because I can do that, what it’s taught me was how do I communicate with those people? Not just communicate with journals, not just communicate with the research audience, but how do I communicate? Like I started doing policy briefs through the Scholar Strategy Network, an organization that any PhD can join. And so, they talk to civic groups, they teach, they train you in how to talk to policymakers. So, I literally started doing that and getting my work out into the community. So, that’s how, actually, social entrepreneurs found me <laugh> because they saw my work in newspapers and in policy briefs and in magazines and on YouTube. And they found me and said, “Well, we like that you’re doing this, but this is what we need.” And so, I was able to then develop the solutions for them.

Scheduling Paid and Unpaid Business Work

18:36 Emily: This is reminding me of a need that I’ve sort of started sensing in my own business and for myself which is that I want to do more advocacy work. And I am now trying to see how I can set up my business so that I have time in my schedule to do advocacy work that is not necessarily going to be paid. I’m anticipating that being unpaid, but I still think it’s an important part of like my mission. So how, and I think as like sometimes I feel a little, I don’t know if you ever do as well, jealous of people who have like a salary <laugh>, like a full-time position where like maybe they can take some time to do things that are definitely unpaid on their own because they have this holistic sort of safety net for themselves within their salary.

19:20 Emily: And I’m sort of thinking to myself, how do I do that for me within my business? How do I cover, you know, 20% of my time that’s going to be unpaid by the 80% that I have for paid work? Or whatever the case. And so yeah, I’m just, I think that you are demonstrating how you did this as well, right? Starting as a faculty member. And you’re probably still doing it now as an entrepreneur, right? So like, preserve time within your schedule for things that are going to be unpaid because they further the overall mission of the business slash your own life mission as it relates to work.

19:50 Rasheda: I’m so happy you asked me this question, it actually skips to another question that you had when you gave me the outline. But I dedicate now two days a week just to learning how to make money. So, learning about how to make money and how to grow money. How do I advance multiple, so if you see my vision board from January, 2022, it has all the different streams of income that I have coming in. And so, what I’m doing now that I don’t have a full-time position is I’m using those two days to just figure out how do I multiply the streams of income that I already have. Because if I didn’t, if I hadn’t done that, it would’ve been very hard to leave my job. And so, when things started, you know, getting chaotic and I decided this is not the route that I want to take, and actually if I do go back to academia, it has to be a position that I love and I’m going to thrive in.

20:39 Rasheda: It’s not going to just be any position. I’m not going to just take any job. And so, I wanted to set myself up for success in order to make that a reality. And the reality of doing that is having a solid financial base. And so, literally, taking Mondays and Wednesdays, the same days I had off in academia, because I worked on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I kept those same days. Those are when I do my business stuff, create products, promote things. But Mondays and Wednesdays I’m reading books on estate planning, on investing profit first. You know, I’m reading Smart Women Finish Rich by David Bach and The Latte Factor, all those different things, just learning how to make money because, here’s the truth. And I love this book, The Psychology of Money, that I just finished reading the other day.

21:24 Rasheda: You cannot always, when you’re working for somebody else, there’s a cap on how much you can make. In entrepreneurship, there is no cap. You can make a limitless amount of money. So, what your job as an entrepreneur to do, and this is what I teach in my Bootcamp, you have to figure out how you can get to limitless <laugh>. You know what I mean? And so, there’s a lot of investment that happens. And like, with me putting aside an emergency fund for these couple of years, what I was doing with that was saying, “I’m buying myself time just to learn.” And that is something I talk about a lot in my book. I talk about patient capital. My emergency fund gave me patient capital as opposed to waiting for somebody else to give it to me. I decided to take this time, I gave myself a whole year. We’re just going to learn, and we’re going to implement things. We’re going to test them over time, and we’re going to make certain investments. Like I invested in a book marketing company because if I want to sell books, that’s, you know, being strategic about those investments. And so, yeah.

22:23 Emily: This is something that I did not understand very well when I started my business. I was so focused on making money immediately, that I didn’t give myself the runway that you did and all these wonderful steps you’ve been taking. And I hope the listeners are taking notes about this. I didn’t do the investment in myself and growing in all these like entrepreneurial sort of related ways that you’ve just been discussing. It took me years into this journey before I started making those investments. And then obviously seeing like the returns from it. But it’s just something that now when I talk with other sort of budding like solopreneurs or people who are interested in my journey, I tell them like, be taught either like in a community or buy a coach, or read books. Like you have to make the investment in yourself, like you said, to be able to grow to that level. Because if you stay stuck in the cycle of like, I have to, you know, have 35 billable hours per week to like make my, you know, the nut that I need to survive on, that’s not any way to grow into the future. You may be able to survive on that, but it’s not a path to growth within your business. So, I’m so glad that you said that. It’s such an important message.

Commercial

23:37 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my tax resources, many of which I have updated for tax year 2022. On that page you will find free podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. The absolute most comprehensive and highest quality resources, however, are my asynchronous tax workshops. I’m offering four tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2022, one each for grad students who are U.S. citizens or residents, postdocs who are U.S. citizens or residents, postbacs who are U.S. citizens or residents, and grad students and postdocs who are nonresidents. Those tax return preparation workshops are in addition to my estimated tax workshop for grad student, postdoc, and postbac fellows who are U.S. citizens or residents.

24:52 Emily: My preferred method for enrolling you in one of these workshops is to find a sponsor at your university or institute. Typically, that sponsor is a graduate school, graduate student association, postdoc office, postdoc association, or an individual school or department. I would very much appreciate you recommending one or more of these workshops to a potential sponsor. If that doesn’t work out, I do sell these workshops to individuals, but I think it’s always worth trying to get it into your hands for free or a subsidized cost. Again, you can find all of these free and paid resources, including a page you can send to a potential workshop sponsor, linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

Investing in Yourself and in Your Business

25:37 Emily: Can you give any other examples of how you’ve been doing this investing in yourself slash in your business for present and future growth?

25:47 Rasheda: Absolutely. So, I always say you need time and space for creativity. And so, I have the days, the two days where I’m working on just learning and learning how to invest and then implementing that and then the two days where I’m working and then Fridays are my self-care day. So, I invested in a health coach because I need to be healthy to make great decisions. Like, I’m so serious about this, like I literally eat blueberries because it’s good for your memory and as an academic you need to have a good memory <laugh>. So, that’s how serious I am. You need to have carrots, I hate carrots, but you have to eat carrots because they give you good eyesight and we need things like that in order to read. So, that’s like how serious I am. And I hired a health coach, not because, because I also have a ton of health books, not because I need someone to you know, I can’t do this myself, but you do need accountability.

26:30 Rasheda: You do need guidance. And so, one of my friends, for example, she runs a company called, an eight-figure company, called The Product Boss, where she trains females that have a product to turn their businesses into six- and seven-figure businesses. And so, I started investing in, I appeared on her podcast and then I invested in her social media kit because you can always learn something from someone else. So, I’m investing in myself in a variety of different ways, and I set aside two years. Year one, we’re going to learn a lot and we’re going to implement, we’re going to test and see what works and we’re going to track it, because we’re academics and we’re good at tracking things. And then in year two, I should start to see the flourishing. I’m already seeing the revenue coming in, but I’m reinvesting that into growing the organization.

27:16 Rasheda: And so, when I make a sale, I’m not thinking, “Oh, let me get excited and just sell this.” I do treat myself, but I also you know, I call it being scrappy. Like I started shopping less at Whole Foods and started shopping more at Trader Joe’s and having a budget around those things so I can invest more in my business because one day I’ll be able to make a lot of money and it won’t even matter if I spent, you know, do you know what I mean? Like it’s short-term sacrifices for long-term gain, deferred gratification. And that is what we’ve all done in our PhD programs, but now we have to apply it to entrepreneurship.

27:50 Emily: That’s such a great point of, I sometimes think about the sort of, I guess personality or characteristics that you develop in the course of doing a PhD that are going to very well apply to, it could be your career that’s more conventional afterwards or if it’s entrepreneurship. It’s such a proving ground and you’re going to learn a lot and you’re going to be different when you come out from the PhD. And those skills, those soft skills as well as hard skills can be applied in so many different ways. Now, just because you are on the topic of like your weekly schedule and so forth and I love hearing that rhythm. Can you share with us anything more about how your life looks today and how it’s similar or different from your life as a faculty member?

28:30 Rasheda: I think the most important thing that I noticed, like I feel so good, and like I’m healthier. I’m just not stressed. <Laugh> I don’t have that stress on me and being in academia can be very toxic, and we all know that. Anyone that has a PhD knows that, because we went through a toxic experience getting it. And it was a beautiful experience because it allowed us to become who we are today, but it has severe psychological and physical and medical effects on you. And I think the most important thing that I’m seeing now. And also I think the most important thing I did was be honest about that. Because that’s another reason why I had to get a health coach, right? So, going through this and it’s a holistic health coach as well, so I can talk to her about these things.

29:12 Rasheda: Like yes, I was under a ton of stress last year. How do I heal my body from that stress? You know? So just taking walks in nature, drinking bone broth, like little things like that. And I just, I dedicate less time to work. I don’t work more, I work smarter. I work not harder. I work smarter. It’s like I said, learning how to make more money. Scheduling. I’m having two days for a week where I’m doing deep work in my business and allowing that to just sit so I don’t stress myself out, because understanding that stress isn’t going to help me. And then spending more time with my kids and doing things that I love, like doing art and I want to get back into dancing again. That’s one of the things that, but I have to find somebody that does dancing classes of the day. That’s the hardest thing <laugh>. But things like that. And just making sure I just take care of myself and do things that I love. I think that’s very important.

Time Management and Slow FI Movement

30:02 Emily: I’m a little curious about your time management right now, because I can already see you’ve blocked off what I’ve learned are called theme days, like you said. You know, you have your days of investment in yourself and your business and you have your days of producing you know, saleable work, and you have your day for health and so forth. I wonder, are you tracking your hours and almost like do you see actually even a distinction between the hours you spend working and the hours in your personal life? Or are they all, like the investment in yourself could go either way, right? I don’t know. What do you think about this?

30:33 Rasheda: I do think, I do track my hours now. I had to learn to say no. Like if I can’t, so when my kids get home around 2:30, I just, I can’t work with them home. It becomes stressful. That makes me stressed out and so I have to do everything before two. And so, yeah, in a way it’s like a limit to my hours and I do everything between 10 and two because making time for yoga in the morning <laugh> and making time to take a walk around the blocks, I can get fresh air. That’s just become really, really important. And that’s the beauty of entrepreneurship is that I can choose to do that. And so, once again, I might be making a little less money now. Because here’s the truth, with the kind of organization that I’m running, I literally could make [inaudible] in a year.

31:18 Rasheda: Like, I’ve literally done the math, I’ve started working with government officials and all these things, but I don’t need to do that right now. I need to get my health on track and my family and have a great familial and health foundation so that I can grow later. So, I’m making the sacrifice now, but I know that that’s coming because, one, I’m an entrepreneurship professor, so I know how to do this <laugh>. I’ve literally trained people and I’ve studied it, and it’s like, it’s working. It’s literally working. People are buying the products, people are buying the books. And so, it’s just a matter of scaling that and through investing in myself and learning how to do that in a way that doesn’t deplete me, but in a way that nourishes me. So I can do what I love, but I’m also you know, I’m not sacrificing my health and wellness in the process. Because when I was an academic, I was, I had to, there were sometimes you just, you have deadlines, you have to get, you have to get your slides ready for class, you have to grade by a certain time.

32:09 Rasheda: There’s just all that adrenaline. And like I said, I was the only faculty member teaching four classes. So that was hard. Because if you’re teaching even one class, you know that after you’ve done that you’re just exhausted. It takes a lot of mental and physical energy to do that. And you have to be very alert and you’re just exhausted after one. So, imagine doing four in two days. And it works if you have to do it five days a week or four days a week because what I’ve found is that you need a day off. You need that break day to just help you recuperate from the physical, physical demand of that. But because my programs are online, it just, it takes care of itself, you know? So like when you mentioned a certain amount of billable hours, I don’t have that.

32:49 Rasheda: So, most of my meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays are meeting with people to do things like this, podcasting because I’ve already either developed my programs or I can just dedicate those days to developing online programs that are then there. And then I can create the schedule of the live programs or live talks that I want to do. And I can say “yes” and I can say “no” to whichever opportunity. It’s just all about priorities. So for someone, so for example, if somebody’s single and they have no kids, they can do a lot more than me at this time. And I would say use that as a great opportunity because that’s the benefit of being, you know, a solo, completely solo, like genuinely solo entrepreneur. But if you have kids and you know, I feel like they help me keep my balance, my family. And fortunately I did, I actually had my son while I was an academic while I was in my PhD program. So, I’ve always had to take weekends off and had to sort of navigate around that because I still have to be a mom, you know.

33:43 Emily: Your entire description through this episode of like the synergy between your academic life and your business and what you feel is your life’s mission and then how you arrange your schedule and the investments in yourself and your health and all these things. I don’t know how much you’ve explored, you obviously mentioned earlier you’ve read numerous personal finance books, but the whole like FIRE movement, right? Financial independence and retirement early, there’s a component of that. There’s like a subset which is called Slow FI and maybe you’ve encountered this concept, so like you are going to get to financial independence eventually, like you talked about, okay, well eventually I can build my business. Right now I have a different goal, which is, you know, in this other area. The Slow FI movement is like, make your life awesome right now.

34:25 Emily: And yes, eventually you’ll get to financial independence early retirement, but it almost doesn’t even matter because you’re living such a fabulous life. There’s almost no like end point to like this goal, right? And that set to me just sounds like the life you’re setting up right now of working, you know, part-time doing also investment in yourself and your health and having this wonderful time with your family. There are a lot of parallels of that in my own life. I also only work like four to five hours per weekday because that’s the schedule that allows me to spend a lot of time with my kids when they get home from school. And it’s just, it’s more balanced. I feel like working eight hours a day, yeah, maybe I had the energy of that in my twenties. I don’t anymore. Anyway, so I just.

35:03 Rasheda: And it’s also the stage, the stage of life that we’re in. Like my daughter is three and my son is seven and she’ll be four. And like I just made up my mind and said I have to do Slow FI because I’m very, I love the FIRE movement, but I have to do it slowly right now to still do what I love because that’s nourishing in a different kind of way. And also making money to support the family. But at the same time, I don’t want to miss these moments. So, because money isn’t everything, right? So like I said, I could make, I projected I could make [inaudible] a year like easily. But I want to be here for my daughter. I want to be here for my kids. I want to cook for them. I want to you know, have a thriving romantic life, you know what I mean? Like go on dates and all those things. I love that, and that matters to me. And go on vacations and all that stuff. And so, you know sacrifice in some areas. Well, here’s what I say. I always say, “What I can’t do now, I can do later.” <Laugh>, you know? I won’t do what I can’t do, but what I can do, I will do.

Where Can Listeners Find You?

36:02 Emily: Rasheda, this has been such an invigorating conversation. It’s been so lovely to meet you. I have two more questions for you. The first one is, if anyone else is as excited as I am about this conversation and wants to follow up more with you, where can they find you?

36:14 Rasheda: So, my website is rashedaweaver.com and also my Instagram is @rashedaweaver_PhD. And I’m also on LinkedIn. And that’s been fun. If you sign up for my newsletter, I’m starting a newsletter called Weaver’s Review starting January, so you’ll be able to have updates on me but also updates on social entrepreneurship in general, the field, funding opportunities, employment opportunities, and information about my boot camps and training programs. That’ll all be, you know, we’re going to really be doing that in the next year.

36:46 Emily: Yeah. And mention one more time, I think you said you have a book that’s just about to come out. We’re recording this in December, 2022. So, it’s about to come out, right?

36:53 Rasheda: It comes out exactly one week from today. It’s called Social Entrepreneurship: A Practical Introduction. And the main question that I ask in the book is, if I teach good people how to make money, will they do more good with it? And so you definitely want to get that book because it’s all about entrepreneurship and exactly what we’re talking about. How do you create an organization that allows you to do good for yourself as well as good for your community?

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

37:15 Emily: Fantastic! Okay, Rasheda, the last question that I ask all of my guests is, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or it could be something completely new.

37:29 Rasheda: My best financial advice is that there’s no greater investment in life that you can make than the investment in yourself. So just like I had that emergency fund, I also called it a dream fund. And so, putting money aside, even if you don’t know exactly what you are you going to use it for, emergencies always happen. So, it’s better to have an emergency be annoying than for it to be catastrophic. And so for me, you know, when I became unhappy with my career in academia working there, I just, I was able to just easily transition into entrepreneurship because I had that fund already set up because I was investing in myself even when I didn’t know what the investment really was, <laugh>. And so, I think you should really do that and that’s a holistic investment as well because your health, your wellness, your family, your romance, all that matters into making you the best individual that you’re going to be in. But that all takes investment.

38:23 Emily: Well, Rasheda, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast. It’s been a real pleasure to talk with you!

38:29 Rasheda: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure to be on the podcast, and I’m so happy to get to know you now. I hope to be back and share more!

38:35 Emily: Sounds great!

Outtro

38:41 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.