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Tax-Advantaged Retirement Account Options in Higher Ed and K-12

February 23, 2026 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Daren Card, a computational biochemist working in industry. Daren and his wife moved to Arlington, TX for his PhD and then Boston, MA for his postdoc, and she held K-12 teaching positions in both cities. He shares their financial journey, from managing their student loan debt through opening and funding IRAs. Daren and Emily discuss the tax-advantaged retirement account options available, such as 403(b)s, 457s, and 401(k)s, and how to spot red flags in your employer-sponsored plans.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Tax-Advantaged Retirement Account Options in Higher Ed and K-12

Teaser

Daren (00:00): This was one of these fellowship programs that’s actually channeled through me. So I sort of administered my own award, which is a bit unique, uh, in this way. And, and there’s some upsides to that. But some of the downsides are you don’t get sort of the, the, the financial benefits of, of being attached to a large university.

Introduction

Emily (00:26): 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 (00:54): This is Season 23, Episode 4, and today my guest is Dr. Daren Card, a computational biochemist working in industry. Daren and his wife moved to Arlington, TX for his PhD and then Boston, MA for his postdoc, and she held K-12 teaching positions in both cities. He shares their financial journey, from managing their student loan debt through opening and funding IRAs. Daren and I discuss the tax-advantaged retirement account options available, such as 403(b)s, 457s, and 401(k)s, and how to spot red flags in your employer-sponsored plans.

Emily (01:30):The tax year 2025 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. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the 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 this workshop for you and your peers? 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. Thank you so, so much for doing so! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s23e4/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Daren Card.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:06): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Daren Card, who currently works in industry at Colossal Biosciences as a computational biologist. But we are gonna be taking it back to his grad school days and his postdoc days to talk about his financial journey. And Daren, because this story involves both you and your wife and your kind of joint projects and finances, please introduce yourself and your wife and we’ll get started.

Daren (03:30): Yeah, so, so my name’s Daren as, as you’ve heard, uh, my, my wife’s name is Rachel. Yeah, we’ve, uh, we’re both originally from sort of rural western New York, uh, south of the Buffalo, New York area. And we actually met in high school at the very end of high school. We both shared a, a high school job at Burger King, ironically, a fast food job. And, um, yeah, got to know each other there. Started dating at the very end of high school, and we’ve been together ever since as, as partners in life. So we’re approaching now, uh, 10 years of marriage, uh, next year and 20 years of being together. So it’s been quite a ride. Um, we both sort of navigated through the community college system and the SUNY system in the, in the state University of New York. Um, both were interested in biology, generally speaking. My wife wanted to pursue more veterinary science. I became interested in conservation. Ultimately, uh, I got more interested in the research bug, like a lot of folks do. Um, and that brought us both down to Arlington, Texas, where I did a PhD at that point in time, uh, focused on evolutionary genomics, uh, sort of trying to link the, uh, the, the genes that we have in our, our cells to the actual physical traits that we see, uh, in organisms in, in nature. Um, Rachel worked for a few years in a veterinary field. Um, we ended up getting married in, in 2016, about 10 years ago now, and a week later, actually, Rachel got a new job as a, as a high school teacher, and she’s been doing that since, and she really enjoys that work. So I finished my PhD in 2018 and was fortunate enough to get a, a fellowship from the National Science Foundation, so shout out to NSF and the US government for funding folks like me and the work that we do. Um, and that brought me up to Boston area where I did a five year postdoc at Harvard University. And, uh, that ended about two years ago. And since then, I, I worked a couple years at the Broad Institute as a computational biologist, mostly focused on cancer genomics. And recently, just this summer I moved over, uh, to a computational biologist position at Colossal Biosciences, which is a bit more in my traditional area. So.

Emily (05:20): Wonderful. Thank you. Such, that was a very succinct overview. Let’s rewind a little bit through that process, because I wanna know what your finances, um, and I don’t know at what point you considered those are finances, yours, mine, whatever your situation was. Um, with your now wife, going back to the start of graduate school, what were your finances like? Like did you have assets? Did you have debts at that point? Maybe student loan debt. Um, did you know anything about money <laugh>? Um, and then what was the stipend like when you started grad school?

Daren (05:46): For, for me, you know, both my wife and I came out of, I guess sort of lower to middle class, uh, sort of backgrounds. We were in more of a rural area, so, you know, just didn’t quite have some of the access that you get in sort of urban areas to a lot of, of the, the benefits of, of sort of population density, I guess you could say. So, um, so because of that, you know, we, we both came out of bachelor’s degrees, uh, in that time period with, with basically zero assets, right? And we had to fund our way through, uh, through our undergraduate degrees using debt, unfortunately from, from, uh, student loan debt in the form of government debt, or in some cases private debt as well. So, so yeah, the, the, uh, the, the numerator of the equation here, I guess is zero in the form of assets.

Daren (06:24): Uh, the, the debt that we had, I had in the order of about 60 or so from memory, uh, k worth of debt from my undergrad, uh, education at a state, uh, university. Um, my wife had a bit more, she was about 75K or so, I think. Um, and yeah, as far as sort of knowledge and and mindset at that point in time, you know, minimal knowledge, I guess, you know, we’re both entering adulthood. We, we did share our, our, our finances largely by that point when we moved on to Texas together. Um, which, uh, had a lot of benefits, I would say. Um, and, uh, and yeah, but I’ve just always been sort of a nerd about various things I like to learn. And, and, and for whatever reason, I got the personal finance bug, uh, a couple years into graduate school, you know, um, and, uh, and yeah, just spent a lot of time perusing the internet, basically teaching myself about all this stuff.

Daren (07:10): You know, it’s all out there in some form, right? It’s tax code, um, uh, it’s not the most easiest thing to read, but usually people distill it down for you. And, and I took advantage of that in that time. So, uh, as a grad student, my stipend over my, uh, six years at UT Arlington was on the order of 30K A year, I would say. I was, uh, I was funded at, on a, a teaching assistant line, so I, I taught the whole time, including on the summers. Um, and my spouse, uh, was fortunate to have a bit more income. She sort of hovered around 50 to 60K through that time period. Um, and overall, and I, I do want to point this out, you know, I should have said it before, but I, I, I do think it’s really important to emphasize this. This is a partnership with my wife. Um, she takes as much credit for these successes as I do. I might be the one standing here talking with a PhD. Uh, she’s not an academic. She’s, she, uh, doesn’t have a PhD, but, uh, but I’ve been very fortunate in that this way, and I think it’s important to point that out. And not take too much credit here because my wife had a big role in this. And, and I think it’s also an important caveat too, um, because, uh, some things are just, you know, simply easier when you have two forms of income and you can split costs. And, and not all PhD students are gonna be able to have that advantage like I had over that time period. So, uh, that was a bit unique to me, I guess.

Turning Personal Finance Knowledge into Action

Emily (08:23): Yeah, very important context for us to have. Thank you for like, explaining that and caveating that. And, uh, yes. Wonderful. So you’ve mentioned that you, you know, kind of <laugh> developed this interest in personal finance, decided to kind of nerd out, learn about it in, you know, that time period when you were in graduate school. And so did you actually start applying that knowledge, um, like what were you doing with your finances during that period of time in graduate school and then also with your postdoc?

Daren (08:49): Yeah, yeah. So we, we, yeah, we did I think, start applying that pretty quickly. My wife has, has always been a, a saver <laugh>, you know, I, I guess I am too by, by nature for whatever reason. Uh, you know, I think we’ve had relatives that sort of knocked into our head early on, you know, given their limited means in many cases that, you know, you gotta think long term and, and, and not wait. Um, so we started pretty early, you know, by our mid, mid twenties I guess I would say. We were starting to contribute to, uh, IRAs. Um, I, um, is, is, is a great way of starting, uh, in this world. Um, you know, it’s flexible. Uh, it doesn’t have the highest contribution limits, but for our income at the time, it was perfectly sufficient, right? So, uh, you’re able to just to open that account yourself, right online, uh, at a, at a many different options out there to, to use that.

Daren (09:33): Um, I think at the time I used, uh, Betterment, uh, just for a, a, a bit of a reference. And my, my wife had started up a Vanguard account, uh, at that time. So, so that’s what we did the first few years during, uh, my, my PhD, um, when my wife switched over to a teaching job, she was able to access a, the state pension system, um, being a K 12 teacher. So she was, uh, starting to contribute in that way as well, on top of the IRAs. Um, and, and that’s basically the status quo up through, uh, 2018 or so when I left my PhD and, and, and wrapped that up. Um, when we moved to Massachusetts, you know, my wife obviously continued with the pension system, being a K 12 teacher. Uh, she’s also able to take advantage of what is called a 457 plan, which we can talk a bit more about here if you’d like, um, at one of her former school districts, uh, that she taught at before.

Daren (10:19): And, uh, and then, um, basically, uh, in my peer in my position as a postdoc, I was, I was funded by and an NSF Fellowship, so I think we made some contributions still to IRAs, but I didn’t really have access to like a 401k or a 403B. This was one of these fellowship programs that’s actually channeled through me. So I sort of administered my own award, which is a bit unique, uh, in this way. And, and there’s some upsides to that, but some of the downsides are, you don’t get sort of the, the, the financial benefits of, of being attached to a large university. Um, so, so yeah, I had to sort of sacrifice that for a few years, which was a, a little tough, I guess, but it wasn’t the end of the world. And, uh, and my last year I actually moved on to a more of a proper internal position and was able to contribute to a 401k for the last year, my postdoc. And then since, uh, in my positions, I’ve been contributing to a 401k, uh, as well. So, so yeah, that’s basically the journey through grad school to- till about now really.

Tax-Advantaged Retirement Account Options

Emily (11:13): Let’s dive into the tax advantage retirement accounts. ’cause I know you and I both really excited to talk about those. So, um, you’ve kind of mentioned already some of the different accounts you and your wife have had access to over the years. Um, just tell us more about what you learned about those accounts over time, what you think is important for the audience to understand.

Daren (11:31): Yeah, yeah. You know, I think the, the one big tip is, you know, don’t overthink it. Just, just pick one and, and go with it. <laugh>. That would be my sort of big tip here. Um, but yeah, we can spend a second sort of talking about some of the, the differences between these different accounts. So, so there’s a, uh, an IRA, so an individual retirement account, I believe is the acronym, right? Um, uh, so this is sort of the, the, the, I guess the beginner, uh, account, I think for most people. So it’s, anyone is eligible for it. Um, generally speaking, um, it’s flexible. You can open it up yourself. It doesn’t have to come through an employer. Um, the contribution limits are lower, that’s one of the downsides. I think they’re on the order of 7,000 now or so,

Emily (12:07): 7,000 in 2025. It’s gonna go up in 2026. Yeah, 7500, I think.

Daren (12:12): Yep. So, so that’s, uh, the, the, the option that we took advantage of in the beginning, you know, that was perfectly sufficient for our, our, our, uh, our situation. And honestly, it’d probably be perfectly sufficient for most grad students. I would, I suspect out there, uh, in, in the US at least. So, um, you know, when we moved beyond grad school, we started to think more and more about other things, and mostly that was because we actually became eligible for other sorts of retirement accounts. I didn’t have access to that sort of a thing as a graduate student, given my appointment at the university, uh, my wife, uh, became eligible for a, a pension system, but, um, but not really a, a 401k, right? Um, um, but yeah, when we sort of moved into graduate school and moved up here to Massachusetts, then we started to think about things like, uh, the, the very famous 401k, right, which comes typically from, uh, normal employment out in at businesses and things like that.

Daren (12:58): And then you have a very similar plan called a 403B, which is usually reserved for nonprofit sectors. Um, so universities typically have this type of, of plan. So these are sort of your quintessential retirement plans. They come through the employer. Occasionally you’ll get an employee, employee match, uh, not, not usually at a, at a a a college. I’m, I suspect, or at least for grad students and, and postdocs, maybe for faculty. Um, uh, but out in the sort of private industry and things like that, you can get nice employer matches that, uh, will sort of help to top up your contributions a bit. Um, so we’ve been taking advantage of that a lot since, uh, coming into sort of the postdoc and beyond phase of, of our, uh, of our lives. Um, and, uh, those contribution limits, I think on the order of about 24,000 right now, so much more substantial.

Daren (13:39): And then with the, with the additional contributions from an employer, you know, that’s sort of a hundred percent return right away, which can be pretty nice on at least a subset of your contributions. Um, so definitely take advantage of that for sure. And then, uh, a last account, I’ll, I’ll talk about, I mentioned it earlier, is a, uh, is a 457, uh, plan. Uh, this is another, these are all IRS tax codes. Uh, basically is, is people probably know. And, uh, honestly, I think this is maybe the best of the, the group in my opinion. There’s, uh, it’s basically the same as a 401k or 4013B as far as contribution limits and the way it’s administered and things like that. Uh, but one nice thing about it is, uh, and again, I should say it’s, it’s really reserved much more for I think, state level or local level, um, uh, government sorts of positions and, and things like that. So it’s a bit more restricted. You’re not gonna see this at a, at a company or something like that. Um,

Emily (14:28): Nonprofits can also have them sometimes. Um, but I do see it more often with like state university systems or something like that,

Daren (14:36): Right. Or local municipalities and things like that. Yeah. So, uh, but yeah, the, the real nice advantage of this is when you leave employment, there’s some, you know, I don’t remember the exact details now, it’s been a while since I’ve looked at it, but there’s some nice, um, there’s some sort of nice liquidation options. You know, usually with these accounts, you’re sort of locked out of them for, for good reason, don’t touch ’em. That’s the idea, right? Um, and, uh, so yeah, when you do have to touch them, like if you have an emergency or something, you take, you take a penalty, um, and you, you do typically with a 457 as well. But one of the sort of, uh, caveats of the way that they wrote the tax code here is that when you leave the service that provides that 457, uh, it is eligible, you know, all these things are eligible to get rolled over, but the 457 is a bit unique in that you can actually liquidate that money, you know, you have to follow certain procedures and, uh, and sort of tap into it in a way that you can’t with these other traditional, um, retirement plans.

Daren (15:28): So, uh, so that’s a nice one. We’ve took, taken advantage of that on top of my wife’s pension here in Massachusetts. Her previous district had, uh, access to a a 457 plan through the state of Massachusetts that’s administered at the state level to keep the cost low. It’s called a smart plan here. Um, and, uh, yeah, we’ve been able to take advantage of that a little bit as well.

Emily (15:47): So I’ve heard about the 457, I mean, in my work, it’s like, okay, you know, 457, 403B kind of similar sort of arrangements, but in the FIRE community, the financial independence retire early community, it’s kind of held up as this, like, hey, you can, if you separate from service, as you said, you can access this money earlier in ways that you don’t have to pull the tricks that you need to do with your IRAs and the 401k and all those other types of accounts. So it’s kind of held out in that community in particular as a really great plan to use, if that is your goal of stopping work before age 59 and a half, and, you know, trying to access some money earlier. So, um, I did a previous interview interview with Dr. Corwin Olson that people might wanna reference, um, talking about early retirement in the FIRE community, uh, for PhDs and people who work, again, in, in sectors where these kind of, um, accounts are permitted and offered. So that might be something for listeners to check out, um, as well. But it sounds like you, if you’ve tapped that 457 have not done so for funding your lifestyle in retirement, but maybe for other investment opportunities. Is that right?

Daren (16:51): Yeah, you know, and I, I sort of, you know, definitely in grad school and, and stuff, you know, who knows where life will take me, right? But, but I wouldn’t mind retiring early <laugh>, you know, I sort of look at, uh, personal freedom and the ability to sort of control your time is, is one of the ultimate forms of freedom that you can have in, in, in this world, and subscribe to the idea that that that is something to strive for. And, and, and that has been part of our, our, my, my collective goal with my wife is to, to somehow facilitate, you know, early retirement and it’ll be an open question, you know, how early it can be for us, uh, or if we’re even successful. But, um, but yeah, the 457 at least allows the opportunity to be able to draw down that money before you hit the age.

Daren (17:29): The age is where you’re typically eligible to do so under more traditional plans without a penalty. So, so yeah, if you do wanna retire early, that’s where the 457 can really shine. Otherwise, you know, if you’re gonna start, if you’re gonna retire at a traditional sort of 62 or, or 59 and a half, I guess technically is the earliest you can do, um, you know, it, it really doesn’t make much of a difference which of these you sort of go with. Um, so, so yeah, we’re in the weeds here a little bit, but, but these are I think, some useful, uh, tidbits of information that might be helpful to folks.

Emily (17:57): Yeah, I think I wanna go back to how you started this section, which is like, the main thing is just pick one plan <laugh>, and then like stick with it. So like, it always depends on what’s offered to you. So if nothing’s offered to you because you’re a graduate student, then you’re gonna go with an ira, probably a Roth IRA given your income at the time. Um, if you work in the private sector, okay, it’s probably gonna be a 401k if you work in, you know, universities or other types of nonprofits, government, yeah. Maybe then we’re talking about the 403B, maybe with the 457 as well, and then you have a bit of a choice, which one do I wanna prioritize? Or if you’re really mad about personal finance, you might do both.

Daren (18:29): That is a good advantage of the two. You can do both, uh, the 403B and the 457.

Emily (18:33): Yes. That, that is like, yeah. And most people who have these types of jobs don’t earn enough money to be able to do both. But if you’re a PhD and you’re well compensated and you have to be, happen to be in an industry that does offer both of these things, maybe you’re that unicorn where you actually could, you know, contribute to both. But the point is like, what is being offered to you, it’s probably not gonna be this whole suite of options unless like you two, you have a married couple who works in different industries with different types of opportunities and also maybe shifts over time. Um, what’s available to you? I’ll throw in as well self-employed person. I have a solo 401k, so like throw those options and advantages in there as well. If you have any kind of self-employment side hustle, you can open a solo 401k. So anyway, just to complicate things further, basically yeah, there’s even more. It’s out there. Yeah, it’s like an IRA like you said, is almost always available. There are technically some eligibility things about your income, but most graduate students and postdocs will qualify. Yeah, so there’s the IRA and then it kind of depends on your work after that,

Daren (19:30): Basically. Yeah, that’s a good take home. I think there, and, and yeah, there’s even more out there as, as you’re sort of alluding to, and, and there’s even more, you know, the, I think the other side of this, uh, the coin here that this sort of comes into this conversation that I think is maybe worth, uh, talking about as well is, you know, this is just a sort of the, the tax code, the vehicle in which you’re sort of investing, but, um, but there’s also what you’re investing your money in. And that can be just as important as the, the tax advantages and things like that is, well, you know, am I investing in something that’s gonna see a good return? Uh, am I ensuring that that return isn’t being eaten up by needless fees and, and things of that nature? And, uh, and honestly, I, I would say the, the 401k, 403B, that, that’s a bit easier to understand. It’s, it’s the, that aspect of things, the, you know, what you wanna put your money into, what things you might want to avoid. You know, when the salesman sort of comes calling and says, we have the best plan for you. Um, I think that’s where people get into more trouble, um, and where it takes a lot more effort to, to sort of understand what’s in front of you and, and what might be best for your, your personal situation.

Commercial

Emily (20:32): 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.

Fees Associated With 403(b) and 457 Accounts

Emily (21:23): Well, going off of that, uh, comment about a salesperson, um, I wanna say that listeners might be aware, and you’re prob- most likely aware, um, that 403Bs and 457s have a bad reputation of being fee laden, uh, very expensive types of, um, vehicles in which to put your investments. And also the investments that you might be steered toward by people helping you with this might not be actually optimal for the decades of investing that are ahead of you. I think this reputation more comes from K through 12, those kinds of educators versus the higher ed, um, group that I’m normally talking to. But since your wife is in that former category, let’s talk about this a little bit more. And also, there’s sexism in this because women are, you know, dominating the K through 12 educational space, whereas men are dominating the higher education space. This is one of the ways that sexism ends up influencing our investments and our finances overall. But that’s me getting on a soapbox. Let’s let you get on your soapbox <laugh>.

Daren (22:21): Sure, yeah, yeah, please. This is, this is great. Um, yeah, you know, as you say this, this pertains more to the K 12 level. You know, some of this maybe propagates up to, to post-secondary levels and, and it’s something to be aware of, certainly. Um, but, but yeah, at the K 12 level, you know, again, we have 403Bs, 457, so on and so forth. Uh, but as I said before, beyond that, you’ve gotta pick, you know, what you wanna invest your money in, and there’s lots of things out there that you can invest your money in. Um, what I tend to personally invest my money in is, is, is what they call, uh, uh, low cost index funds. So these are, uh, basically funds that are indexed to the, the overall stock market, so like the s and p 500, right? So they basically try to, uh, select a mixture of investments that are out there that match the performance of what the overall market is doing with the idea that it’s diversified.

Daren (23:07): And it’s, and, and it might not give you the best return every year, but it’s at least gonna give you, uh, a reasonable return and, and be somewhat protected against, uh, big downsides or big down swings, uh, that you can have, uh, in, in certain situations. So, so yeah, that, that’s, that’s what I tend to invest my money in is, is sort of a low cost index fund. Um, and, uh, the big reason for that is, is the, the low cost. You know, so there’s the money coming in from the stock market, right? So you can go out and you can look at what that is. You know, the people keep track of that all the time, right? Uh, the downside is, you know, the, in some cases that folks aren’t maybe as clear as they can be about, um, the, the cost associated with these sorts of things.

Daren (23:46): Um, so with a low cost index fund, you know, this is something offered by like a company like Vanguard. They sort of pioneered this kind of thing. The idea is, you know, we keep the, the fees as low as possible, you know, it, it’s sort of a bit automatic. It’s, it’s sort of easy to manage because it is an index fund and therefore we can offer it with very low fees. Um, and therefore your most of your money is going into your pocket, and it’s not coming into the pocket of, of, say, Vanguard or whoever is administering these funds. Obviously, there’s some cost, right? These things aren’t free, but it’s, it is actually very, very low cost. Uh, typically speaking, uh, on the other side of the coin, unfortunately, are, are what I would say are sort of predatory practices, especially at the K 12 level, given the, the sort of abundance of K 12 educators that are out there, uh, uh, the, you know, across diverse communities and so on and so forth.

Daren (24:33): Unfortunately, you know, there’s, there’s folks that, that, that sort of, I would say, sort of prey upon this <laugh> in some way. You know, they, they’ll, uh, you know, they’ll, they’ll maybe put out something sort of similar to an index fund as far as its performance, but they’ll, uh, they’ll sort of riddle it with, with high fees. Um, and you may not think much about, you know, a 1% fee, no big deal, right? Um, but, but in the long run, it really adds up. Um, you gotta think about compound interest in, in it can help you, but it can also hurt you when it’s working against you, right? So, uh, you know, you can go out and do, look at some calculators online that will sort of show you over a 20, 30, 40 year time period, even a 1% fee. You know, if you were to knock that down to a, you know, by to a 10th of that, you know, a 0.1% fee, which is more akin to what you would pay, uh, at a low con-, low cost index fund, um, you know that the extra money that you would accrue over that time period is, is substantial. It’s, it, it almost knocks you over when you look at it.

Emily (25:26): It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars, typically.

Daren (25:29): So, so yeah, you know, it really is unfortunate. You know, my, my wife, uh, is in a district now. They actually, the district in which we, we reside, um, where they do have a pension system, and that’s what most teachers contribute to. And, and, uh, and then it, it just doesn’t feel like folks have really thought much more about everything else. Um, but, but there are certainly gonna be people that want to contribute to additional savings accounts. And at least at my, my, my wife’s school district, uh, uh, you know, all the plans that we’ve seen are either quite opaque. You have to sort of call people and, and get them on the phone and, and try to get the details. You know, there’s not like a nice sort of prospectus laid out of, of what you can invest in and, and what the costs are and all this sort of stuff, which alone is sort of annoying when, when folks are busy and have lives to live, right?

Daren (26:09): Um, but then on top of that, you know, when you sort of do dig in, you find that a lot of them are, uh, uh, these varieties that do have high costs associated with ’em that really can detract from the, from the, uh, the, the, the whole opportunity, I would say. So, uh, so yeah, it’s, it’s just unfortunate, at least in the case of my wife’s district that the, that the folks haven’t put more thought into that, I would say. Um, and the other sort of downside here is, is across Massachusetts, most folks have access to the state level 457 plan called the smart Plan locally. Uh, but for whatever reason, my wife’s district currently, uh, hasn’t adopted that plan. Um, which is a, a major downside, I would say as, as well. Um, and I, and I get this at some ex- to some extent, you know, most teachers will contribute only to a pension plan, never think about anything else, but not all teachers.

Daren (26:53): Um, you know, and, uh, and it really is a, it’s a missed opportunity, I would say, and it points out some, some, I I would say big problems in how sort of K 12 administrators and school districts in general, which are usually tied to local municipalities. Um, you know, even in cases with very strong sort of local union support, which is definitely the case up here in Massachusetts. Um, you know, uh, you know, still allow these things to happen. Um, you know, and, and especially in this day and age where we’re sort of facing these major teaching shortages, um, really this could be such a simple way, in a cheap way for a local school district to, to improve compensation for teachers in a way that that makes a difference, um, and, and, and not really add to their bottom line in a major way.

Daren (27:34): Um, so I would consider it really a very big missed opportunity in, in, and quite a shame. Um, and hopefully, you know, by, by pointing these things out, uh, and advocating for ourselves collectively, uh, we can improve these situations. But, but there’s definitely an uphill climb, um, in this way. And again, this mostly pertains to K 12. Some of this might trickle up to, to the post-secondary level. But, you know, I think the take home at the end of the day is, is, um, you, you really can’t rely on anyone else. Uh, you know, not to say you can’t trust people ’cause you can, but you really gotta do your homework. Um, uh, you know, you gotta make sure that the advice you’re getting is correct. You gotta make sure that it’s actually in your best interest and it’s not just a generic form of advice.

Researching Retirement Account Options Before Investing

Daren (28:13): And, uh, and that’s where sort of being a researcher I think can really be an advantage, right? So, you know, this is tailored towards PhDs and PhDs are professional researchers, so, uh, I guarantee you, if, if you can get a PhD, you can, you can learn the, the basics of this stuff and, and, and, and really help yourself out, I think in, in the long run. So, and it’s becoming better and better. I, I think, uh, there are advocacy, advocacy efforts sort of starting up in this way. A couple I can sort of point to is one’s called 403Bwise.org. Again, this is mostly k12, but they’ve sort of taken up this cause and have a, a podcast as well as a lot of information online and as well as school district, uh, report cards, uh, a lot of which are Fs and and Ds nationwide, unfortunately, uh, because of the, the, the, the, uh, the plans that are offered at most school districts.

Daren (28:59): Um, and another place that, uh, that is probably more useful, I think beyond the K 12 system is the state of California has a nice database of a lot of the, the, the, the, basically the retirement options that are available to K 12 educators in that state. And, uh, a lot of these generalize across other sectors and, and other non-profit, at least situations too. So if you’re looking for a, a, I would say maybe the best place to compare these sorts of plans, uh, in a, in a relatively unbiased manner, it’s not perfect. Um, I would say it’s the, the state of California, I can’t recall the name of the database right now, but, uh, but maybe go look that up. Um, and, uh, maybe you could put it in show notes or something like that. Um, that would maybe be the place I would suggest where folks, uh, can get more of a one-to-one comparison between these funds and really maybe get at the true details that sometimes can be hidden from you when you actually, uh, uh, go and talk to, uh, the folks at the banks and the financial institutes that offer these sorts of things.

Emily (29:52): Yeah, thank you for mentioning those resources. And kind of like you were saying in that like it’s really, um, important to investigate what’s available to you, get into the details, and then talk with your peers, right? Because whether it’s part of union or whether it’s just just talking to your colleagues, um, it’s very helpful to just get that information out there and things do and can change over time. If enough people ask, why is it that we’re not offering a 457 like every other district in the state or whatever, whatever the case is, then maybe that will eventually change. I wanna give you a small example and a big example of similar, uh, themes that I’ve run across. Um, the small example is I was actually, I had a, a series of speaking engagements recently for a university client. And so I was looking into their retirement account options for their postdocs, and I noticed that they, uh, you know, they had a 403B and a 457, uh, great.

Emily (30:39): And they had three providers, two you’ve heard of and one you maybe haven’t before. And they had a really nice table. Like you said, sometimes this information is hard to come across, but they had a really nice table laying out all of your investment options. There weren’t that many, there were maybe 10 or 12 across these three different providers and what the expense ratios are. And so I’m looking at this table going, good, good, good. We got some Vanguard funds, we got some Fidelity funds, everything’s low cost. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Oh, they’re really clearly delineating. What are the passive funds and what are the active funds? This is a very easy chart, at least for me to read since I have some familiarity. But then I looked right up at the top and saw there was a record keeping fee for each one of these different providers, which is just another add-on to the expense ratio.

Emily (31:19): And that the two you’ve heard of had very, very low record keeping fees and the one you hadn’t heard of, even though it offered the same investments as the other two, had a much higher, probably three to four times higher, uh, record keeping fee. And so I was looking at that like, oh, that one little number on this chart changed everything in terms of what I would choose if I were an employee at that institution. And I can’t give anybody financial advice, but when I ended up talking with the postdocs, I said, look at these numbers. Bigger numbers are not to your advantage, <laugh>, what should you conclude if you see these three numbers, two of which are much lower than the other. So again, just a call for like looking into the documents and having an awareness of how important fees are and really that they don’t buy you an advantage.

Emily (31:59): That’s kind of how we think that that money works. You’re gonna buy something that’s more expensive and it’s gonna be better, not the case. So it turns out in investing, um, statistically speaking, okay, so that’s a small example. The bigger example is, um, from my husband’s um, uh, biotech company that he’s worked for since he finished his postdoc, um, which has a startup. And so it’s gone through some growth over the years. Um, and they used to offer a 401k plan, um, through I’ll name and shame Edward Jones with American Funds. That was very high expense ratios. And we looked at that and we’re like, okay, we’re gonna use every other vehicle we have before we get around to this 401k, because there was not a match offered. So there’s really no advantage of using it unless we needed the contribution room, which eventually we did.

Emily (32:45): So eventually we started making some small contributions that as we were maxing out everything else available to us. Um, but over the years, again, the company grew and eventually their benefits changed, and now they have a fantastic 401k provider who has low costs and low fee options. And it’s just such a relief now that we’re using it more, we’re like, oh, this is great. Like, it’s actually not <laugh>, it’s actually to our advantage to use this 401k instead of trying to have to avoid it. Um, so things do change over time, but that, but my point is it happens in the private sector as well. You still have to be careful about, um, those expense ratios about who the providers are, about the investments that you choose. Do they offer those low cost, um, index funds or is it all actively managed stuff? So it’s not hard, you know, spend a couple of hours reading about this, read The Simple Path to Wealth, you will get it, you’re a PhD, you’re can be very capable in this area. And really, as we were saying earlier, this is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to you over your investing lifetime. So it is worth a little bit of time upfront.

Daren (33:41): Yep. Yeah, don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Achieving a Positive Net Worth

Emily (33:43): Is there anything else that you would like to share about your financial journey, the investment component of your journey, maybe at, you know, coming outta your postdoc or any other stage you’d like to share with us?

Daren (33:54): Yeah, maybe I’ll, I’ll conclude with, um, with a bit of an update on sort of where I am now. You know, like I said before, I’m a couple years out of a, of, out of a postdoc and, and yeah, we, we definitely have picked up momentum, uh, over the course of the postdoc and especially these last couple years moving into sort of my, my big boy job, so, so to speak, right. Um, and, uh, and, and yeah, so I, I’m happy to report and it, it’s a big source of pride, I think for me and my wife that we, we did do a little bit of math recently, you know, looking at, you know, our, our, our, our student loans, which haven’t really moved much, but, but that’ll change soon. Um, and, uh, as well as, you know, the, the money that we have accrued across these various sort of investment vehicles as well as sort of personal savings and, and, and, and other things that we haven’t even gotten into today.

Daren (34:35): And, uh, and I can say that we, we have a positive net worth, which I think is an a major accomplishment. We have, you know, in, in the, you know, having collectively over a hundred thousand dollars worth of student loan debt. So, um, so yeah, you know, you know, I’m now sort of approaching 40 <laugh> to age myself. Um, so I’m not super old, but, uh, I’m not as young anymore. But, you know, like we started, I guess around 25, so we’re, we’re, I’m going on 13, 14 years now. Um, so, so it’s, it’s time. It’s not no time, but it’s not a lot of time either. Um, you know, and, and like I said, we, we came in with basically no savings in the beginning.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Daren (35:10): So, you know, I, I think, uh, the, the biggest advice I can give to people is, is just, just start now. Start start as early as you can. Um, the, the big thing there is just the compound interest. It’s, it’s your your best friend here. Um, you know, look for those low fee things so that, uh, there, there aren’t fees compounding on top of your compounding interest <laugh>. Um, and, uh, and yeah, the other big thing like we’ve been saying right along is, is is do your research, you know, tap into your professional skills as a PhD and, uh, and, uh, you know, I think in doing so, you can set yourself up for a, a more comfortable retirement and perhaps a bit less stress along the way. And, uh, and I think, you know, due to Emily and other folks that are out there, there, there are an increasing number of, uh, sort of resources and information that’s available. You know, when I started sort of nerding out on this 12 years ago, it was fewer and further between, but, but you know, there is a bit more of a cottage industry now of folks trying to advise folks on the best way in which to think about these things, or at least provide all the options so that people can make more informed decisions.

Daren (36:08): So on top of this, I think, uh, another good source I’ve seen that I haven’t shouted out already is, uh, I think there’s like white coat investing or something. There’s a, a [white coat investor], MDs basically, which is a pretty good proxy for PhDs in many respects and have a lot of the same, uh, you know, career stages and, and, and affiliations and things like that. So if I could fi, if I could point you to anything that’s sort of most relevant besides Emily’s things tailored to PhDs, it might be sort of the white coat investment, uh, side of things. Um, they do a pretty good job, outlining a lot of this stuff.

Emily (36:36): Yeah, I agree. They’re a great resource, especially the more your profile looks like that of their typical audience member, which is like you having student loan debt, having significant student loan debt, and then also having a good salary, which I’m sure you do now on the other side of the educational journey. Um, the more you look like that profile, the more that community is gonna benefit you. And of course, if you get really into investing, then they’re gonna benefit you as well. ’cause they talk a lot about that. Um, amazing. I love that advice. Um, thank you so much for, um, sharing that with us and for sharing your story and your insights. And I just echo like everything you said about yeah, doing your research and starting early, of course, it’s difficult during your PhD to get compound interest working on your side, but we are in PhD training for a long time. I mean, you had six years in your PhD, five years in a postdoc had you not gotten started, you know, with the investing side of things. Like not a late start exactly, but it would’ve been later <laugh>, right? And that time is really on your side. So thank you so much for sharing this with us today.

Daren (37:34): Well, well thank you Yeah. For providing a forum to, to sort of share my story. Uh, it’s, it’s been a, a wild ride in some respects, but it’s been enjoyable. I’ve, I’ve learned a lot and it’s great to sort of be able to impart that onto other folks, um, you know, to help them avoid maybe some pitfalls that are certainly out there and, and to, to hopefully, you know, to, to, to help them to maximize their personal finances. Uh, both now and, and well into the future.

Outro

Emily (38:08): 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 me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

This Grad Student Bought a Home at the Start of His Doctoral Program

February 9, 2026 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Ethan Muller, a first-year doctoral student in theology at Villanova University. Ethan and his wife purchased their first home outside of Philadelphia at the start of his six-year program. Ethan shares the details of his and his wife’s financial profile, their emotional readiness to become homeowners, and their plans for the home once he finishes his program. After local mortgage lenders were unable to work with him due to his student status and 9-month stipend, Ethan connected with Sam Hogan, who knew exactly how to make the lending process much faster and easier. Ethan and Emily close the conversation by discussing which other PhD students should consider home ownership.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This Grad Student Bought a Home at the Start of His Doctoral Program

Teaser

Ethan (00:00): Especially in the shifting landscape of being an academic, you know, you could apply for something and get in, what does that look like with your house, and what equity did you have time to build? Which is also why before the program, it felt like a big deal to us to just simply attempt to buy a home.

Introduction

Emily (00:24): 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 (00:53): This is Season 23, Episode 3, and today my guest is Ethan Muller, a first-year doctoral student in theology at Villanova University. Ethan and his wife purchased their first home outside of Philadelphia at the start of his six-year program. Ethan shares the details of his and his wife’s financial profile, their emotional readiness to become homeowners, and their plans for the home once he finishes his program. After local mortgage lenders were unable to work with him due to his student status and 9-month stipend, Ethan connected with Sam Hogan, who knew exactly how to make the lending process much faster and easier. Ethan and I close the conversation by discussing which other PhD students should consider home ownership.

Emily (01:40): By the way, I’m hosting an AMA with Sam Hogan on Thursday, February 19, 2026, so that he can answer all your mortgage and first-time homebuyer questions! Sam is a mortgage originator specializing in early-career researchers. Anyone who is considering buying a home is welcome to attend, whether that’s in the near or far future. Register for the event at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash mortgage.

Emily (02:09): The tax year 2025 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. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the 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 this workshop for you and your peers? 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. Thank you so, so much for doing so! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s23e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Ethan Muller.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:45): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Ethan Muller, who is a first year PhD student at Villanova University. And Ethan is here with a home ownership story, and you all know how much I love a home ownership story for graduate students. So that’s our topic for today. We’re gonna get into all the dirty details. So Ethan, welcome to the podcast. Will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Ethan (04:08): Yeah, thanks for the kind introduction. My name is Ethan. I’m a first year doctoral student at Villanova, Pennsylvania, which is wonderful. It’s right outside of Philadelphia. I spent most of my time before this doing grad work in the Boston area with my wife and went through the incredibly hard process of applying to PhD programs and was lucky enough to, uh, wind up, I guess at Villanova. Yeah.

Emily (04:35): Can you tell us just a tiny bit more in that background question about maybe the timeline on this? Like when did you finish undergrad? What were you doing between then and when you applied for doctoral programs and also when you got married?

Ethan (04:48): Yeah, that’s a great question. My then girlfriend and I decided that we did not wanna go to grad school, um, as, uh, anything other than a married couple. So in the, I guess it was early spring of 2023, we both applied, um, to graduate programs. She got into Northeastern University and I got into a seminary on the north shore of Boston. So we got married in the spring of 2023 and went to grad school from 2023 to 2025. I applied to PhD programs the fall of 24 and heard back in the spring of 25.

Emily (05:27): Great. And what is your wife doing now? Is she also doing more school or has a job?

Ethan (05:32): My wife works in marketing. She has training in clinical psychology. She’s worked previously as an ABA therapist, wanted to switch it up, wanted to do something different. So now she’s in the field of marketing, which is great, expanding her CV a little bit. Um, we both during our grad school days, worked at Whole Foods Market, which is our claim to fame. It was our <laugh>, our our era to save a little bit of money while we lived on campus and, um, that kind of let her see some different experiences in different fields and corporations. So.

Why Buy a Home as a First Year PhD Student?

Emily (06:01): I love that story actually. It’s, it’s so often that I find that work experience itself is what opens our minds to other possibilities for how, you know, areas in which we might work or apply our education and so forth. So that is awesome. Thank you so much for that, um, backstory. And so when you’re, you know, you’re into this PhD program and you’re moving to Philadelphia, what made you interested in buying a home at that stage?

Ethan (06:24): Yeah, uh, it’s quite rare, especially as an academic to, there’s only a certain few places you can really go for school, depending on the field. I mean, sometimes people are limited to, Hey, I’m moving to the west coast. Other times it’s Chicago. It, it’s really rare. So I’m in a very niche field of theology where I knew that Philadelphia was a place where I could go one, because I was born and raised in Pennsylvania. So it became a very intentional part of my pitch to being accepted, um, that Pennsylvania was a place not only that I loved dearly, but wanted to return to. Um, so my wife and I really pushed hard to get into Villanova. I was very honest with the faculty there. Reached out, uh, quite a few times in order to make strong connections to put my best foot forward. Pennsylvania was the place for us. One, because this is not just a me decision, it was my wife as well. But two, the cost of living was much different than Boston. We loved the Boston area, it was brilliant. There’s so many wonderful opportunities and connections, but Pennsylvania really offers a good access to many different areas of the country, while also having a lesser cost of living, which for people who wanted to own a home, uh, that, that was pretty key for us.

Emily (07:39): So, but why, even though, you know, you’re, you’re sure you wanna put roots down in Pennsylvania and you, you know, you’re presumably there for the length of your doctoral program at a minimum. Um, why buy? Because renting is obviously the default and easier decision.

Ethan (07:52): Yeah, that’s for sure. We rented all up until that point, uh, most of the rhetoric that was given to me was, you can’t buy unless you have a certain amount of time, which I’m not sure how accurate that is or how many times other people have heard that. Like, oh, you need to have five years or 10 years when you buy. Um, and we had some people come alongside us and say, Hey, maybe that’s not so true. If you have time to save money while living on campus as a grad student, even if you’re in a next place for three to four years, no matter where we were gonna go, we felt like we had a enough of our debt covered to really put a foot forward into buy to make an investment. It just felt like something we were ready for.

Emily (08:34): I heard the same thing, um, the same rule of thumb around five years, or it could be even longer in some cases. Um, and I agree that that is off-putting for a lot of people starting a PhD program because they don’t, it could be only five years or it might be a little bit less or maybe a little bit more and we just don’t know. But I agree with you that it’s, it’s actually much more nuanced in that first, I mean, as a rule of thumb, it’s fine, but you always have to take a rule of thumb and then go into your specific market and your specific situation and really drill down into that. And the other thing is that that rule of thumb really comes from the transaction costs of buying and selling within a short period of time. And how likely it is that the appreciation of the value in your home is going to overcome those very high transaction costs. Very legitimate question, but the kind of corollary to that is like, well, maybe you don’t need to sell the home just because you finished your doctoral program. Like one, maybe you’ll stay in the area, you’ll still use the home. Two, maybe you’ll decide to rent it out. Like just because you finished your program doesn’t mean you actually have to sell and incur those transaction costs anyway. Probably some things that you were also thinking about when you were making this like evaluation.

Ethan (09:37): Yeah, one of the things for us was it’s whether you’re there for three years or four years, it doesn’t have to three to be a three or four year investment. The, the, the investment of the house can last much longer than that. And I think in the shifting world of academics is we saw, especially with Zoom, there was capacities to have an academic role while being in a singular area. So even though, uh, you know, who knows what’s happening with education as a whole nowadays, we knew that my wife and I could, she could find a job that was remote. I could find an academic job that was remote. So putting down those roots and investing in the house seemed more probable than let’s say 10 years ago.

Emily (10:11): Hmm. I totally agree. Yeah. Thank you for bringing up the changing work norms that we’re dealing with <laugh> and yeah, you’re not the first person as an academic who I’ve spoken to who is either working remotely or open to working remotely. Um, you know, within their roles. You mentioned that you had been in a master’s program, you were also working at Whole Foods, um, you of course have your wife’s job and your like stipend offer from your doctoral program. So putting that all together, like what was your financial profile that you kind of like presented as like a prospective homeowner?

Financial Profile as a Prospective Homeowner and Grad Student

Ethan (10:41): Yeah, I’m, the biggest aspect to my wife and I’s homeownership profile was that we didn’t have any school debt. That was one of the biggest things for us. We went to grad programs where there was open funding for us where we, we really went to the places where we got the most scholarships and we could pay off the debt as quickly as possible. Um, along with that, we had some strong savings in a couple investments, but really the thing I think that spoke the loudest was we had good credit. We had years of credit history and we had no debt and no student loans. Um, which really I think every lender we talked to was really happy with that. Um, because you don’t realize that the common norm, at least for a lot of academics and a lot of my friends has been there, is so much, there’s so much debt and there’s so many things that can get in the way, uh, of putting down a down payment or even just paying for an appraisal and things of that nature. So my wife and I went into the graduate season knowing that if we wanted to buy a house, we had to focus on debt. So we’ve started paying off our debt while we were in grad school working at Whole Foods. That was, we worked alongside that probably 30 hours a week just to supplement and slowly pay that off. So when two years was up, um, we wouldn’t have any student loans.

Emily (11:58): So if, if I, if you don’t mind, um, when did you acquire the student loans? Was it only from undergrad and you managed to, you know, okay, so just from undergrad, so that’s great. So you were in your master’s programs, you had your offers from there, whatever the funding packages were, plus you were working 30 hours per week on top of that, and that’s how you managed to repay the prior debt.

Ethan (12:20): Yes. Uh, it’s a hard road <laugh>, it’s a hard road that I’m sure many other people in grad school and in doctoral programs feel as well. Um, but I also think it’s really important that when you’re in these big metropolitan cities for academics, there are part-time jobs that are really accessible. Whole Foods has a great starting rate. They started me off at $18 an hour with zero experience and gave a discount. So there’s ways that you can make things work.

Emily (12:44): Then tell me a little bit more about your income, if you don’t mind. ‘Cause you have a two income household and we’re talking about Philadelphia, so yeah. How much are you guys making together or individually?

Ethan (12:55): Yeah, so my stipend is a nine month stipend. I know each school does it differently. I, these things fluctuate, but I’m at $30,000 for nine months and then the summers, there’s still coursework and things of that nature. But you do have a capacity to go and get a job or just internships, different funding at the school. My wife works in marketing. She’s around 45, I would say 40 to 45 depending, because you know, there’s incentives in different, um, qualifications for that. So all around we’re probably $70K a year, uh, on a good year. So it’s, we are a little bit outside the Phil- City of Philadelphia. That’s one of the beautiful things. Um, I go on the turnpike for a little bit and I can get to school, which is very, very nice. Uh, one of the benefits to doctoral work, so we are in a more rural area that has, uh, less living costs than, uh, downtown Philly would.

Emily (13:51): Hmm. Let’s talk about that. Home selection and the location is certainly part of it a little bit. So you have, you know, around $70,000 a year able to demonstrate on your paperwork that you’re gonna be earning um, in a year. And so like what, like price, because I, I haven’t even kept up with, I know interest rates are kind of like shifting now. So what price range does that enable you to buy in? And then what did you like ultimately select and, you know, share whatever you would like to about the home that you actually purchased?

Ethan (14:17): Most of the homes in our area, which is central Pennsylvania’s a very interesting real estate area because it’s low inventory, but high demand. So things go very quickly and they’re normally listed at a premium, which is similar to a lot of places nowadays. Um, we were looking in the, our, our top number was 330,000. That was the max that we could do. And now things depend, are you working to, is the price more loose? Are they, is it gonna sell quickly? There’s all these things that go into it. We ended up buying at that price, which was good for us, but it was also a place where if we were going to spend the extra money, it had to be move-in ready and it wasn’t necessarily a flip sort of investment. We were able to secure a house within a day. It was only up for a day. Very competitive market. We had to see it the day of for 330,000. So.

Emily (15:09): Yeah. So of the down payment, you don’t have to gimme the exact figure, but was it in like the 3 to 5% range of like the minimum for a conventional loan? Or was it like higher than that?

Ethan (15:19): It was very interesting. So the sellers of the house wanted a really high earnest money deposit, so it felt larger on the earnest money deposit end. I think the earnest money deposit was somewhere around 3%. Um, and the total down payment ended up being I think 7%.

Working With Mortgage Lenders as a Grad Student

Emily (15:40): Interesting. I understand that you ended up working with my brother Sam Hogan, um, for your loan and that’s how we got connected. But I’m wondering, you know, you told us you make, um, $30,000 over nine months. Is that W2 income or is it fellowship or like what’s the reporting like nature of the stipend?

Ethan (16:00): Yeah, that’s a great question and something I had to figure out early on when I reached out to lenders. It is, I am an employee of Villanova University, which is very helpful, I would say to anyone who’s applying to programs or once you get in, you can immediately reach out and ask ar what your HR, what your status will be. Um, Villanova’s really student focused and friendly, where they made sure based on doctoral students complaints and questions so forth, that they were employee status and not just independent contractors, um, which was very helpful. So it, it is W2.

Emily (16:35): Okay. I know that makes it so much simpler for lenders, so much simpler. But I’m wondering why you ended up working with Sam who kind of has like a specialty in this area. Did you have trouble working with local lenders? Like what went on on that front?

Ethan (16:47): Yeah, local lenders were incredibly friendly, but not always well versed in my situation. Uh, I didn’t run into any bad people, but I was forced to go online and somehow, you know, find this podcast and then find Sam and Sam was incredibly helpful and knew exactly what he needed from me. A lot of other lenders, I spent a lot of time trying to say, this is the situation, these are the documents I have, this is what I’m trying to qualify myself as. And they were wanting to reach out to the school. Would reach out to different people in my program and reach out to me a lot of the day. Sam already had a checklist of what he needed and how he was gonna get it done, and it went very smoothly. So the local, local agents and lenders were great, but it was, it was quite complicated with them.

Emily (17:33): Hmm. So you were kind of having to educate them about what the situation is, whereas Sam already deals with this day in and day out and he, he knows what’s going on. Um, was it the nine month stipend that was like giving people some pause?

Ethan (17:46): Yeah, a lot of people because it wasn’t 12 months and because it wasn’t medical. That’s one of the things I ran into as well. I’m in a humanities field, which I think some lenders rightfully so see as a bit more, uh, volatile. Um, it was brought up at one point that it was an issue that it wasn’t for a MD or a medical doctor that they wouldn’t be able to sponsor or help with. So there was a, a slew of things that I ran into in which people were hesitant to lend

Emily (18:19): Yeah. They didn’t have like a box that you fit in like neatly, but Sam Sam’s very familiar with all this, so yeah. I’m really glad to hear that he had like the checklist. He was able to like move quickly and everything. Is there anything else you wanna say about the process of like securing the loan or like any of the, the, you know, the contract period or just anything about else about the home purchasing process

Ethan (18:41): With the home purchasing process, I think sometimes, especially as an academic where most people are tight on money, I would say make sure you know what you have. Uh, it was often for me where your agent is asking you, are you okay with this? Are you okay with that? And if the home buying process is quick, know what your yes lines and no lines are, know what’s uncomfortable, know what is uncomfortable. Um, even with Sam, Sam was great helping us wait for a good rate, just waiting for a good rate nowadays is incredibly hard and, and can be very stressful. So knowing for you, this is the last day I wanna lock my rate, this is the last day I wanna worry about this. It just sort of having a strategy and not, um, it can be just really stressful to look at the lack of money that you have instead of what you’re comfortable with. So I would just offer the encouragement to be okay with what you have and, and plan for, um, using that in the most appropriate way.

Emily (19:35): Yeah, I totally concur as, especially in like a fast moving market, like what you’re describing, you really have to have given thought in advance to like what is a boundary, what is a yes, what is a no, what is a need, what is a want? Like all of that stuff when you’re, um, yeah, selecting the home that you’re gonna be living in for at least a few years.

Commercial

Emily (19:54): 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.

Initial Experiences With Homeownership

Emily (20:46): So you’ve been a homeowner for like, we’re recording this in November, 2025, so a handful of months now. Um, how have you found the experience? Has there been any like surprises, like positives, negatives?

Ethan (20:59): As far as negatives, I can’t say there’s a whole lot. We’re still very new. We moved in in September, so there’s not a whole lot that we can say that has gone wrong, thankfully, because that’s not always the case. Positives is there’s always things to learn. So if you’re an academic, you’re in a good spot because you must like learning and owning a home is a learning process. One of the things that we found really beneficial about having a home and making this step has been the sort of accomplishment of it, of it can feel so difficult to finding a home in this market that there is a real relief that once you get into a home you maybe haven’t even thought about what you’re going to do with the home. You’re just so happy that you have one. And I think one of the positives is once you get into the home, it really is, uh, an anchor and something to be proud of and something to hang your hat on that you went through the process because it’s so multifaceted and a lot of it was out of my vernacular interest rates and, and I, I didn’t know what an earnest money deposit was if you asked me 12 months ago. There’s a lot of that that you can accrue and I think it makes you well versed to help other people, but also look whether it’s time for your next house, I feel so much more capable, uh, in reaching out to lenders and agents and even with my own finances, it makes you dive deeper into sort of your whole inventory of knowledge.

Emily (22:24): Yeah, that’s very true. And we touched on this a little bit earlier, but do you anticipate this home to be something that you live in just while you’re in graduate school? Um, or so do you definitely see yourself moving at the end of it? Do you definitely not see yourself moving it? Are you open to multiple possibilities? It certainly sounds like you wanna stay in the area, but what about like this specific home?

Ethan (22:45): For the specific home we, it is a four bed, three bath, now, it’s technically two and a half bath. Um, I think they bump that number up on Zillow for the, for the looks of it, but it has space. So one of the things that we’d always consider is this could be more of a investment property in the sense of it was not perfect, but it could use some cosmetic updating. So when we sell it, we certainly could do some things in that realm. We’d love to stay in the house. I’m in a six year program, so at least for that long, um, outside of that, Pennsylvania’s a good area for postdoc research as well. I’m not gonna try and predict where I’m going, but it’s in a good area. It’s in a growing area. We felt like if we bought this house in six years, this area, we’ll still have a lot of people looking for a home, especially a single family residence. So we feel comfortable that no, no matter which way it goes, we’re just gonna put as much cosmetic work into the home as possible and move on from there.

Emily (23:43): So it sounds like you have a happy, happy scenario. Like if you end up staying longer than six years, that’s great. You’ve made a choice that probably will work for that situation or if you end up leaving after six years, that’s all you also thought through that scenario. This is something I was exposed to when I read, um, the First-Time Home Buyers Handbook, I believe is the title, and it’s by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench over at BiggerPockets. Just even, it’s like in the introduction of chapter one, first thing I learned in the book was like, think through the possible outcomes. You live in the home forever, you sell the home, you move, but rent out the home. Are you going to be, are you making a selection that you are happy with, no matter which of those scenarios it ends up being. So if you know for sure that one of them’s out, that’s okay, but are the other couple of possibilities like you’re set up to do that. Because obviously, like you said, there are some properties that would not make a good rental property that you would pretty much have to either stay in forever or sell, and that does of course limit your options. So it sounds like you were thinking through all those possibilities.

Ethan (24:42): Yeah, the versatility to us was a really big deal. We wanted something that if it is an investment, it’s gonna have the widest exposure to helping us in the future as possible. Especially in the shifting landscape of being an academic, you know, you could apply for something and get it in in New York. What does that look like with your house and what equity did you have time to build? Which is also why before the program it felt like a big deal to us to just simply attempt to buy a home.

Homeownership Considerations and Advice for Grad Students

Emily (25:07): Yeah, absolutely. I mean if your finances are ready like yours were, you know, you had repaid the debt, you had some savings you had on paper, your offer letters and so forth like that is ready. Of course, not everybody, even if they wanna buy a home during graduate school, would be ready to do so right at the beginning. But I agree, like as soon as you are able to, the more time you give yourself, the better. As you’ve been entering into your graduate program and meeting other people, have you met any other homeowners in your graduate program or in other programs at Villanova?

Ethan (25:35): There are a couple, you know, graduate programs, there’s, there is a nice mess of people from different stages in life. Um, there are a few, yeah, there’s a few my, I would say in my generation to keep that as <laugh> as uh, classy as possible. But there are not a lot. And I think a lot of the times when I’ve talked to people about buying a house, they’ve, the question isn’t necessarily how did you do it? It’s how did you start? Because I think people feel really intimidated by the idea of doing so, and it’s not that they have a lack of capacity to do so, it’s just, oh, you know, it is a really overbearing process and having someone else who has done it can just feel like a good encouragement to them. So not a lot of people, but definitely people that are interested in doing so.

Emily (26:27): Hmm. Well I’m glad you’re, you know, available as a resource of course to your peers to give them your tips and what you learned through the process. And I’m glad that you’re, you know, you came on this podcast to, um, cast a wider net of like, hey, maybe it’s possible for you, like it, it is a project, but it’s not, not like too onerous. It just depends on whether you’re financially and emotionally kind of ready for that, which definitely sounds like you were. So maybe to add on to the discussion we’ve already had, but are there any, like, what are the circumstances under which other PhD students or doctoral students should consider home ownership?

Ethan (27:00): This is really basic, but one of the first instances is look at the institution that you’re at. I know that Villanova has a couple economic fail safes for its students that if something really negative were to happen, let’s say your car breaks down, your expensive MacBook breaks, right? And you were planning to buy a house that can take a real hit into your dreams of owning a house. Villanova at my institution has resources where they will cover that for it’s graduate and PhD students. So if you’re an at an institution that has these things to back you up one that’s really helpful. Two, I would say it’s exactly what you said, make sure you’re emotionally ready for it because looking for a house alone can be an emotional rollercoaster. It’s a wonderful coaster that you get off at the end and it’s awesome, but during it it’s a little frightening. And then third, I would say, if you feel that you can keep up with your debt, that’s the biggest thing. If you can continue to make payments, if it’s dwindling, if you feel comfortable with the payment, what, what kind of payment you’d be comfortable with. Those would be the big three things. Your institution, your emotions. Are you ready to buy a house? Is that something you want? Is that what the people around you want? And then third, what is your capacity to have a down payment? And also what’s your monthly gonna look like?

Emily (28:15): And I would say to that third question, um, if you really are considering home ownership, you can reach out to a lender. Like you can reach out to Sam for example, and just be like, this is the financial picture at the moment. Uh, yes, am I ready to buy in what price range, what I qualify for? And a lender of course will give you that information, but they might also say to you, Hey, your, your application’s gonna look a lot stronger if you clear, you know, your credit card debt. There may be some things they can suggest you of like maybe work on this first. Um, student loans, I know you paid yours back. Student loans are less of a heavy weighted consideration. Especially if they’re currently in deferment. So I would say if your only debt is student loans, like go for it, get what the picture is. But like that may not hold you back as much as an equivalent amount of another type of debt. I guess I’ll put it that way. Um, like if you had a car loan or you know, some other things going on like that. So like yeah, it’s never too early to just say, what would I qualify for right now? Okay, if I cleared my credit card debt, if I did this, then what would I qualify for? And maybe come back in a year, whatever, when you’ve had a chance to work on those items within your financial profile.

Ethan (29:27): Yeah, that’s a great point and thanks for the clarification. I think with that, I would say reach out to multiple lenders. One of the first lenders I reached out to said, Hey, you’re not gonna be able to buy a house in the central PA area for at least two years. And I, it was very defeating and very strange and I just felt the need to maybe get a second opinion. So I would say reach out to maybe if you don’t find an answer completely satisfactory and you wanna double check where you stand with a certain lender, reach out to a different one, see what they say and if you get similar feedback, go from there.

Emily (30:00): Yeah. I would say especially if those early answers are, um, limiting or like telling you you can’t reach your goal, like keep asking. Because frankly some PhD students will receive the answer of we don’t lend to people with your type of income or with, or we don’t lend to students or, you know, kind of what you were hearing. Oh, well if you were a medical student it would be different. But in this scenario we don’t do. So you may hear some of those answers. So like you said, always get, I would say minimum three, talk to at least three different lenders, get three different quotes. Um, let Sam be one of them because he does have a specialty in this area if you are a grad student or a postdoc, that kind of thing. But uh, still, you know, there is always a possibility that in your local area, maybe you will find a lender that deals with students or deals with postdocs all the time and like they have that checklist like Sam did, like they may be more familiar. It just very much, you know, could be dependent on your individual housing market.

Ethan (30:48): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And Sam, again, just to speak to Sam, Sam was wonderful and not only that, but Sam immediately took the pressure off me to try to validate my situation and he could speak the language and immediately asked, Hey, I know you’re gonna have a statement from your acceptance letter of how much you’re gonna make each year. Can you send that to me? And in my head I was thinking, well how does he know that? Like he, he just read, read my mind. That’s wonderful. So having someone with that expertise is really helpful.

Emily (31:16): At least, yeah. One area of the buying process that doesn’t have to be like, quite so onerous. Like, like working with an experienced real estate agent who loves working the first time home buyers, like that’s another real huge like asset in your corner if you can find someone like that.

Ethan (31:30): Yeah. Finding a good real estate agent, they are worth their weight in gold. And I think you hit the nail on the head. There is a lot I didn’t realize, some real estate agents do not enjoy working with first time home buyers and that is more of a burden to them because first time home buyers are going to look at more houses and investigate different things and not know what they want. So that, I think that’s a great point.

Emily (31:49): Well, Ethan, is there anything else that you’d like to add about this whole journey, um, before we ask our final question?

Ethan (31:57): Yeah, I would just a I just wanna echo something you said earlier, which I think was really sound advice, which is just keep asking if, even if you don’t feel like you’re prepared to buy a house, but you have that desire to reach out to a lender, ask them what your situation is, that that’s very similar to what we did. Yes, we didn’t have a lot of debt, but we also did not have a lot of income during the summer and I wasn’t working, I hadn’t worked for a while. Um, my wife and I had never worked two jobs at the same time until this fall when we bought the house. So at that time we were on one income and it was not, uh, an exuberant amount of money, but it was still possible. So I would just offer an encouragement ask and you don’t know what doors could open or close

Emily (32:38): And just, we sort of touched on this, but like you can go to a lender with your offer letter, like you don’t have to wait for your first paycheck to arrive. Um, I’m trying to remember, I know Sam and I have talked to this before. It’s either two months or three months in advance of your start date. You are, you could get a loan based off of your offer letter, so it’s not too early if it’s, you know, the summer before you’re gonna start, you know, a PhD program in the fall. Like if you have that offer letter in hand, you can start those conversations for sure.

Ethan (33:03): Yeah, that’s a great point.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (33:05): Okay, Ethan, I, we will wrap up with the final question that I ask of all my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

Ethan (33:18): I would say reach out to your schools for as many financial opportunities as possible. One of the reasons that I had this opportunity was I bugged my school to see whatever funding I could receive at any moment. And I think as much as we wanna focus on buying the house, there are opportunities at the university you’re at where there are dollars that are waiting to be used no matter what field, what department there are opportunities. And I think having that just a season where maybe you get a scholarship you don’t, you didn’t know was coming, can really, really help your chances to get a house and make you feel more confident in going through that process. So I would say reach out to your institutions about funding, funding that may be available to help you in any way, shape or form, whether it’s health insurance subsidy, whether it’s, uh, a reimbursement for classes or textbooks. Use those tools to your advantage and while you’re looking to buy a house,

Emily (34:08): Love that advice. And I know I, I’ve, I talk with a lot of administrators and it really is the case that there is funding available that sometimes goes unallocated just because they didn’t know where to direct it to. So like ask your advisor, ask your director of graduate studies, anybody on your committee, just like all the appropriate people within your orbit, is there something I could be applying for? Is there money available? Like what do you think I’m a good candidate for? Um, especially if you are anything below fully, fully funded as a graduate student. I mean even if you are, you can still ask, but if you’re below fully funded, then for sure have those conversations. Then they, they should be expecting them frankly because if you’re not fully funded, then they should be expecting that you’re looking around for more opportunities. <laugh>.

Ethan (34:51): Yeah, absolutely. They, especially if you’re not fully funded, there’s a honor system there where they should be bringing you funding opportunities, I would think.

Emily (34:59): Yes. Okay. Well Ethan, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today and congratulations on your home purchase.

Ethan (35:06): Thank you so much. I appreciate all you do for people who are in precarious academic situations looking for houses. We really appreciate your encouragement and the wealth of knowledge you bring. So thank you.

Emily (35:14): Awesome. Thanks

Outro

Emily (35:26): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Resources for PhD Job Seekers from the Hosts of Propelling Careers

January 12, 2026 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jim Gould and Lauren Celano, the co-hosts of Propelling Careers, about strategies for PhD job seekers, starting with an update on the PhD job market. They discuss how PhDs can figure out the salaries of various careers and particular jobs, including where they might fall within a posted salary range, and what benefits are offered at a company. They review where job seekers can go for both free and paid assistance. Finally, both Jim and Lauren give excellent financial advice related to job transitions.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Resources for PhD Job Seekers from the Hosts of Propelling Careers

Teaser

Jim (00:00): But it’s not productive to panic and say, oh my gosh, let me send out a whole bunch of of resumes or applications without actually going through the process. The process might end up being expedited time-wise, you know, instead of three to six months or nine months of exploration, job application, and interviewing, you might have a couple weeks, but you still have to go through the steps of doing that, and you have to fight off that panic.

Introduction

Emily (00:33): 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 (01:01): This is Season 23, Episode 1, and today my guests are Dr. Jim Gould and Lauren Celano, the co-hosts of Propelling Careers. Our topic is strategies for PhD job seekers, starting with an update on the PhD job market. We discuss how PhDs can figure out the salaries of various careers and particular jobs, including where they might fall within a posted salary range, and what benefits are offered at a company. We review where job seekers can go for both free and paid assistance. Finally, both Jim and Lauren give excellent financial advice related to job transitions.

Emily (01:42): These action items are for you if you switched onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac last fall and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe for 2025 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is this Thursday, January 15, 2026. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate, named savings account for your future tax payments. Calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your next fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives. If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. This quarter’s Q&A call is on Wednesday, January 14, 2026 at noon Pacific Time. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s23e1/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Jim Gould and Lauren Celano, the co-hosts of Propelling Careers.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (04:05): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, the host of the Propelling Careers podcast, Jim Gould and Lauren Celano, and they are gonna take the time to introduce themselves to you, but I just wanna say, if you’re a PhD, you need to go right now and subscribe to their podcast because it’s really, really valuable whether you’re in a job searching, you know, time or not. Although that is a subject of the podcast still something we need to keep up all the time. So go subscribe. Also, Jim, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself first.

Jim (04:32): Thanks, Emily for the invitation and thanks for the plug to our, uh, podcast as well. So, I’m director for postdoc affairs and program director for Responsible Conduct of research at Harvard Medical School, where I’ve been for almost 15 years now, providing programming and coaching and policy implementation for our postdocs here. I’ve received my bachelor’s in molecular biology from Clarion, University of Pennsylvania, my PhD in biochemistry at University of Louisville in Kentucky, and did my postdoc training in two different laboratories at the National Cancer Institute at the NCI in Frederick, Maryland.

Emily (05:05): Excellent. Lauren, how about you?

Lauren (05:08): Alright, well, currently, uh, the co-founder of a company called Propel Careers, and I do a lot to be able to help support PhDs and postdocs and early career people in their career journey. Um, but I’ve been in the life sciences sector now about 24 years, the first 10 of which was more drug discovery focused. And since about 2009 I’ve been working really closely with a whole range of postdocs and PhDs and early career people to help them navigate their careers.

Emily (05:34): My next question may have started to be answered by your, uh, background information there, but I’m, I’m curious how you developed this expertise, particularly in PhD careers. Um, Jim, why don’t we start with you because we know how you got your PhD, but then how did you get into this work?

Jim (05:48): Alright, so, you know, I I I was experiencing academia and research training firsthand as, uh, you know, in my bachelor’s. You know, I did a, uh, research stint, uh, summer undergraduate research fellowship actually at Ohio University and went into a PhD program trying to figure out what to do career wise with my molecular biology background. Uh, it seemed like it made sense going to graduate school, getting a PhD, struggled a little bit as a student, trying to figure out what it actually meant to, to do research and, and be successful there. And then, as I was a graduate student, realized that there’s an entire community and my peers and colleagues and fellow students who also needed help. And there wasn’t a ton of infrastructure for the development of professional skills, tons of research happening and, you know, we were able to, you know, show presentation skills, but it wasn’t a professional skill set.

Jim (06:42): And it was one of those things where we started ourselves building those skills and, and pulling groups together. And then the next step is like, okay, I don’t have enough experience to go on the job market directly from a PhD. So I did postdoc and not fully understanding what postdoc means ’cause there weren’t a ton of postdocs when I was a graduate student at U of L. There are more now. And just having been in that process in the training and struggling in each one of those stages and then figuring out things for myself, but also figuring out things to help my, my peers and colleagues. So that gave me a lot of just sort of on the ground practical experience and helping others. And then I realized I could probably do this for a career, but didn’t know what it looked like, didn’t know what it was, what it would be called.

Jim (07:28): I was looking at education and outreach, but it was running a, um, a postdoc association running seminar series, just being invited to sit on committees and panels and get questions asked of me like, well, what’s the postdoc experience? Where we’re faculty, we’re appointed, we, we don’t know exactly how postdocs are, are, are being treated or what they need or what the trainees need. And I was like, well, we need this, we need this. And it just sort of snowballed building a reputation, doing that, and then realizing I can make a career out of it. And at the same time, as I was in the middle of my, my postdoc, finishing my postdoc, there was a proliferation of postdoc offices growing, you know, and there are still institutions that are still starting postdoc offices. So I went from being a postdoc doing research, but also helping my, my fellow postdocs to running a postdoc.

Jim (08:20): And then I needed to learn the administrative aspect of policy development, of implementation, of learning how to coach. But doing this sort of day to day, week to week, growing and building my own portfolio of presentations, of skills, of coaching, I, I’ve been able to just build that expertise and now working with maybe even thousands of postdocs and PhDs and other trainees. So being able to then share that experience through my workshops, through my trainings and, and whatever else other people invite me to talk about. But also through that podcast that we have Propelling Careers.

Emily (08:56): And how many years has it been since you devoted yourself full-time to this

Jim (08:59): Full-time? It’s been 15 years. So I started this job in 2011, June, 2011. So June, 2026 will be 15 years on the dot.

Emily (09:08): Amazing. And I can see so many parallels actually between your story of, you know, needing this information for yourself and struggling through it, and then starting to teach other people with my own story. Of course, you decided to do this from within academia, <laugh>, and I’ve decided to do it from external academia, but still a lot of parallels in the motivation there. Um, Lauren, how did you come to, you know, decide to focus on this particular population?

Lauren (09:31): So, I, I have a scientific undergrad. I have biochemistry, molecular biology is what I focused on in college, and a lot of my friends decided to go to graduate school, so I started to get to know people that were doing their PhDs and some of them decided to also do postdocs. I also had moved to Boston in 2003 and, uh, started to be surrounded by people <laugh> with advanced academic training from the biotech activities I was involved in, but also just from my friend network and that sort of thing. And I started to notice that a lot of people had these amazing skills, but didn’t always know what to do. And in my working world, before Propel, I was, uh, getting to know a lot of different people in biotech companies and across a whole range of different roles and that sort of thing. And when I ended up, uh, going back for my MBA, I started to see that there was this need to be able to help people think about their future, to think about what are they doing and how are they leveraging their skills.

Lauren (10:25): I was giving advice to a lot of friends of mine, and then I realized that maybe this is something that could be applicable to other types of people. So I kind of fell into it, to be honest. But it’s been really fun to be able to help all these motivated people that really just wanna do great work and they wanna change the world through their research and activities and, uh, and so forth. So it’s been really nice. So for me, it’s been about 16 and a half years, so it’s funny, Jim, to think about like, when I started interacting with you, that was shortly after you came to HMS. So it’s really a small world, but I’m so happy that we got to kind of grow up together, <laugh> in this space.

Jim (11:00): Yeah, being able to, to do this straight out of postdoc, there was a huge learning curve. And one of the things that I wanted to point out with, with what Lauren and I were, were talking about with our relative path is that it wasn’t, we had to explore it, we had to find it, it wasn’t just laid out in front of us, okay, you have an MBA, now you go do this, you have a PhD, now you go do this. And I, I know that for our audiences, relative audience is yours and ours, it’s, it’s very similar. Like, okay, I’m going to undergraduate, I could do these things. I could go pre-med, I could go to graduate school, but we don’t know what’s happening two or three, even five years down the road. So being able to figure that out while still being productive as a student, as a trainee, as a postdoc, you know, it, it’s almost like you have two jobs. You need to figure out what your next job is, but also you have to be productive in, in your fellowship as well.

Emily (11:51): Absolutely. I totally agree. Um, I I think about it the same way of having the academic training aspect of your job and then the professional development and perhaps even job search and pursuit of careers aspect of your job. Um, you just mentioned, Lauren, that it’s a small world and I had the pleasure of meeting both of you in person. Um, within the past year, Jim and I saw one another at NPA, the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference. Then Lauren and I saw one another at the graduate career consortium annual meeting, and after that I wanted to set up this podcast interview. But I’m so glad for that timing because right now is a really interesting and critical moment for PhDs in terms of their, anyone who’s looking for a job. Right? <laugh>

Current State of the PhD Job Market

Emily (12:30): We have heard overall in the media that the job market is so difficult right now. And so I want to get an update from you two on how the PhD job market in particular is doing. Because I know from looking at BLS data that, you know, PhDs overall have a really, really low rate of unemployment. And as of the last update, which I looked at, and now we had a government closure in between, but the last jobs update I saw that PhD unemployment has ticked up a little bit, but still very low overall. But Jim, you said to me earlier this year when we met that PhDs are more likely to be underemployed than unemployed, which is also not a great, uh, image. So take this how you will, but I want to hear from each of you like your assessment of the job market right now for PhDs.

Lauren (13:13): Yeah, I I can start on this one and then Jim can, uh, can add, so the job market’s really hard. We actually have a podcast that we put out a few months ago about reasons why the job market is so challenging. There’s financing challenges, all sorts of things that we go into. Uh, it’s a really hard time, especially in life sciences and in high tech in particular. It’s very challenging for people. There’s been a lot of layoffs and reorgs for different reasons. So for people that are currently looking for roles right now that are finishing up graduate school or finishing up their postdoc, there’s so many people on the market, which is making the job market really hard. It’s taking people longer to find roles. People have to be even more persistent in terms of the job search process to find opportunities. And sometimes, you know, at a practicality, people just need a job. And so there’s some cases where people just take a job just to be able to pay rent and things like that as opposed to their ideal job because they just need something. So it’s a, it’s a complicated, we could probably spend like three hours just on that topic, but, but Jim, what, what else do you have to add there

Jim (14:16): For the reasons that you just explained Lauren, but also there are, um, there’s, there’s relative safety and, and that might not be so true nowadays, but traditionally, historically there’s relative safety in academia for many PhDs and postdocs. And they tend to remain in those positions longer or maybe go on the, the job market multiple times, at least historically. Now it is changing because of, of just funding constraints and, and changes in the NIH and and, and changes in indirect costs. And, you know, it costs more now to keep a postdoc and graduate students. But the, the idea is that they stay in positions longer. They might extend their PhD, they might extend their postdoc a year or two, so they don’t go, they don’t finish a fellowship and then go unemployment. So they extend a fellowship. And that’s what I meant by underemployment, where they stay in a position where they’re not advancing. There’s no sort of promotion structure within academia right now, at least for postdocs to continue to advance, uh, within that structure. They’re also may be even under appointed as I as sort of just explains like they, there’s no path of advancement. And then the other thing that, that Lauren kind of hinted at is sometimes they end up taking jobs out of need rather than sort of matching skill sets and advancement that are, tend to be below their skill set or experience level, because again, the fellowship funding is over and they need to find a job rather than launching their career. So there, there tends to be a little bit of underemployment and that it ended up catching up eventually. But there is, you know, there, there is this aspect of academia is this kind of warm, cozy, at least it used to be this warm, cozy place where you could take your time doing research and being productive and getting publications out, and then there’s a kind of a soft launch and or, or whatever on your, your next step of your career. It just sort of extended a little bit. So it’s not, you don’t lead to unemployment ’cause you don’t just lose postdoc jobs. It’s, you end up staying longer and you end up being under, under appointed and underemployed,

Emily (16:19): Except that some postdocs are losing their jobs now. Um, I mean because of funding changes, I actually worked with a university this fall who in the midst of me working with them, they conducted layoffs of their postdocs. So it’s unusual <laugh>. It’s, it’s different than at other times. And I wonder if, I know we could spend so much time on this, but if you had any advice for how PhDs can meet the moment, and I’ll say that in the financial realm, when people are experiencing job loss or financial emergency or anything like that, the advice is kind of like, well, it’s just more important to do all those classic things that you were told to do anyway, right? Like, have the emergency fund and diversify your sources of income and, and be able to cut your expenses if you need to. So I’m wondering, in your sphere, is there any different advice or is it just like, yeah, go listen to all of our podcast archives and just do all the stuff we’ve already been talking about <laugh>

Advice for the Current PhD Job Market

Lauren (17:12): One thing Jim and I say all the time is don’t do this alone. So find resources at your institution, reach out to your network, may- have your materials together, right? You need to have a resume or a CV depending upon what you’re applying to. It needs to be up to date. So if you do have to look for a job quickly, you’ve got something you can share. Otherwise you lose time trying to put it together, cultivating your network, you know, again, like reaching out to people. But when you do that, uh, we did an episode recently in the podcast called Help Me Help You, which was all about if you’re gonna be engaging your network, help them help you, what do you say to them? How do you share information? How do you make it easy for people to help you, especially if you might be in a time crunch due to layoffs, reorgs changes that are unexpected and things like that.

Jim (18:02): Yeah. And, and in, in addition to what Lauren was just talking about, we have to fight the urge or we advise fighting the urge of panicking because, you know, panic is not productive for the most part. Being able to understand the landscape. There’s, there’s e- there’s a, a grieving process that happens, especially if you lose a job. We’re not downplaying that, but it’s not productive to panic and say, oh my gosh, you know, let me send out a whole bunch of, of resumes or applications without actually going through the process. The process might end up being expedited time-wise, you know, instead of three to six months or nine months of exploration, job application and interviewing. You might have a couple weeks, but you still have to go through the steps of doing that. And you have to fight off that panic and realize in the grand scheme of things, a a three month gap or a one month gap or even a six month gap in your employment record is relatively meaningless, especially in academia and moving into industry because those now, you know, industry is, is relatively, there’s, there’s high turnover, you know, and you’re, you’re going to have multiple jobs, maybe even multiple careers. And now in academia, we are now feeling that, as you pointed out, Emily, you know, postdocs are losing their jobs. We are, you know, downsizing in academia, especially in the, the research realm. So we need to remain nimble, but you need to fight off that, that urge to panic and just remember your resources and your network and community.

Emily (19:27): I like that encouragement of just like, there is a process here. Like work the process, like work the steps. Um, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Okay, <laugh> like resources like yours and others that maybe available to people are, are excellent to be accessing at this time.

Lauren (19:40): Well we did a podcast episode recently about the 26 steps in the job search process. <laugh>, I mean, not not to overwhelm people, but it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work to be able to effectively engage in this. So I would say check that out because it could help people start to get a feel for things they could do to help them be productive in the side.

Jim (20:00): Yeah. And, and that list it, it could have been a hundred things and we, we were able to sort of pull that list and, and you know, glean it and, and, and call it. But the idea is that there, the, that there might be, um, maybe healing in that process. Just doing the thing also helps you able to control the controllables. So again, fight the urge of panic but also re remember that there are many things outside of your control in this, in this world and in this process. You, you, you can’t control somebody interviewing you or hiring you, but you can control doing the process. You can control, you know, engaging your, your network. You can control putting out quality applications.

Emily (20:38): I love that. And all the episodes that you mentioned, Lauren and Jim, by the way, will be in the show notes. So anybody looking for that, go to pfforphds.com/podcast. Find this episode and you’ll get all the links to the Propelling Careers podcast.

Pay Transparency Laws and PhD Salary Ranges

Emily (20:51): Okay. I wanna talk a little bit more about finances, specifically within the job search and job application process. Uh, I learned from your podcast that there have been all these new like pay transparency laws in various states that have come into effect. So I want you to explain a little bit about what that means and how PhDs can figure out what is an appropriate, um, salary or salary range for a career that they’re looking for. And also in a specific location. ’cause obviously cost of living is gonna massively change this as well.

Lauren (21:19): So I’ve had the fortunate, uh, nature. So part of what I do in my career is I do recruiting with a few companies and, uh, I’ve had opportunities hands on to actually be a part of some of these pay transparency activities. And so for example, in Massachusetts, October 29th, 2025, the pay transparency law went into effect, which means companies of more than 25 people are supposed to have salary ranges for each role that they post. In California, this went into effect January 1st, 2023. I was recruiting with a company at the time in California. So I was involved in actually posting the salary ranges and I was so nervous to actually put it out there. But it’s been great actually for candidates to have a little more transparency around where they may fall. Now it’s a range, right? So you have, you have, you know, let, let’s say the range might be a hundred to $120,000 for a certain role. Typically people pay kind of in the middle of that range. ’cause you wanna allow people opportunities to be able to grow once they come into an organization. So as a candidate, I would anticipate probably like middle of the range is probably where you should fall for that. As you’re looking at opportunities though, it can be helpful to see the ranges. ’cause then you can start to get a sense of which roles could align to your financial considerations. ’cause there could be some situations where a certain type of role just isn’t gonna align and that’s fine. You can then focus your efforts on ones that are out there. Washington and New York also have pay transparency laws. And you know, one thing that’s helpful to keep in mind is that maybe you live in a state that doesn’t have pay transparency laws. Well, you can still look at states like California, Massachusetts, New York, Washington and start to get an idea potentially of what ranges could be. It may differ a little bit in, you know, the Midwest or the South or something, but at least you may start to see kind of ballparks in certain ranges. The other thing I would say is, you know, when you’re doing informational interviews you can ask people like, do you have an idea of what the salary might be for this particular role? But not just that though, what are the other benefits, right? And we’ll talk more about that, but it’s like the whole package. Don’t be afraid to utilize your network. There’s a few other ideas I have, but I know Jim has some thoughts on this too, in terms of advice he’s given.

Jim (23:37): Yeah, there, there, you know, if in academia, uh, you know, Laura was talking a lot about industry and, and just outside of academia, but there are public institutions, public colleges and universities that have to pay, have to post their salary. So you can get an insight on relative salaries. They’re usually a year or two, sometimes even three years behind. So you can get a a sense, you know, and I know, you know, inflation is, is increasing. So tho those salaries may not be as accurate, but you get a sense of what the range might be depending on, you know, full professor, assistant professor, associate professor, or even, you know, scientific staff or you know, administrators within university. The other thing is, you know, um, the American Association for Medical Colleges, it produces for a fee, a a booklet of salaries across medical schools and medical colleges. So you can get an insight into that. You know, depending on if you are more, more biomedical research and you’re going into a a private medical, um, research institution, you can, you know, basically purchase those, um, you know, those ranges and salaries. But one of the things that, that Lauren already mentioned that’s really effective is when you’re out there gathering information, meeting people and networking, you do these informational interviews and you collect that kind of information, you don’t want to necessarily ask them specifically how much do you make in your role. That is, that tends to be rude, but you can say, how much can I expect in a, you know, in an introductory role or a, a scientist one role at, at your company or in your sector. And they should be able to give you a, a relatively accurate range as well. So, but you, you have that more direct information that, um, you, you could probably trust a bit more than finding stuff on the internet, uh, in indeed.com or Glassdoor or, or salary.com as well.

Lauren (25:28): To build on Jim’s point, some of the other professional organizations have salary guides. So American Chemical Society every couple years does a salary guide. So if you wanna be a chemist in a certain place, you can probably find a range. Uh, the Association of University Tech Transfer Managers also has salary ranges. So maybe some of you listening to this are involved in professional associations. Well ask that association, do you do a salary survey? Because maybe they do and that might help you. And also universities oftentimes collect this information. So if you wanted to move to California, you could do a search of some universities out in California and maybe they’ve compiled a, a information about recent PhD graduates and recent master’s graduates in their location in different sectors. It’s not gonna be perfect, but it may give you an idea of ranges just to be able to help in terms of that information. There’s a lot of information out there, but the source of the information, that’s the important part to make sure that you are seeking sources that are credible. That’s why sometimes Glassdoor and LinkedIn and so forth, sometimes it’s self-reported or made up in other capacities. So you just wanna be careful in terms of where you’re getting that information from.

Jim (26:42): You. You also wanna be careful with, again, the information you gather and you are moving in, in a different geographic area because cost of living varies across the United States and, and obviously the world. So if you gather information about salaries in the Boston area, but you’re moving to Pittsburgh, those numbers are gonna be inflated. Uh, Pittsburgh is generally gonna pay lower, but the cost of living is is cheaper, so your dollar might go a little bit further. So thinking about those aspects as well.

Emily (27:11): This, this is great information, thank you so much. And I, I love that you mentioned like different sort of categories of places that people can go to find this information. And I love the idea of someone starting this very early on like years or more, you know, a year more before they’re actually engaged in a job search process to try to figure out like maybe their own financial expectations and what sectors and what titles kind of align with that. Like for example, I did an interview recently with Dr. Gabrielle Fil- Filip-Crawford, who actually also met at GCC and she was talking about how pay transparency talking with our colleagues about pay helped her understand that she was never going to make enough money inside academia on her faculty track that she was on to satisfy her lifestyle needs and wants. And so it helped her leave that sector entirely and find more remunerative work that was, you know, still in line with what she wanted for her career. And so I just think that’s really, really important that we have realistic and grounded expectations about what different types of careers pay, what different titles pay. Because frankly, as a PhD you have a lot of transferrable skills that are kind of flexible. And so if you could fulfill the, you know, the requirements of roles with a few different titles, like you should look into what those different titles pay and the tracks that they’re on, um, to see, you know, what best aligns with your financial desires as well.

Lauren (28:29): 100%. Exactly. And of course it’s not always just about the money, but the culture and the kind of career trajectory. There’s a lot of things to factor in in terms of taking a role, uh, or not, but finances come into play and you wanna make sure that people are realistic so you can, whatever quality of life you need that you’re able to meet that.

Jim (28:50): Yeah, I agree. Quality of life is, is, is front and center, especially nowadays. We want to be able to, to work, to be able to live, not necessarily live to work for a lot of, a lot of different people.

Commercial

Emily (29:03): 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.

Learning About Benefits Information During the PhD Job Search

Emily (29:55): Okay, so we’ve talked about how to work out what kinds of salaries are on different careers and where to locate yourself on a range that you might see. Um, I wanna ask about benefits as well because, you know, certain benefits can be really, really important to people, especially related to like health insurance stuff. Like does this company offer parental leave? Does this company offer, um, you know, a specific medication that I need for a health condition that I have? Um, you know, different things like that. And how can someone who is looking or applying for jobs understand like, is this company even gonna meet, like benefits wise, my expectations? I understand you could probably ask about that very late in the process, like after you’ve gotten an offer, but is there any way to get that information earlier so that you don’t like waste your time maybe pursuing something that is not ultimately gonna work out?

Jim (30:44): So is because of the, the job market being so, um, so difficult at the moment, they want really good candidates and, uh, universities, colleges, um, companies, so on and so forth. If they, they usually put the benefits first and foremost at maybe at the bottom of the job description. They’re very proud to say, we offer, you know, uh, unlimited paid time off. We offer childcare subsidies, we offer commuting subsidies. So there are a lot of things that you can just find in the job description. And if it’s not in the job description, they probably have a why work here website or webpage where you land on. It’s more HR oriented, but you can find a lot of the different types of, of information and benefits, you know, from the job description, the job ad. Usually towards the end you’re like, we are very happy to be family oriented and all of these other things because, you know, the, the audience that, that Lauren and I tend to to work with are early career researchers and mid sort of midlife, mid thirties early or late twenties, early thirties, building their families as well. So the, I think companies are now understanding more than ever that they’re hiring not just the perfect candidate, but also a a a whole person that likely has a family with them.

Lauren (31:57): Yeah. And to, to add to that, I would say, I mean there’s some companies that literally have their entire benefit guide on the website. You can download it, it’s, you know, 45 pages with all the healthcare options, the 401k match, the vacation, the holidays, the cell phone reimbursement, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, also to plug the informational interview, when you talk to people at certain companies, it’s fair to ask, can you share some insights about benefits? Because this is something when I counsel people, and I’m sure Jim, you do too, and Emily for sure, you know, people look at the sal- the base salary and they’re either happy or sad depending upon what their expectations were. But then I always advise people, make a list of everything, right? The base salary is a hundred grand, okay, is there a bonus? Is there cell phone reimbursement? Is there commuter reimbursement? Is there like lunch provided a couple times a week, uh, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I’ve had situations where the base salary is a hundred thousand dollars, but the total package is actually like $135,000 because of the extra things associated with the offer. So that’s where it’s really helpful as a candidate to make sure you’re looking at the entire package. Plus, of course, what’s the culture like, what’s the work-life balance like, what’s the enjoyment of the role? Those are a little bit intangible, but also super important as you consider what’s gonna be the next best fit for you?

Emily (33:27): Is it appropriate to ask generally? Can you tell me about the benefits? ’cause obviously people probably in the interview process don’t necessarily wanna reveal oh yeah, I’m thinking about having a baby soon. Like yeah, I have a chronic medical condition, or, you know, whatever the case is.

Lauren (33:40): I think it’s fair to ask and, and I, I know, so in the recruiting work I do, typically after the first discussion, I’ll send people a summary of the details, but if, if you don’t get sent that I would ask it because these things are important. You don’t wanna get to the end of the interview and realize that the company doesn’t have things you need because then you just spent a lot of time and a lot of their time interviewing for a role that then is not gonna be a fit. So I love just being open and honest <laugh> and just asking for what you need and hopefully the organizations you are interviewing with will be able to provide information.

Jim (34:11): Yeah, it may not be your leading question. Be like, you know, when you first get in, what are the, what are the benefits? And it may not be the central question, but when given the opportunity, or maybe as you’re rounding out the interview or the discussion, be like, would you mind sharing, you know, the, the benefits package or, or a more information about benefits as well? Because during the interview it’s more about fit and work and, and connection and, and sharing your experience and credentials, but benefits will play a huge part in the actual decision if an offer is tendered.

Free Career Search and Career Development Resources for PhDs

Emily (34:43): You all mentioned earlier, um, graduate students and postdocs accessing resources related to career search and career development at their own institutions. Um, I’m wondering for people who have already, maybe they’re aware of that resource or maybe they’re no longer affiliated with institutions, so they don’t have access to those kinds of offices anymore. Um, what kinds of free resources are available? I mean, we know about your podcast, but anything else? And then is there ever a point when a person should consider paying for professional services or a course or anything like that?

Jim (35:16): So I, I know Lauren and I, we tend to align with, with some of this, uh, this interaction and, you know, the feedback and advice. But I do want to reiterate, even though, you know, people might not be still affiliated with in-, with institutions or schools or colleges, they are still alums of those schools and colleges and can go back as an alumni to maybe access career services, career offices. So you, you can still have some access, it might be limited, but there are also other offices that, you know, like mine, you know, especially, you know, if a postdoc is transitioning out and their end date is, um, I don’t know, a week from now, I’m not gonna turn them away in seven or eight days after their, their appointment ends. They can continue to come back as they’re transitioning out. So there, there’s also workforce development. Again, thinking about if you’re transitioning out, you can really leverage and access all of those resources. If you’re being terminated or you’re actually on your way out, you can tool up. But don’t forget that you are an alum of schools and universities where you paid probably thousands upon thousands of dollars. They still, you know, give you access to their, their, you know, uh, alumni office as well as their, the career services office. Other resources that I really like are kind of like, you know, um, communication, leadership, you know, emotional, uh, intelligence assessments. Those tend to be free. You, you can go to a, a coach and a professional and pay for those services and get, you know, um, some help unpacking some of those things. But there are a lot of those are free and the explanations are pretty clear and straightforward and it allows you to understand how you communicate and how others communicate and how things land for you. Where you can then stretch yourself into different personality types or with different personality types. Uh, I, so those are kind of the, some of the free stuff that you can get into, but you can pay to do some of those things like strengths finders or Clifton strengths. You, you, you have to, you know, buy the book for strengths finders and then you have access to like your top five strengths, but you could pay someone to sort of coach you on those things as well. And I know Lauren has a lot more information and insight as well.

Lauren (37:26): Totally. I mean, one, uh, one free thing that I often suggest to people is the myIDP by Science Careers. It, it was a tool, uh, meant mostly for biomedical and biosciences, uh, graduate students, but it could be used by other people as well. These, some of these things are transferable to other disciplines, physics and, and, and others. Uh, but you know, you put in your interest skills values and then it rank orders one of 20 career paths that could be a fit. Doesn’t mean you have to do patent law if that comes up first, but it can be a nice way to start to understand, oh wow, if I have these interests in skills, those writing careers or outreach careers or entrepreneurship careers or whatever seem to be a fit. Sometimes people just need a little bit of insight and then it can launch this whole new area that’s out there. Um, on the, you know, on the paid, uh, coaching side. I mean certainly some people need a ton of help in terms of tailoring the resumes, interview prep and things like that. So there are coaches out there that can help. The key is make sure you find a coach that’s appropriate in terms of background, expertise, even level of people that they’ve engaged with. I, I’ve had a few people recently that have come to me ’cause I do some coaching work with people and they may have gone to someone that just coaches like executive level people and here’s someone that’s just coming outta their PhD, that coach may not have the right type of advice ’cause they’re not used to working with people at more of the entry level. They’re used to working with people that are more seasoned or I’ve had people that have gotten career coaches, but they coach people in different industries. And so like the cosmetics industry is definitely way different than life sciences, which is way different than data science. So it can be really helpful to do your due diligence to make sure if you are paying for coaching services and career advice services, that you are paying for the right, the right information and the right, uh, the items to be able to make sure it’s actually useful for you.

Jim (39:20): And, and it might be helpful in the short term, very near term, you might, you might pay someone for a couple of sessions and then you, you’re on the path to, to success or you might buy a subscription for a month or a couple weeks to, uh, job, job listings or even like LinkedIn, you know, uh, uh, you know, high level. So, but it should not be a long term or, or a forever type of situation. But you know, there are times where you might need that extra help and you can’t find it for free and you need to reach out and have someone or some, some, uh, resource that actually is a paid resource, but it should not be necessarily a long-term commitment.

Lauren (39:59): I know in Massachusetts there’s even these like mentorship networks. I’ve been a mentor for at least 10 of the last 15 years for the Massachusetts chapter of Association of Women in Science. So they have a year long mentorship program. You pay a small amount of money to be a part of it, but then you get someone like me giving you advice every month about, you know, your career, how do you navigate things, how do you build resumes, how do you job search? So just I would say be resourceful. ’cause there could be a lot out there. It’s just sometimes you don’t always know where to begin. So that’s where ask your network, you know, engage with people so that way you’re not doing this alone.

Emily (40:33): Yeah, I just wanna underline that, that like, clearly there are so many either free or near free or hey, you already paid for this in the past, so let’s just keep using it, uh, resources available, go to those first by all means. But I can imagine there are some people who, like this job searching has gone on for like a long time and anything that they need to do to truncate the end of this and just get into a position might, you know, might be worth the investment. Is there anything else that you’d like to tell us about the financial side of job seeking and job interviewing?

Additional Insights About the Financial Side of the PhD Job Market

Jim (41:03): There is a cost, time and financial and resource when going on the market. You might have to invest in new interview materials, like maybe a printer or a new laptop or professional clothing or outfits, maybe microphones or, or you know, you know, headsets for phone interviews or, or zoom interviews. But also you might want to understand how if you’re traveling for the job or traveling for the interview, how that reimbursement or payment or upfront, you know, scheduling will, will impact your finances because sometimes you are, you don’t have a ton of money and they want you to pay for the flight and they’ll reimburse you afterwards. Or the pay for the hotel and flight, they’ll reimburse you afterwards that, that could be two, $3,000 very quickly where they reimburse you 30, 60 or 90 days later. So, uh, again, just understanding that there’s an actual cost, not just your time because going on the job market is a timely cost. It’s a almost a second job, but there are these, you know, these little purchases that tend to add up that, that you could be in a thousands of dollars just going on the market, buying new clothes, buying new materials and, and actually traveling.

Emily (42:17): Great point that in the event of job loss, your emergency fund is not just there to pay for your ongoing living expenses, but you may have increased expenses to engage in this as well. Thank you.

Lauren (42:27): And I know we touched briefly on this, but I, I just wanna reinforce this point. When you look at the actual salary, just don’t look at the actual salary <laugh>, look at the benefits, the entire package because that will help you get a better understanding of if you end up having a few job offers, which one’s going to be the best fit. I just, I urge people make a spreadsheet, I’m sure Emily, you probably love spreadsheets to keep track of things so you can really compare apples to apples if you’re lucky enough to get a few offers and know you have to know what your like turn, turn away point is, right? If, if you need a certain amount of money to be able to live, then you need to know that. So then if a job doesn’t cover that, then you may have to say no, even though the role could be amazing, you don’t wanna take something knowing that you’re going to be in a negative financial situation starting from day one. So these are sometimes really hard discussions to have with people, but it’s really important to be honest so that way you can find a role and be able to focus on the role and not be stressed out about not being able to have proper finances.

Emily (43:33): And this may be a concept that is unfamiliar to people coming out of graduate school or the postdoc that you should feel financially supported in the role that you’re in. Absolutely. Thank you so much for those, um, concluding words. Where can people find Propelling Careers?

Lauren (43:48): We have our podcast on Spotify and Apple podcasts, and again, our podcast is free <laugh>, we have at the end of 2025, we’ll have 88 episodes. We have a ton of content and hopefully all of you find it valuable as you peruse.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (44:04): Excellent. And I wanna end here by asking each of you the question I ask of all my interviewees, which is, what is your best financial advice for an early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new,

Jim (44:17): Right? It for me, it’s a combination of what we, we, we’ve already talked about is it it, and it’s a two-parter. Don’t do this alone. Use all of your resources to understand the, the cost, uh, of, of transitioning finding jobs and being successful in your career, but also understand and know the true cost of living in an area that you might be moving to. And that was, you know, Lauren, you know, talked about, you know, moving to a job and, and not realizing how much it cost. And and that’s something that actually happened. It, we got sticker shock when we moved up to here from Frederick Maryland to Boston. Uh, uh, it was a, a jump in salary, but it was not actually enough. And I didn’t realize that until after the fact. And it set us back several years in our finances to then catch up. And I think I still feel that we are actually behind where we would’ve been if we did actually just stayed in Frederick, uh, at points.

Lauren (45:08): And from my standpoint, so I see some people, they finish their PhD or postdoc and they get a job offer from a large pharma company and they go out and buy a new car, they get a nicer apartment maybe in the seaport of Boston and it’s like, don’t blow all your cash <laugh> right away. Like it could be really helpful to still live below your means so you can save some money so you can have a rainy day fund. You never know what might happen in the future. So it’s just as much as you may want to buy when you see your first check, like buy all this nice stuff, try to hesitate on that <laugh>. So, so that way it just allows you a little more freedom in the future.

Emily (45:48): There’s a big difference between splurging on a one-time purchase and splurging on something that’s gonna cost you some more money every single month going forward. So you’re absolutely preaching to the choir here. I love it. Thank you so much for this wonderful interview. I hope everybody goes and checks out your podcast. Thank you so much for joining me.

Jim (46:05): Thank you Emily.

Lauren (46:06): Thank you Emily.

Outro

Emily (46:17): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2025 Edition

December 15, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

Emily published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 246rd episode, and over the last six and a half years, the podcast has featured over 300 unique voices in addition to her own. For our last episode in 2025, we are catching up with the guests from Seasons 15 through 17, and a few from earlier seasons as well. The guests were invited to submit short audio clips to update us on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of their interview, as well as to provide their best financial advice if that has changed since that initial interview.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2025 Edition

Introduction

Emily (00:00): 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 (00:28): This is Season 22, Episode 9, and today I am featuring several past guests! I published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 246th episode, and over the last seven and a half years, the podcast has featured over 300 unique voices in addition to my own. For our last episode in 2025, we are catching up with the guests from Seasons 15 through 17, 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. The audio clips in this episode are ordered by when the original episode was published, most recent to least recent. 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/s22e9/. Happy listening, happy holidays, and happy new year! See you in 2026!

Dr. Emily Roberts

Emily (02:05): 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! As in previous years, I’ll give you a personal update and then a business update. Personally, I’ve had a great year but perhaps a quieter year and more home-focused than 2024. For example, my family took two vacations this year, one to the Grand Canyon over spring break and one staycation in San Diego over the summer, and the staycation was honestly awesome. I definitely want to do more of that going forward. My husband and I also oversaw some home renovations due to water damage that seemed to go on forever but have thankfully finished now, and we’re really enjoying the remodeled aspects of our home. My daughters are in fourth and second grade, and these are such fun ages. They have lots of activities of course, but I’m really enjoying the ones we can participate in together as a family, like Girl Scouts, tennis, and baking. For myself individually, I’m a three times per week regular at Orange Theory Fitness and loving how I’m feeling. But my reading stats are down! I’ve only finished 37 books so far this year. Another 2025 highlight was attending my brother’s wedding—you know Sam from our prior podcast interviews—I was a bridesmaid, my husband was a groomsman, and my daughters were junior bridesmaids. To sum up, I can honestly say that I’m very happy and satisfied with my personal life right now.

Emily (03:34): As for Personal Finance for PhDs the business, as someone who works adjacent to academia obviously I have been following the political landscape and experiencing some secondhand ups and downs. Starting in March, I was really concerned with the viability of my business. Thankfully, I was somewhat reassured by my interactions with past and prospective university clients at the conferences I attended over the summer and even more reassured once speaking engagements started lining up for the fall semester. Some of my previous clients were unable to hire me this year but others did and I worked with a few new clients as well. Overall, my business made approximately the same amount of money in 2025 as in 2024, so I will take that as a win. This year, I also gave myself a non-revenue-generating project to occupy my time. Over the summer, I took a course to write a book proposal, which I submitted to a few university presses in the fall. As of the moment I’m recording this, my proposal is under peer review at two presses, and the reviews that have come back so far have been very supportive of publication. I’m hoping to receive at least one advance contract offer in the next month or two. I’ve started writing the book, which is great, but I don’t think I’ll really feel underway with that until I know who will publish it, so that’s coming soon. The subject of the book, as you might imagine, is personal finance for stipend-receiving PhD students. I’ve been sharing updates on the book and the publication process on my YouTube channel, Personal Finance for PhDs, so check that out if you want to follow along.
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. Laura Portwood-Stacer

Laura (05:23): I’m Laura Portwood-Stacer and I appeared on season 17, episode five titled, Can You Earn Money From Publishing a Scholarly Book? I’m a developmental editor and publishing advisor for scholars who want to publish books. My editorial business is called Manuscript Works and my 2021 book, The Book Proposal Book has helped thousands of scholarly authors navigate the book publishing process. My big news for 2025 is that I had a new book come out also in Princeton University Press’s Skills for Scholars series, just like The Book Proposal Book was. My new book is called Make Your Manuscript Work, and it walks readers through the process of preparing a manuscript for a book or any kind of scholarly text to ensure that it’s publishable. One of the big lessons in my new book is that in order to evaluate whether your manuscript is working, you need to get clear on what your mission is, meaning what are your goals in trying to get published in the first place?

Laura (06:18): On my previous podcast episode with Emily, we talked about earning money as one possible goal someone might have when publishing a scholarly book. On that episode, I pointed out that the financial rewards associated with publishing a scholarly book often do not come from the publishing contract itself, but if your book lands successfully with your dream publisher and reaches your intended audiences effectively, then you can often leverage your book publication into other income generating opportunities. In my new book, Make Your Manuscript Work, I encourage writers to think about those opportunities upfront before getting too far into the revision process. What do you want your book to do and who do you need to reach in order to accomplish that? Having clear answers to those questions can make the revision process so much more straightforward and ensure that all the time and labor you pour into writing your book will actually have tangible outcomes on the other side of publication.

Laura (07:14): I’ll use my own new book as an example. Although my publisher paid me a decent advance payment for my new book writing, it actually represented a loss of money for me because of the opportunity costs. Every hour I spent writing the book was an hour I couldn’t spend working with a client or creating a course or workshop that would earn me revenue. My editing and advising business took a 20% income hit in 2024 because so much of my time went into finishing my book. Yet in 2025, I was able to leverage the work I’d done on the new book into a new online course, the manuscript development workshop where I offer hands-on guidance to writers who are working toward publishing a scholarly book or article. By leveraging the new book into a new course, I was able to get my 2025 income back to the level I wanted it to be, and I hope the book publication will continue to introduce me to new writers who may want to work with me in the future because I knew that’s what I wanted my new book to do. I wrote it very intentionally as a practical and accessible guide that teaches my way of working on manuscripts. My book will help thousands of scholarly writers who will never work with me personally and at the same time, the book works as a calling card for my courses and services. If you’d like to write a book, I encourage you to think of it in similarly practical terms. Writing a book will likely cost you something in the short term, but the long-term payoffs can be even greater than the costs if you write and publish your manuscript effectively. To learn more about both of my books for scholarly writers and to see how they can help you achieve your own publishing goals, you can check out my website at manuscriptworks.com/book.

Dr. Ana Romero Morales

Ana (08:58): Hello everyone, I am Ana Romero Morales and I’m the founder of Brewing Dinero. I apologize as I am getting over being sick. I was on the personal finance for PhD’s podcast season 14, episode three on the podcast, I spoke about my financial and graduate experiences as a DACA recipient, resources for undocumented graduate students and ethical boundaries to consider between personal finance and mental health. Since being on the podcast, I had my first baby, moved from the Midwest to the west coast, and I’m actually uh, soon to have another baby girl. The transition to the west coast has been easy and hard in different ways. Of course, having to adjust to a higher cost of living, but also enjoying being close to family and watching my daughter be loved by her aunts, grandparents and extended family. As parents now we’ve had to adjust our financial goals and take on additional expenses that comes with raising little human beings along with the move.

Ana (10:07): I started a new job as a child psychologist while continuing to facilitate workshops for first gen college students and working with my clients that are in my six month coaching program. 2025 has been quite a year in terms of politics and its impact on undocumented communities. It is a scary time to be undocumented or a DACA recipient trying to pursue graduate schools when laws are being implemented to limit one’s access, especially in some states over others. I wish I could say something to make it all better, but the fear is real. If you know, you know. What I can say is continue to reach out to commu, to your community for support. If you are in graduate school, talk to your department about ways to support your ability to finish your degree, and if you’re thinking about graduate school or looking for other resources, remember that there are still organizations out there providing access to grants and scholarships that don’t require US citizenship.

Madeline Hebert

Madeline (11:17): Hi, my name is Madeline Hebert. I interviewed for this podcast back around June of 2023, which aired as season 16 episode one. During it we spoke about how I budgeted for the arrival of my first child as a second year PhD student. Since then, we’re actually expecting our second and the way we’re budgeting for this one is based a lot on what I learned from my experiences from having the first. I think that the one thing I wish someone had told me that I know now and is my advice for early career PhDs is that you really can and need to do what’s best for you in your situation with your personal goals and values, and this advice holds true beyond financial choices, as I’ve found it also applies to decisions related to your dissertation and career exploration. For me, it’s appeared in realizing that even though we could buy a home, it wasn’t best for us.

Madeline (12:09): On the flip side, we found that it actually benefits us more to have our second and I remain in graduate school as opposed to going for a full-time job and leaving even if just for a year. I think that some people have always known or abided by this advice, but I for one have always wanted to know what’s the right or best or most efficient choice, and I’ve just come to accept that it really does look different for each person, and so as much as it may be daunting, it really does benefit you to know your options and it doesn’t have to be overwhelming or a complex Excel sheet or multiple savings accounts as you might hear if you look back on my episode, it just needs to work for you and if it’s not working for you or even if it used to but no longer does, then it’s okay to pause and revisit your options. I think accepting this sooner would’ve saved me a lot of financial anxiety, stress, and time spent looking at my banking accounts, so that’s my best advice for early career PhDs. Now you can find me on the University of Connecticut’s graduate student page or on Twitter/X @SRIQResearch.

Commercial

Emily (13:18): 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 2025. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2025 tax season starting in January 2026, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these 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 hosting 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. Brenda Olmos

Brenda (14:36): Hi Emily. It’s good to connect with you again. This is Brenda Olmos or Dr. Olmos, if you will, and I was on season 13, episode two in September of 2022. At that time, I had started my third and final year of my PhD program and I defended my dissertation in July of 2023 Since the episode I got married, moved in with my husband, started a job in industry in March of 2024 and started maxing out my retirement accounts again. I knew at the end of my PhD that I did not want to pursue a tenure track academic career right away, partially because a postdoc or an academic salary were much less than my salary prior to my PhD and partially because I knew my research would be difficult to fund. It was based on healthcare discrimination and minoritized groups. I am now the administrator of education and development for advanced practice providers in a large health system in central Texas, and I really enjoy my work.

Brenda (15:33): I am the first person in this role, so I have been able to mold the position to my strengths and I build orientation curriculum for new clinicians, plan and lead skills workshops, and soon we’ll be starting two specialty clinical fellowships for nurse practitioners and physician associates. I feel this job utilizes my strengths and it pays more than I made when I was a nurse practitioner prior to my PhD, so I’m happy with where I landed post PhD. I still consider an academic career maybe in my future, but maybe more in administration than in research. My best financial advice for an early career PhD is to get out of debt as soon as possible. In my episode, I had talked about how I didn’t take on any debt for my PhD since it was funded, and I would also say start investing again asap. I am back on track now to retire at age 50 if I choose, but I do see myself working until 60 or beyond since I do enjoy my work and I finally feel like it’s sustainable. If I were starting my PhD again today, I would probably spend a lot less than I did so I could invest a bit more in that time, but the spending got me through the hard time, so I don’t really have any regrets. I don’t have a brand or a website, but I can be found on LinkedIn with my name Brenda Olmos and on Instagram as AlmostBrenda, A-L-M-O-S-T. Brenda, thanks for including me in this and have a great holiday season.

Dr. Samantha McDonald

Samantha (17:00): Hi there. This is Samantha McDonald. I was on season eight episode three and the title of my episode was Knowing Your Worth in an Environment that Devalues Your Work. Um, I think a lot has changed in the most recent update since I graduated from UCI. I ended up working at Meta the tech giant for a few years, um, continuing the same sort of savings pathway and knowing my worth and how much I was in the tech world, but I actually decided to leave Silicon Valley and spend almost three years unemployed <laugh> intentionally so on a what my partner and I call a sea sabbatical, SEA, living on our sailboat and sailing around the Pacific Ocean for a few years, which was amazing. And then after spending some time away from work and employment, I just recently came back into employment as a lecturer and professional track faculty at the University of Maryland in the School of Information.

Samantha (18:11): So my life kept taking a 180 from a tech giant to unemployment, uh, and sabbatical to being back in academia. Um, I don’t have any change, I think in advice for financial advice. I think a lot of what I said stays the same of knowing your worth in a place that oftentimes feels like you’re competing for the pennies and the scraps with how much people are undervalued as graduate students. I don’t think that has changed. I do think that the new generation coming in, uh, especially when I talk to undergrads, are much better at knowing their worth than I think previous generations. So I think that’s the biggest change where I think a lot of my advice is becoming more and more obvious for the next generation, but I still feel like it’s a struggle for people to understand how to value themselves in graduate school in a place where there is a lot of struggle financially, um, happening.

Samantha (19:11): So I don’t know if that has particularly changed, but um, yeah, everything is going great. Um, being back in academia has definitely been a crazy shift, but one that I’m happy to be in and I am definitely still on the path of financial independence and one of the beauties of how much I was able to save in graduate school and my time just for a few years in tech, it was I was able to financially afford taking a few years off while I’m still young and have adventures and do all these things before you either become too old or too dependent on other living beings, whether it be children or grandparents or parents to do those things. So everyone told us when we bought a boat, go small, go now. And that’s exactly what we did when we were young and we’re, we have no regrets of doing that.

Dr. Echo Rivera

Echo (20:06): Hello, this is Dr. Echo Rivera from season four, episode 19. I help PhD students end death by PowerPoint and create more visually engaging talks and lectures. Well, so much has changed in the last six years, and I first want to acknowledge that the future might feel really bleak for PhD students and academia in general. It’s been a really bad year, but keep going. You can still do this. You can get through this and you will find a way, and my best financial advice for every PhD student right now is to make sure you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. What I mean by that is to make sure you aren’t hyper-focusing on just one specialized skill branch out and be multi-skilled because those are the people getting hired, keeping their jobs and getting promoted. Even now, for example, PhDs who can run advanced stats or use R or whatever are kind of a dime a dozen now because every student is told to prioritize those types of technical skills.

Echo (21:23): Just about every PhD student is told to focus on pubs above everything else, et cetera. So that’s what I mean, like consider the advice you are being given about what to prioritize and assume that every other PhD student in the world was told to do the same thing. Now, I don’t say that to make you depressed, like don’t get depressed about it. Use that to your advantage. Think about the thing you’ve been told to deprioritize too, because chances are every other PhD student has been told the same thing, which means if you can shine at that thing, that thing that no one else is good at, then you are going to shine as the competitive must hire. And guess what meets that criteria? Engaging, effective, powerful presentation skills. Every grad student is told to deprioritize that, put it on the back burner. Don’t worry about it.

Echo (22:27): Few other grad students are developing these skills. So do you see what that means? If you are the one who can do both, run advanced stats and visually explain it in a way that everybody loves, that’s the competitive must hire. Do not wait until your job talk to take that seriously. Do not wait for your postdoc to take that seriously. It will be too late. Trust me, I’m the one that gets the panicked, heartbreaking emails and I’m the one who sees what those draft job talk presentations look like. I cannot stress this enough. Please, you need to start now, but I promise we can make it fun and empowering. Come over and check me out on YouTube. Search my name, Echo Rivera. The channel is called More Than PowerPoint, and visit my website echorivera.com for free training. I’ve got lots of resources to help you. I will make you a communication star. I got your back. Let’s do this. Okay, have a good day. Bye everyone.

Outro

Emily (23:45): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Financially Thriving as an International Scientist in the US

November 17, 2025 by Jill Hoffman 1 Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Sonali Majumdar, the assistant dean for professional development in the graduate school at Princeton University. Sonali is the author of the recently published book Thriving as an International Scientist: Professional Development for Global STEM Citizens. Sonali and Emily discuss the various financial challenges that international graduate students, postdocs, and researchers face when coming to the US, including the start-up expenses and relative financial dependence on their advisor’s grants. They also touch on the learning curve that international scientists experience in the areas of immigration, taxes, and investing.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Financially Thriving as an International Scientist in the US

Teaser

Sonali (00:00): And what happens as a result of that is we sort of start, um, falling prey, um, to what could be called deficit thinking or scarcity mindset, which is focusing more on the problem and planning our life around the problem and not around possibilities. And so that, that’s a problem, not just for the individual, but also for science in general.

Introduction

Emily (00:35): 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 (01:05): This is Season 22, Episode 7, and today my guest is Dr. Sonali Majumdar, the assistant dean for professional development in the graduate school at Princeton University. Sonali is the author of the recently published book Thriving as an International Scientist: Professional Development for Global STEM Citizens. Sonali and I discuss the various financial challenges that international graduate students, postdocs, and researchers face when coming to the US, including the start-up expenses and relative financial dependence on their advisor’s grants. We also touch on the learning curve that international scientists experience in the areas of immigration, taxes, and investing.

Emily (01:44): If you want to bring one of my live tax workshops to your university next tax season, get in touch with me ASAP! Between now and the end of the year, I’m populating my calendar, especially early February, with in person and remote speaking engagements. My workshops are typically hosted by graduate schools, postdoc offices, and graduate student associations, and sometimes individual departments. Whether you are in a position to make those arrangements or simply want to recommend me, you can get the ball rolling by emailing me at [email protected]. My tax workshops, both live and pre-recorded, are my most popular offering each year because taxes are such a widespread pain point for graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e7/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Sonali Majumdar.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:58): I have a really special podcast interview for you today. Dr. Sonali Majumdar is with me. She is the assistant Dean for Professional Development at Princeton University and the author of the newly released book, thriving as an International Scientist Professional Development for Global STEM Citizens. We are recording this interview just a couple days after the book launch date in late October, and so we’ll get this interview right out so that all of you can enjoy the book if you think that it applies to you. Um, so Sonali and I have, uh, been in, you know, collaboration and correspondence for several years now. Um, she hired me a few years ago as a speaker back at UVA and we see one another at conferences on and off. And so it’s just a great opportunity for me to speak with her in this format on the podcast and get to introduce you all to her. So, uh, Sonali, would you please introduce yourself a little bit further to the audience?

Sonali (03:47): First of all, it’s really nice to talk to you again, Emily. We just saw each other last weekend, uh, but it’s always a pleasure to get to collaborate with you. I really appreciate the topic that you’ve been working on for PhDs on financial literacy. Um, okay, so a little bit about me. Um, my name is Sonali Majumdar, like you said. I am born in India. Um, I identify as an international scientist, um, and in some ways this is my third career path. So I started after my undergrad and master’s in microbiology and biotechnology in India. My first job and career path was in healthcare entrepreneurship. I, with a team of physicians and clinical embryologists, started an IVF clinic in a hospital in Calcutta, India, and did that for about three odd years. Um, and that’s when I got excited about doing PhD. Someone told me in the middle that you actually get paid, um, and, you know, to do research. And I thought, wow, that’s great. And as has been the theme of my career so far, um, I get bored every few years. I when I, there are moments in my life when I feel like I’m using my hands more than my head, and that’s sort of been the indicator of a change in my career path. And that’s how I kinda moved into the US in 2007 for PhD in, uh, earned in biology at University of Georgia, um, and spent the next decade as a PhD and a postdoc, uh, scientist.

Sonali (05:11): I did my postdoc in Sloan Kettering studying RNA protein complexes, um, first in CRISPR biology or like, you know, bacterial immunity systems. And the second in understanding the role of RNAs in brain development and different forms of cancer. Um, but it was, again, when I was a postdoc that I got, um, interested and in a different problem, which was how were we really training our scientists? We were all kind of stumbling into different career paths. That was also around the time that NIH had really started looking at data for PhDs and postdocs in the sciences. Um, and we realized that vast majority of postdocs don’t go into academic fields, but we weren’t getting intentionally trained, uh, for the dynamic careers that we could be, you know, beneficial and adding value to society. And, and so that’s where I started doing a lot of volunteering work, um, in New York City, um, to, uh, for equitable access for professional development for postdocs primarily, and got involved in National Postdoc Association, uh, did a leadership program in Genetic Society of America, and did a lot of work with, um, the, um, Sloan Kettering’s Postdoc Association, as well as, um, started, I was on the founding board for this organization called New York City Postdoc Coalition. So doing all of that with working on professional development and science communication kind of work, I thought, again, I was being more creative outside the bench then on it. And so that was my, uh, you know, thought of moving my career. But I was on visas, and this was around 2018. It was a very different time in terms of, uh, you know, similar to now the, uh, immigration climate was tense, um, and changing fields was hard and there wasn’t a lot of precedence for immigrants to do that, but I made it work, and we can kind of talk about that in a bit. But over the last seven or so years, I’ve, uh, been building professional development program for PhDs and postdocs. Um, like, uh, you said I was at University of Virginia there before for about four years, building a new program called PhD Plus. That’s where we got the opportunity to collaborate. And since 2022, I’ve joined the graduate school of Princeton University building out, um, this program called Grad Futures here, um, focusing more on science engineering graduate programs.

Sonali (07:28): So, yeah, I, I’ll stop right there. Um, it’s generally been my own experiences, my friends’ experiences, many of whom are immigrants, and then like advising our graduate students and postdocs in two different universities and as well as nationally. Um, if I were to put a number, it’s possibly more than 500 or so trainees that I’ve advised in the last seven odd years, um, that I’ve seen similar themes, especially among immigrants, um, that I thread into this book called Thriving as an International Scientist. Um, and then also it’s kind of came through someone in our professional community who said that there was a need for this book, someone I’ve looked up to who started talking a lot about, um, support for international scientists, um, when I was a postdoc myself. And so this was a good time to kind of like write about some of the things I’ve learned, um, and also ground the challenges of international scientists, um, and thread best practices of professional development in a more customized manner, um, and also make the stories of international scientists visible. Um, we are way more than our immigration challenges or, um, minority, um, you know, um, myths that we have in terms of getting the job done.

Dr. Majumdar’s Book: Thriving as an International Scientist

Emily (08:46): Beautiful. Thank you so much for that introduction and the backstory about how you got to this point. Um, and thank you for, you know, telling us a little bit even about the book already. I actually had a new appreciation for the position that international scientists are in here in the United States, actually at the conference that we were both at this past weekend, um, which was, what can you be with a PhD hosted at NYU Langone. Um, and I went to a session on, I think it was titled like, Can You Stay or Should You Go? And I was a little bit of a fish out of water, right? Because as a, you know, native born US citizen, I did not experience any of these things, but obviously I’ve had many peers and collaborators over the years who have been, um, part of this system. And I <laugh> got, uh, just from that session, a new appreciation for all the complexity and all the strategy and all the decision making that has to go into, um, as you put it in, you know, the title of your book, like Thriving as a Scientist across borders and in different, you know, contexts.

Emily (09:43): Um, is there anything you’d like more to tell us about, like the themes of the book? And actually I’m curious, maybe we’ll start here. Um, is the book written for, um, let’s say international grad students, postdoc scholars in the us or is it a even more global context of a any country of, you know, presence?

Sonali (10:02): Um, there’s definitely, um, more specific, um, chapters for international graduate students, postdocs and in fact scientist- early career scientists or scientists at any stage. Um, the chapters on Visa, et cetera are definitely more contextual for those who are in the United States, but there are def- uh, broader chapters, um, which might be resonant for international scientists globally in any country who might face similar challenges setting up life in a new country on trying to understand the culture or communication norms, et cetera, that are pretty broadly applicable here.

Emily (10:36): Okay. Thanks for clearing that up. Um, and yeah, any other themes you’d like to share from the book before we start really talking about the financial aspects?

Sonali (10:44): So I’d like to say that, you know, when, when you ask me about the central theme, and I’ve been giving talks about this, this is becoming more and more visible to me that somehow our lives as international, whether it’s grad students, postdocs or scientists, we face a paradox. Um, on one end we sort of drive cutting edge research innovation, um, in our professional lives, um, while operating in sort of like a restrictive environment in our personal lives, mostly driven by the immigration landscape, um, and policy, so to speak. And what happens as a result of that is we sort of start, um, falling prey, um, to what could be called deficit thinking or scarcity mindset, which is focusing more on the problem and planning your life around the problem and not around possibilities. Um, and so one example of that is choosing sort of your career paths and planning your future based on visa, visa feasibility rather than your ambition and your interests. Um, and so, and that could also have a bearing on, you know, the lack of creativity one might filter into their professional life, um, after operating in this restrictive, you know, sort of environment. And there could be repercussions to one’s future in the research as well. And so that, that’s a problem not just for the individual, but also for science in general because we are not, we are trying to train like more holistic thinkers. Um, um, and that’s a barrier. And so what, uh, this book is trying to also do outside of foregrounding the unique needs of immigrant scientists, um, is really helping them push beyond, first of all, acknowledge when they might fall prey into a scarcity or deficit thinking. Um, and then push beyond that by really, um, harnessing some of the skills they’re learning in this research. Uh, whether it’s creative thinking, whether it’s curiosity, growth mindset, and giving them more actionable strategies, um, to look beyond the restrictions, to navigate their lives, to think expansively within and beyond the sort of rules made in their immediate environment.

Emily (13:00): Yeah, and, and actually just again, thinking about this session from this conference this past weekend, that was kind of what I learned from that session. I think some people in the audience did as well, like the presenter was going through different visa options and of course, maybe, you know, the H-1B is kind of prominent in people’s minds, but he was saying there’s so many different ways to like, to have a visa that allows you to work in the United States, depending on your exact situation, exactly what you were thinking you were saying, just use curiosity, look into all the options, everybody’s situation’s different. So it has to be pretty personalized. Um, but it just opened my mind quite a bit to the possibilities, um, in this space as well. And so, yeah, you’re not locked into like one single path. Um, there’s a lot of different ways that this can branch, and I admit that I did not, I was not aware of how, um, restrictive things could get in terms of your career, uh, options through the immigration process. Like how, as you were saying earlier, like pivoting a little bit or changing fields, like in some cases you’re not permitted to go too far from, you know, the original reason why you were, um, admitted.

Sonali (14:05): I think the thinking is, and one of the reasons for this is a lot of these immigration rules and policies haven’t changed in 30 odd years, right? Like there have been some improvements made in the past decade or two decades, but the thinking is if the United States is investing in your training in X area, you should work in that X area, that that’s what you are good for. But the reality of the job market and careers and such is a lot more dynamic. Um, and so it is with scientists as well, by and large, more and more, a lot of scientists are not just working in the research field that they did their PhD or postdoc, and they’re also working outside academia. They’re working outside research all altogether, like whether it’s in business of science, whether it’s in science policy and communications. Um, and that’s where, you know, it can be done. Um, there’s a, a lot of storytelling aspect to show how you are training and aspects of the, the broader skill sets you’ve learned as scientific think, uh, thinking can be applied to many different career paths. I mean, I’m an example of that, that where I could show that my PhD training is just as applicable in administration and understanding graduate education. Um, but it’s, again, folks don’t know about it as much, whether they are the international students or their employers. There needs to be a lot of education and clarity on both ends so that we can start building those narratives, um, and trying to explore the options. So that’s definitely something that we have to kind of collectively work toward.

Startup Expenses as an International Scholar

Emily (15:36): And absolutely your book furthers that cause your, um, you know, your current position furthers that cause professional development broadly in this area can pay attention to this and help, um, scientists in, in this area as well. So I’m so glad about that. Let’s talk more about money though. So, um, you know, we were kind of chatting together and we figured out a few different areas where, um, certainly we can give a little bit of guidance from the book on how, um, international scientists can thrive financially while they’re in the us. So let’s start with like when they first arrive, what do you see as like the common way that, you know, grad students or postdocs, um, or early career researchers pay for the moving costs, the startup expenses associated with moving to a new place, getting the rental set up, um, how are they typically doing that? And then how <laugh> might we suggest that they could do it in a better way?

Sonali (16:27): Um, I mean even before that, right? Like, and when I look back around my own life, I was, I was working at the time, um, and so I could actually use part of my salary, whether it was paying for GRE preparation or the taking the test, the fees required for that. The multiple universities you make applications to like that is a limitation, right? You know, I mean, especially for a lot of internationals coming from countries where the conversion rate to US dollar is pretty steep. So in, I was from India and from Indian rupees to US dollar back in the day, it was actually half of what it is right now. Um, and so 2007, I think it was around 45, um, rupees was a dollar. Now it’s over 70, right? Um, and so that limits the number of applications you can even send because, uh, you know, a lot of people take out loans even from that stage, um, um, or depend on family.

Sonali (17:21): Um, and then you have the set of costs, like you said about the flight tickets, um, coming and paying for like, you know, even reserving, um, an apartment, uh, if you’re living there you have to pay a security deposit, the first month’s rent, setting up all the utilities, um, you know, phones and other expenses before you’ve seen the first paycheck even, right? Um, and so all of these you have to kind of like have, um, figured out and hopefully you are thinking, but like a lot of people are kind of figuring it out as they go along. Um, the other thing is during visa interviews, when you are being looked at to come to the United States, they ask you for financial documents on your savings in your home country to make sure that you can actually sustain yourself, um, before your financial support assistantship, whatever is your form of finan- income comes in.

Sonali (18:17): Um, and so from the beginning there’s that, right? Like from my own life, you know, this is where, um, university international offices, even student associations were really helpful. And so the Indian Student Association at University of Georgia, actually one of the most fundamentally important things they did was recognize this housing issue. So they had like, you know, started negotiating with properties on, um, helping, you know, immigrant international students find accommodation, doing roommate matching, negotiating for rent and security deposit issues, informing, um, the students when they got in. So they would work with the international office on just collaborating on that. And since I’ve then I’ve learned a lot of international offices actually do that in terms of like sending more information to graduate students. So congratulations for coming to Princeton. You know, these are things you have to look into as you would also pay-, file your paperwork, just start looking into this is what expenses would look like.

Sonali (19:19): And then social media has clarified a lot of things like, you know, I came pre-social media time where a lot of things were not, um, clear for us, visible for us. Now there’s so many tutorial videos, other international scientists kind of talking about these things. Um, and by and large now departments and graduate schools are also recognizing this. Um, and I might be kind of talking about a lot of these elite urban institutions, but some of them do also have financial support in helping out for a setup costs, um, or just like financial funding and support to support the tuition or, you know, so, um, before they actually come in here. Um, and so there’s that. I also talked to, um, in terms of what can be done to help.

Sonali (20:07): Like, the other thing is there are a couple more things. One is you don’t have a car when you’re coming. You have to take a test to show that you can drive, maybe even take a driver trainer, training. So many internationals don’t necessarily get a car in the first year. They have to figure out the public transport option. And so I was talking to, um, a faculty, um, his name is Harmit Malik, he’s in Fred Hutch. He, I interviewed him as part of the book and we were discussing on this specific aspect of setup costs. And he suggested this idea that he’s been discussing in his institution of maybe, uh, frontloading some of the, the stipend, maybe taking part of the stipend from say, December or some other month and front loading and paying them before they come. Um, you know, that could be one idea where when they need the money, they have some, um, and the second is also seeing if there can be vouchers or, uh, discounts for Ubers, right? Like if, if someone got like a per month X amount of dollars to use toward Uber or carpooling, that could also be very helpful, uh, for those who don’t have, they’re not, who are not living close to campus and cannot use, uh, campus transit or public transit. Um, and so those, those are like some creative ways that we can go around. But unfortunately with the, uh, current budget climate and higher ed, this is not a problem that is at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Um, but we definitely, these are unresolved issues that we have to think about. Um, and I mean, speaking of like the national organization, I think National Postdoc Association has done a great job. They have an onboarding guide for all postdocs with a specific section for international postdocs, and they also have like a separate resource for guide for international scientists and international postdocs. Um, and so some of these organizations are doing a lot of work in kind of clearing and, uh, expectations and making some of these things visible from the beginning.

Emily (22:12): I think it’s so important to share best practices like what you were just doing in this interview and also I’m sure in the book as well, so that we can create more systemic helps for, you know, based probably at each institution for the scholars coming into that institution. I love the ideas that you shared already. And actually I was recently, I visited, um, university of Texas Southwestern Medical Center to give a workshop there, and I was introduced to, um, someone in the international office whose job is like, I think her title is like relocation specialist, which you would think is very, I thought, oh, that’s common at the faculty level, but no, like, it’s actually accessible to postdocs and grad students as well. So like kind of an even more specialized version of what you were just talking about with, you know, uh, what the international offices are doing and what the, you know, student groups are doing to help this, you know, transfer of information and transfer of best practices to the incoming, um, people.

Navigating the Hidden Financial Curriculum of Life in the US

Sonali (23:06): I mean, some of these things have been improvements over time, right? Since I started PhD in 2007, but even during my time there were like small things that the international, which looks like small, but it was foundationally important, uh, was doing an orientation, which many uni- uh, international offices do for a weekend. But during the orientation they actually had, um, you know, the social security administration office come on campus and set up our social security accounts. Um, so we didn’t have to go somewhere to their offices not knowing where they’re at. During that week we were told, if you want to open up your social security account, you can do it here. If you want to open up your bank account, you can do it in the orientation. And so bringing them all to you, and I remember I took advantage of all of those <laugh> just so I didn’t have to figure out how to go to, which bank to go to, where to go to. Um, and yeah, we, those kind of smaller things, but um, um, they did was really helpful over the long term.

Sonali (24:09): But like even then, I mean, there’s a lot of these hidden curriculum which are like unwritten rules, which I feel like maybe this generation knows a little bit more about than we did was the idea of credit history, which took me a while to figure out, right? Like one of the first hurdles I faced was getting a phone, like getting a like cell phone. Um, and many of the providers have these requirements for having a, uh, established credit history, but how do you have that as it’s a chicken and egg problem? Same thing with cars and stuff like, but those are different, like more, um, established investments you’re making down the line. Um, and so while you couldn’t open up a credit card until you’ve been in this country for about like six or so months and you’ve established some amount of, uh, financial statements, um, and so there, there were one or two companies back in 2007 phone companies that would let you, um, and they recognized this market, the immigrant market <laugh>, um, and a lot of folks actually ended up getting those phones in the first year until they could build up their credit history and move to a different provider that where they could show that.

Sonali (25:13): And so things like this, um, those are hard things that you kind of learn through practice. Um, but this is where the community, um, senior international students, um, who had been through this experience in the recent past were really helpful in helping us figure out. And so we each had a peer mentor when we started, um, through the international office, through the Indian Student Association, who would talk about these issues and they would take us around. Um, and we also had like some, uh, local families, um, from, you know, India who would help us on, you know, grocery shopping or just taking us to a grocery store every weekend, um, before we had a car and such and such. So yeah, I mean there’s also a lot of help around from just the community. Um, but these are just even systems like, you know, to learn in a new country, those kind of take some time.

Emily (26:07): Absolutely. And just to bring it back around to the money, like I feel I started graduate school in 2008, so similar timing to you. Um, and I am getting the impression that in the, you know, decade and a half since then, um, that graduate student graduate schools have more and more recognized what I at that time was calling the problem of the long first month, which you mentioned is like, okay, or for me, for example, orientation started in mid-August, but I didn’t get my first paycheck till the end of September, right? The long six weeks of the long first month before you get paid, I feel like there’s been more and more action on getting paychecks sooner to graduate students. Um, but even better

Sonali (26:45): Biweekly, the biweekly thing is amazing.

Emily (26:47): Yes. Or more frequent pay. Yes, exactly. Um, but even better is getting a bonus upfront to help pay for these startup expenses or like you said, less ideal but also helpful an advance on, you know, a, a later paycheck just to have access to that bulk amount of money that you need right up front. But this is also something that people can ask. Like you said, it’s a difficult climate for funding right now, but it doesn’t hurt to ask, you know, as you’re looking at your offer letter, whether it’s for a grad student postdoc position, something later, if it doesn’t include information about a startup bonus or a moving stipend or anything similar, just ask. It absolutely does not hurt to ask. And you may actually get some money out of it,

Sonali (27:25): And especially as a postdoc, you probably will <laugh>. Um, ’cause postdocs are weird, right? Like in terms of some of them are actually employees and staff. And so those are part of staff benefits. So if you don’t ask, you won’t get. I I definitely got, um, these benefits as a postdoc moving into New York City. Um, and so yeah, that’s, as a postdoc you should be asking about all of these things

Emily (27:48): For sure.

Commercial

Emily (27:50): 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 2025. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2025 tax season starting in January 2026, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these 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 hosting 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.

Learning US Systems: A Time-Consuming Endeavor

Emily (29:08): And you just mentioned also that it takes some time to figure out the new system that you’ve just moved into, the financial and legal and otherwise system. So let’s talk a little bit more about that. Like how are international scientists affected by this, you know, learning curve that they have to be on when they move to a, a new country in terms of the financial system?

Sonali (29:29): Yeah, and like I said, it’s uh, helpful when you have mentors and folks you can talk to. Um, but even like with that, some of these systems are so convoluted, um, you know, I am thinking primarily about the healthcare insurance and, you know, the healthcare system in the United States. I still don’t have a complete grasp over it and I’ve been here for 17 years. Um, and so, you know, I mean, uh, the other part of it is the number of options, right? Like I don’t even, sometimes it’s easier to say, oh, as a student you only have that option. I’m like, okay, <laugh>, I guess I’m just gonna enroll in that. But when you have multiple different options, you’re constantly trying to figure out which one’s good or not. But now with like, there’s a lot of online calculators, whether it’s with your benefits package or with your, and even with within the, you know, the package that you’re getting through your university, they have this virtual assistance that can help you kind of figure out, given your circumstances, given your family circumstances, which package might be a better situation. Back in our time there were human beings that you had to like, take appointments from and go get some of these ideas.

Sonali (30:32): So the benefits healthcare, um, all of that like takes time and it’s, the rules are becomes a little different by visa type, right? Like, so, and this is where things get complicated on a student visa, you have x amount of options as a J-1 scholar, you might have a completely different portfolio of options for your health insurance, for your be-, you know, benefits, if any. Um, and so those are things like, and the other thing is the time, right? Like not time to learn, but like the time to invest in learning, um, because you are also, you know, busy doing research or setting up credibility, um, in your lab.

Sonali (31:10): Um, and that’s the other thing that I talk about in the book. It’s like there are chapters for faculty advisors, for administrators where I discuss at, ’cause I know through my own experiences, through friends and talking to a lot of people that many have faculty who just think, you know, taking care of immigration status, et cetera. People can do all their own time in the evenings, weekends. But no, that like takes a lot of time. Like you need to give them grace to actually take care of the amount of paperwork there is to maintain your immigration status. Um, they could be spending some of that in their weekday, but like many of them don’t feel like they can. And so they basically spend their weekends. And so that’s the other part of the work-life balance on when you have all of these systemic things that you have to maintain in your life. Um, there’s the financial burden of it, but there’s also the time burden of it because you may or may not feel like that you have the flexibility to spend your weekday or any portions of your weekday taking care of that.

The Financial Costs of Maintaining Your Immigration Status

Sonali (32:12): Um, and speaking of the financial burden, I wanna make another point on immigration. Um, so although your university or employer would petition on your behalf, whether it’s for a student visa or a postdoc scholar, scholar visa or work visa, every time you that gives you the permit, you get the approval on the petition to with the permission to work a study. And that has is a document type, but to actually get the stamp on the visa on your passport, you have to either go to an embassy or a consulate in your country and there’s a separate set of fees for that. And, and they may give it to you for the entire time that your permit is on for like, whether it’s four years or five years, or they may only give it to you for two odd years and then you had to renew it. And so even as a student visa, I had to renew my student visa a few times. You have to incur whatever, a hundred dollars, $200, $500, that is the visa fees to get that stamping in the consulate. And so even maintaining your immigration status, there is a recurring cost beyond the employer’s, you know, petition cost that they’ve paid for your application. And so there’s that too that you have to know, um, and have money set up for, um, as something that for discretionary that you might have to spend every once in a while and then flight if you wanna go home, those are expensive. Um, um, the farther you live, um, it’s not just time, it’s how much money you can spend to go out. And so some internationals don’t even go home every year to save that money. And so there’s different aspects of our life. It’s not just sort of like the new systems that a lot of it has these other financial sort of costs to it.

Emily (33:59): Yeah, I definitely remember my lab mates in graduate school having once or once every two years, some of them at least needing to go home for these immigration, you know, purposes. And as you said, the flights are very expensive, time cost, monetary cost. I also recall, and I’ve gotten this question from grad students and postdocs over the years, that there’s, I would say a four to five figure cost to the process of getting your green card right, to moving to that stage of the immigration process. And so that’s something that people start saving up for, um, well in advance of when the, you know, the date and the timing actually comes because it’s a very significant cost on that kind of salary.

Sonali (34:36): Yeah. So there are few tracks on the permanent residency, primarily called EB1A or the national interest waiver, which is under EB-2, where you can self-petition. Um, and in that scenario you have to pay both for the application or petition cost, which is a few thousand dollars, and the lawyer fees, which can be substantial. Um, and uh, and if you wanted the decision within 15 days, you can expedite it for an additional cost on top of that. And on a very sort of, if I were to put a number on it, and I had looked into this too, <laugh>, I mean I, I was stubborn where I at some point decided if this country needed me, I would not spend my own money on it <laugh>. So I’ve only gone through employer, that’s how stingy I am. I, I only, I have only gone through employer sponsorship and they’ve mostly paid my way through, uh, keeping my careers here.

Sonali (35:28): Um, but I looked into actually applying on my own and how um, how much any of these like lawyers et cetera costs. Like, so I would have at some point saved close to 10,000 odd dollars for just like the lawyer petition and the expedited fee. It comes down to something like that, uh, for one petition. And then some lawyers have schemes on if it’s, they will guarantee it if they like your case enough and if they’ll give you 50% of the money back if you don’t, your petition isn’t moved for like approved. Um, and so some of those law firms have these, but in today’s climate, I don’t even know what they’re doing because the rules are changing every day. And now with this like new proposal of adding a hundred thousand dollars for the new H1B visa petitions, which may not like most likely don’t apply to our student visa or the J-1 scholar visa category because that’s a transferring from one visa to another. But for anyone who is abroad and starting off as a faculty or any other role which would require a new H1B petition, employers have to incur that additional cost on top, which would make them even less, uh, inclined to recruit someone who is outside the us. And so yeah, there’s, um, it’s becoming harder in the immigration landscape in terms of financially how much money there is, um, involved in this.

Emily (36:51): Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because I also got clarity during the session that that new H1B fee, which was all, you know, all the news was more for people coming from outside the US if you’re already here, just to reassure audience members, if you’re already here for grad school or your postdoc and you’d be doing a change of visa type, the new fee does not apply in that scenario. Um, but I’m thinking of some other systems that can cost time and money to, you know, figure out which are the tax system and the investing system in the us. Do you wanna make any comments about either one of those?

Understanding U.S. Taxes as an International Student

Sonali (37:22): Yeah, I’ve mostly used the automated, um, taxed, uh, sort of calculator to figure out. And that’s also where there are differences between how much you’re taxed when you are on what’s called a non-immigrant alien or non-resident alien category, which is typically most visas. Um, once you’ve lived about five years in the country on any visas you are identified or as an resident for tax purposes, although you are not a permanent resident. And so at some point, I think by the end of my PhD, I was a resident my tax purposes, and that’s when in the next year’s filing I saw a difference <laugh> in how much like my returns were. I was like, oh. So I was actually paying more as, um, as a so-called non-resident alien in the category that I was at. Then there’s other differentiation about, there’s some countries that have agreements, trade agreements and other tax treaties, um, where you might get some deductions, uh, based on if you’re coming from that country, which some other countries don’t have. And so it’s very disparate in terms of how much your tax is withheld in your monthly stipend. And then the other issue is with the, um, whether you’re on assistantship versus fellowship on how you actually pay the taxes. Um, I wish I could give more like details about that, but I’m probably not the best person I’m to talk about it, but it’s quarterly versus annually is at least what I know

Emily (38:57): For residents for tax purposes, don’t worry. I talk about that plenty in other episodes. We don’t need to cover it here.

Sonali (39:03): And so yeah, there’s definitely that, uh, bit of you can see, um, how your tax filing and, um, the returns change, um, based on, you know, your visa status or your type of visa, uh, whether you are, and then there’s like compounding factors, like I’ve been single the entire time in the United States, so you know, I, I feel like I get tax taxed a lot more, um, than folks who might be with families. Um, and then you also have the local city, and that’s the other thing that I learned around the time that the federal taxes and state taxes are not the only taxes that in places like New York City <laugh> in Manhattan district, your local tax is pretty exorbitant as well. Um, and so when I started looking at how much of my monthly stipend was being withheld, I was like, wow, like this is not just your, um, health insurance or other benefits. These are sort of like state and city taxes that are also getting withheld. So my advice would be to like pay attention to those line items, um, and at least if you are gonna, if you have the ability to make any sort of enrollment changes in your benefits in the next year, doing it accordingly based on how much is being withheld from your monthly salary or stipend.

Emily (40:15): And in addition, as kind of you mentioned earlier when you were getting up to like a, a status change, like when you go from non-resident to resident for tax purposes, as you said, depending on what was going on before your taxes could go down, they could go up, they could stay similar. All different kinds of things are possible, uh, depending on what country of residence you had and what your type of income was as you mentioned fellowship versus, um, you know, W2 type employment. So really good to pay attention to that stuff. Um, something that I get questions about a lot, I’m sure you do as well. Uh, basically the question is, okay, I am an international scientist. I’m living in the US right now. I don’t know what the long-term future is. Should I start investing while I’m here in the US? And of course I have a way that I answer that, but I’m curious how you would address that or what you would get people to think about for that question.

Investing While in the US as an International Student or Postdoc

Sonali (41:02): I mean, and this, this is hard, right? Like, ’cause you may not get benefits on a, um, on a student visa or a J-1 scholar visa. Um, but I still think that you should be at least whether it’s your Roth IRA, um, that’s post tax, right? Um, that you should be putting in some money into a Roth, um, and you know, it’s building wealth. It’s just not just savings. And so as it is, there is um, um, what do we call it? The, the salary tax on how long you are training as a PhD and postdoc, the amount of years it takes for you to catch up with the market, uh, wages for someone with a lower educational level or at the same educational level. So you, they have a premium, a salary premium, um, you’re taking a hit in the number of years you are training.

Sonali (41:52): And so the only way to even equalize or think about this is how I think about is like only way for you to kind of catch up is if you are building wealth savings and, uh, rather than having your savings sitting around in the, um, in the bank, which you can, through a higher yield savings account, at least it’s adding some more to it. I would say at least putting some percent of that in the, into a Roth IRA every year. Um, my dad taught me this pretty early on, um, emergency funding on how much you should have in your bank account and that, I know there’s like metrics on what percent of your salary should have as sort of like just disposable sort of, uh, discretionary funding for yourself. But my father was like, just look at, make sure you always have in your bank account a return flight round, round way flight from India to the US as your emergency.

Sonali (42:49): Um, because you might have to come at any point, whether it’s for family emergency, whether it’s for other situation. So just think existential first what is. So the the way that I started thinking about is like, what is the worst case scenario where I might have to leave or do something? How much money will I need, whether it’s to wrap up my life and move somewhere else and do something, do I have that amount sitting around in a bank account that I can just, you know, uh, leverage right away? And then the additional amount of money that I’ve saved over time can go into building wealth through investments. Um, it gets better. You get more financial advice once you are like an employee and you have benefits packages and stuff, but it’s harder to do as a student because, and cost of living is so high, you know, um, you know, renting is so high.

Sonali (43:37): Um, and so I think in some ways in the beginning to like coming into the United States, I had, I think most way through my PhD I shared my apartment with people I never lived alone. And that was sort of like an, um, cost effective way in terms of like back then the rents weren’t as high. Um, but that’s something you could think about. Like, you know, folks could think about on how do you save money, whether it is more on, you know, the rent or other lifestyle choices you’re making and putting that money, parts of that money into investment. Um, and some of it is post tax, so you should be able to take it out when, when you want to.

Emily (44:17): Yeah. I I answer the question very similarly. Just go ahead, get started. As, as you said, it’s, it’s one of the only ways to kind of compensate for those low salary years to not come out so far behind. Um, you, you know, your similar peers

Sonali (44:30): And I’ve, I’ve learned from mistakes myself, right? Like, ’cause I wish I had asked the question, what was the alternative? The alternative’s not doing it and you’re not making building wealth at in those years. And so I’m already kind of like, you know, behind on that, those, some of those, uh, student years. Yeah.

Emily (44:46): Yeah. Well, I guess another alternative that sometimes people think about is investing in their home country instead of investing through the US financial system. And I’ve done a pair of interviews actually with a previous guest named Hui-chin Chen that I would recommend to anyone listening who’s in this situation where we talk about, um, you know, investing as a non-resident, let’s say, um, in the, in the US and why she encourages people to do it through the US systems. Um, ’cause they’re relatively more open, um, transparent, lower cost than many other countries. Not all, but compared to many other countries.

Funding Challenges for International Scholars

Emily (45:18): The other thing that you brought up that I thought was a really, really good thing to talk about during this interview was the fact that there’s, um, funding available in the US that is restricted only for US citizens, or let’s say permanent residents. And so relatively, if you’re an international scientist in the US you have access to perhaps fewer funding options. And so what are the implications of that? Um, well I don’t wanna call it scarcity mindset ’cause you mentioned that earlier, but like that reality of like the fund

Sonali (45:46): Yeah. So there’s actually data around that. So, um, NSF has this survey called the Survey of Foreign Doctorates where they, um, assess the landscape of those who’ve just got their PhDs, um, science engineering as well as humanities, all programs, uh, across US universities. And one of the questions they have in that survey is, what was the source of your doctoral stipend or income, um, in, in the, during your PhD and the numbers, I actually have it in front of me. It’s uh, uh, approximately 50. In 2022s results, 52% of visa holders who were PhD students, uh, were on, uh, faculty directed research assistantships or institutional teaching assistantships compared to 34% of their domestic PhD, um, counterparts. There’s multiple sort of implications of this. The most obvious one is the, if you apply for an independent PhD fellowship, the earlier and the more frequently you do, you can show that you have fundability of your ideas, you can pursue your own ideas and you are more competitive on the faculty job market, right? So that’s sort of the most, uh, obvious one.

Sonali (46:58): Um, the sort of like the indirect implications are when you’re tied to a faculty directed research, you’re also tied to how their career is moving. You are more likely to take the stress that they are bearing on like kind of their grant cycle or grant cycle. Um, you are also reliant on them, um, on their freedom, uh, or their flexibility on you pursuing a independent idea. Many students I talk to ha- are scared that their faculty perceived or real will not be supportive, supportive of them investing time in professional development outside their labs in doing an internship or a CPT, um, all of those decisions that you have to make are tied to faculties uh, whims or, you know, mindset about any of those. And so one way to kind of course correct that is having those conversations early on, knowing that you are kind of going to have more of an employee status with them in seeing how they feel about most of these and having clear expectations before you start working for someone in their lab.

Sonali (48:04): Um, and that the sort of least obvious one, which I’ve talked to a few people in the book who talk about it, especially as a postdoc, is the, um, sort of like the attrition and layoff situation. So if fa- faculty loses a grant, um, they might have to lay off people and if your complete income is dependent on them getting a grant, you are more likely to have your contract terminated mid cycle, um, because they lost money. Like they don’t have money to support you. And given the kind of climate that we are in with, um, shrinking research funding, um, and also the domestic candidates who are applying for these federal fellowships, those are shrinking. They’re gonna also compete for the non-federal, smaller, you know, fellowships that were open to internationals. So there’s higher competition in the smaller amount of fellowships that are, uh, available.

Sonali (48:57): And then there’s like the market changes and sort of like the flux and the mass layoffs that are happening both on the private sector as well as in the academic sector, um, that makes it like, you know, the internationals are very vulnerable to it. Um, the other sort of constraints with that is if you’re on a visa, you have a time cycle time clock typically called like grace period, which is typically 60 day on a work visa. Um, when you have to find another employment within those two months if you wanna maintain your immigration status. If not, you have to wrap up your life and leave. Um, and so those are like kind of a lot of different constraints that make internationals pretty vulnerable to the labor market changing as rapidly and you know, as it is now and with the impacts of AI and all of the other reasons that people have been talking about, I think our international colleagues and students are in a very highly vulnerable place.

Emily (49:54): And that’s why, I mean, I know that you finished writing this book over a year ago and you did not have a crystal ball as to what the situation would be looking like upon publication, but it’s a good time for this kind of resource to be out, um, for this kind of community.

Sonali (50:07): Yeah, and some of these challenges have been persisting for many, many years. It has nothing to do with, it’s come to a head now, it’s been amplified now with the current changes, but we had to collectively like have conversations and make progress and improvements in some of these systems and some of the choices our advisors and employers are making, and at least minimally make things visible. If you’re not gonna sponsor a position, keep, make that very visible in the job description, right? Have more grace and flexibility and empathy where your students can like, be more explicit in saying, I don’t mind you spending some time in a professional development. Uh, don’t keep it sort of hanging so they assume the worst. And so the, in this climate, like I hope that each of us as mentors, as employers, as managers have a role to play where we might not be able to make systemic changes, but we can improve the lives of our international colleagues and trainees every day by making small choices.

Emily (51:05): I think that’s a wonderful place to end our discussion. Um, if people are curious and want to read the book, where can they find it?

Sonali (51:12): This is how it looks. It’s a very pretty color <laugh>. Um, but yeah, you’ll find it in every you know, place where you can find books, Barnes and Nobles, uh, Amazon, as well as I’d recommend going into the University of California press site and you’ll get a 30% discount if you actually buy through the press site.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (51:30): Beautiful. Um, okay. Final question that I ask of all my guests. Uh, what is your best financial advice for an early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or it could be something completely new,

Sonali (51:44): Um, like I said, like, you know, definitely saving and creating some wealth, whether it’s through investments. Um, and the other thing that I’ve learned is diversifying to the extent possible, um, your investment portfolio, um, so that you are not very sort of, um, vulnerable to any sort of like market changes. And so whether that’s equity or other sources of investment, think about that. So yeah, my best financial advice would be actually getting an advisor and seeing how you can even in small ways build your wealth. Um, there’s a lot of financial literacy resources, financial advisors who are free of cost at universities. That’s the best thing about universities. A lot of these things that cost you outside in your life actually come as free resources at universities. So take advantage of that. Um, even if it’s once a year, schedule that time in your calendar maybe every summer to just check in with your financial advisor and talk to them about how do you improve your portfolio.

Emily (52:43): Mm, very good point. Yeah, it’s very popular now for universities to have financial wellness offices or something titled similar to that. So that would be a great, um, first stop in addition to the international house actually, or international office, um, in yeah, getting some of these financial issues sorted that we’ve touched on in the interview. So Sonali, thank you so much for giving this interview. Congratulations on the book. Um, I hope it’s a wild success and thank you so much for sharing your insight with us.

Sonali (53:10): Thank you so much, Emily. This is always a pleasure talking to you.

Outro

Emily (53:23): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Money Is a Good Enough Reason to Leave Academia

October 20, 2025 by Jill Hoffman 1 Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Gabrielle Filip-Crawford, the founder of the peer support network Recovering Academics. Gabrielle left her tenure-track position after discovering she was vastly underpaid with almost no room for salary growth even after promotion. Gabrielle shares the common financial questions and mindsets that she sees within the Recovering Academics community, such as not understanding what different careers pay and feeling guilty for needing to earn more money. Gabrielle and Emily discuss how graduate students and postdocs can improve their money mindsets prior to pursuing academic or non-academic positions post-training.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Money Is a Good Enough Reason to Leave Academia

Teaser

Gabrielle (00:00): That was kind of my mindset going from grad school to postdoc to faculty position. Each one paid more than the last. And so that faculty role that didn’t pay enough for me to really live on was the most I’d made up to that point. And it didn’t occur to me for a ridiculously long time. That didn’t mean it was a good salary just because it was more than my postdoc.

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 (01:03): This is Season 22, Episode 5, and today my guest is Dr. Gabrielle Filip-Crawford, the founder of the peer support network Recovering Academics. Gabrielle left her tenure-track position after discovering she was vastly underpaid with almost no room for salary growth even after promotion. Gabrielle shares the common financial questions and mindsets that she sees within the Recovering Academics community, such as not understanding what different careers pay and feeling guilty for needing to earn more money. Gabrielle and I discuss how graduate students and postdocs can improve their money mindsets prior to pursuing academic or non-academic positions post-training.

Emily (01:44): I’m delighted to share that I will join the Recovering Academics weekly call on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 for a 60-minute Q&A call. If that group is a good fit for you and you’d like to join in time for that Q&A, get in touch with Gabrielle via LinkedIn or [email protected]. If you’ve been enjoying this podcast and want to see it continue, would you please help spread the word? Take a minute to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, text a recent episode that you enjoyed to a friend, or give it a shout-out on social media. Any of those actions helps me to grow Personal Finance for PhDs and continue finding amazing guests for the interviews. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Gabrielle Filip-Crawford.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:49): I’m delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Gabrielle Filip-Crawford, who is the co-founder of Next Draft LLC, and the founder of the Peer Support Group, Recovering Academics. And Gabrielle is a former academic, and we’re gonna be talking a lot about that journey as well as the journeys that she’s observed among others. And Gabrielle and I met actually at the graduate career consortium annual meeting that happened last June. We’re recording this interview in September 2025, and we were both sponsors of the conference. And so of course, I love to meet the other sponsors and get to know how they support the academic community as well. And so we decided this was worth a whole podcast interview. So Gabrielle, welcome to the podcast, and will you please introduce yourself further for the audience?

Gabrielle (03:32): Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. It is a pleasure to be here and chat with you. Um, so I am, uh, as you said, co-founder of Next Draft LLC. My background is in social psychology, graduated with my PhD in 2015, and I went straight into academia, so I was a postdoc for a year and then, uh, on the tenure track at a liberal arts college for six years after that. And I ended up transitioning out of, uh, my academic position and moving into the world of program evaluation and applied policy research. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last few years now.

Emily (04:12): Tell us more about the decision to leave your tenure track job, because I understand that finances played a heavy role in that.

Gabrielle (04:20): They definitely did. So I think one of the things that kind of caught me up around finances is nobody ever really talked to me about what normal people earn <laugh>. Um, I have a lot of friends who work in the tech industry, work for Google, Microsoft, Facebook, who make just massive amounts of money, and I didn’t wanna work in big tech. And so I thought, well, I’m just never gonna earn a salary like that, and what I’m earning is normal. And I earned 56,000 as a tenure track professor with PhD, and nobody really pointed out the discrepancy between that and what PhDs were earning outside of academia and outside of tech. And there were kind of two financial nails in the coffin to my decision to leave. One was, uh, the APA, the American Psychological Association published salary data, and they published the mean salary for people with a bachelor’s in psychology, a master’s in psychology, and a PhD in psychology. And I was right there at the average salary for a bachelor’s. And then I found out that a colleague who had been my department chair was tenured, had been there for more than a decade, was making 60,000. Um, and I just saw this future of, man, I’m gonna be here for my whole career and I’m gonna be lucky if by the time I retire I hit 70,000 a year. And it just wasn’t feasible. I have a family, I have a child, and, um, childcare costs, school costs, uh, everything’s pretty expensive and just not doable on a salary like that.

Feeling Financially Dissatisfied in Academia

Emily (06:12): Now, it would be one thing if you saw that you were under earning compared to what you could potentially earn elsewhere, but you were okay with it, right? The finances still worked in your own personal life. We’re not saying everybody needs to make as much money as they possibly can in their field, but as you were getting to at the end of your answer, like it was not personally satisfying to you to stay at that level and you could see the future. Like it wasn’t gonna, you know, sometimes professors can expect decent leaps up in salary as they go through the, the, you know, professor process with their promotions, but that apparently was not the case for you. So can you tell me a little bit more about like the financial maybe dissatisfaction that you had? Not just the comparison, but for yourself?

Gabrielle (06:54): Yeah, definitely. I think that we hear a lot in academia about, you know, we’re not being, we’re not in it for the money, right? It’s not about the money. And so I think there was sort of a internal unwillingness to look at that for a long time and feeling like almost guilty for considering money. Like it shouldn’t be a career consideration. I am here, I am able to do this amazing job that so many people want, and I’m unhappy with it for a material reason, which felt, um, felt like it wasn’t okay to admit. And, um, but that just bumped up against financial reality, right? Of, of trying to pay childcare costs. And I don’t live, I am, I’m in Minnesota, I’m in the Twin Cities. It’s not a super high cost of living, but it’s also not a super low cost of living. Um, and I need to be able to make ends meet. I need to be able to meet the needs of my family. And when I started really thinking about it, it was clear to me that, you know, it was like, money can’t buy happiness, right? But there’s like, but it can <laugh> be a really big factor. It can pay for, it can be the difference between, you know, your car breaks down and it’s a huge crisis for the family for months and causes a massive amount of stress. Or you go to the mechanic and you get car fixed and you move on with your life and it’s okay and you can afford what you need to afford to make your life work. So I think that that was kind of eye-opening when I kinda gave myself permission to start really thinking about it and, and opening up that question of, well, what do I actually need? And how can I get that?

Recovering Academics Peer Support Group

Emily (08:50): Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that more detail in your perspective on this, because I’m sure it’s really valuable for you to say, I was in this mindset, this is what we are told in academia, and I had to really reexamine that. Um, and that gets me to like, let’s talk more about this peer support group of recovering academics ’cause it sure, like this conversation that we’re having right now is one of many types of conversations you have in that group. So can you tell us more about recovering academics?

Gabrielle (09:18): Sure. So when I was looking to leave my position, there were several of us from my university who were job hunting at the same time, and we kinda ended up finding each other. And, uh, we started meeting every week. And it just started out as, you know, our little internal group within our university supporting each other through the job application process, talking about the challenges. And through that it became clear that there were a lot of people in the same position we were of, we, we landed the coveted tenure track jobs. Some of us had tenure and, um, for a variety of reasons that just wasn’t, it didn’t fit with what we needed in our lives anymore. And so I put a call out on LinkedIn just trying to reach out and see if there were other folks in that same position. A bunch of people responded. We held a Zoom meeting with maybe a dozen people that first time. Um, another member of the group dubbed us recovering academics and the name stuck. And, um, what we did is built a Slack community and, uh, we meet weekly on Zoom, and we have done so now for more than three years. And the group grows almost weekly. Uh, word of mouth, generally, we don’t have, uh, a website for the group. We are a very private group because leaving academia can be a really sensitive process for a lot of people. And we don’t want, we don’t want anyone to feel unsafe seeking out help and support. Um, originally the goal was to kind of bring together people leaving tenure track or tenured roles, and almost immediately we expanded beyond that. So we have people leaving from every career stage you can think of from every type of institution. Uh, we have academic staff including, um, like student affairs staff, uh, academic librarians. Um, it’s a really wide variety of people. It’s cross disciplinary. Uh, there are people from nursing, engineering, chemistry, English, um, media studies, ethnomusicology, psychology. We’re kind of across the board. And a big value of the group is breaking through a lot of the isolation that happens when people think about leaving academia and providing a safe place for people to ask questions and to bring up things like salary and, um, and financial struggles and all of this, um, all of the issues around money that get wrapped up in this process,

Emily (12:03): I can so see the value of that kind of group. Um, I don’t, I don’t wanna call academia a cult, but like <laugh>, you’re, you’re like, not, okay, I’m reading a book right now. <laugh>, it’s science fiction. It’s a dystopian, you know, but like, if you speak out like you, if you even question their like society, you’re immediately killed like death penalty now. Okay. Academia is not that extreme, but there are consequences for you to be very open about potentially leaving in a way that other kinds of industries are not that way. Um, and so I, I’m definitely hearing like that value of privacy and being able to ask those questions in that setting that you. Could not ask in your workplace, or you might not even be able to ask among your peers at other institutions because what if you decide to stay and they knew you had doubts. You know, like, um, so I, I see that now given that this is so, such a, um, a closely held group and you don’t have a website. How do people find out how to join? Because I’m sure somebody listening is like, I need this in my life right now, <laugh>.

Gabrielle (13:04): Yeah, absolutely. So, um, so despite being a very, very private group, we have over 480 members now. So people find us, um, generally people find us either through me on LinkedIn, people are more than welcome to message me or connect with me on LinkedIn. Um, and then I will share information about the group. And I do also wanna be clear that this is a free group that no one pays to attend this. Money’s not a part of that picture. Um, because I couldn’t afford <laugh> coaching resources when I was leaving. And I know a lot of us are in the same boat if we’re leaving for financial reasons or if that’s a contributing factor, then we probably can’t spend thousands on a coaching program, even if that would be amazing and valuable. Um, so this isn’t a substitute for coaching, but it’s definitely, it’s sort of crowdsourced, um, coaching in a way. Um, so people can reach out to me directly. Um, there are other group members, uh, we get a lot of referrals from other group members as well. Um, but for folks who might not be connected or know that they are connected with members, I’m probably the easiest, um, place to look. And we are hopefully soon gonna set up a, a webpage attached to my business webpage, just so I have a place to direct people more easily.

Common Limiting Beliefs Among Recovering Academics

Emily (14:29): Yeah, that sounds good. So I would like to hear more about, you know, in you sharing your personal story about the decisions leave academia, you brought up, you know, um, the salary comparisons between what you could make with your degree inside versus outside of academia. Um, you brought up like, oh, we’re not supposed to be in this for the money. Um, but I’m wondering if there are any other like, common questions or limiting beliefs or mindsets that you’ve noticed, uh, within the recovering academics community beyond those ones that you’ve already brought up.

Gabrielle (15:02): Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah, I think, um, I mean, I think the first thing that strikes me in just hearing how people talk about money in the group is just, um, for such a highly educated group of individuals, we are kind of astoundingly ignorant <laugh> when it comes to financial issues. Um, people don’t have a good sense of what salaries look like and you know, what other people make with the skills that they have. So they have no idea what they should be looking for. They don’t know how to ask for the appropriate salary. They don’t know anything about salary negotiation or anything like that. Um, and one place that also carries over is there’s a lot of people who move into some form of, um, entrepreneurship, uh, or do some level of consulting. And so then there’s also this whole how do you value your skills and how much do you charge and what is appropriate.

Gabrielle (16:11): And then a third bucket is, um, for those of us who move out and do make more money in our new position, what the heck do we do with the additional income that we have and how do we manage that? And that is definitely something that has come up. People don’t know how, what kind of accounts their money should be in. They don’t really know how to manage that. They don’t know how to, um, they’ve never really been able to think about, what if I was able to put this much money into retirement, should I, how do I do that? Do I pay down my debt first? Do I do that? Like, we don’t really know, um, how to, how to manage, um, because it’s a good problem to have. Right? But, um, but definitely still an issue. And I think a lot of us probably are not making the best financial decisions because we just are a little, uh, a little bit at sea with having those decisions to make.

Emily (17:09): Yeah, I can see not only, ’cause I’ve thought before about like the catch up that PhDs at some point when their income does increase, I mean, hopefully it does at some point increase a lot <laugh>, um, what they can do in terms of their financial goals to like, ’cause a lot of ’em feel like they’re behind, whether they leave academia when they’re 30 or 40 or 50 or whatever, a lot of people feel that they’re behind. Now whether that’s true or not depends on who you’re comparing yourself to, but, um, they feel behind. And so I have thought about like, what are those, if, if there’s any special considerations that group should have, um, once, you know, exiting academia. But what you brought up that I think is really interesting is not only is there kind of a, an actual dollars and cents monetary catch up, but there can also be a little bit of a catch up needed just in education around like norms. And like what your goals should be. Um, I I’m even thinking about like benefits, like benefits inside academia can be really different. They actually should be pretty generous in some ways, and they could be quite different when you’re looking at positions in industry or in other sectors. And so just knowing that like, oh, my employer is no longer gonna pay for this, or like, I don’t have a pension, or, you know, these other kinds of questions might come up too. And making that kind of industry shift as well. So, uh, you’re making me wish that I didn’t just specialize in graduate students, postdocs, <laugh>, because I can see that the questions can continue in, in certain environments for a long time afterwards.

Gabrielle (18:35): They definitely can. And I also think that the more advanced someone is in their career, um, the more awkward they feel about asking the questions, they feel like they should know, I’m 45 years old, I’m leaving this career that I’ve been in for decades, and I should know how retirement works. I should know how I should be investing my money. I should know what kind of savings account I need. And so people are embarrassed to, to ask these questions.

Emily (19:07): One of the reasons that I do specialize in the way that I do, um, is because I think that the vast majority of graduate students and postdocs, as you were saying earlier, like coaching is expensive. At the career coaching option. Yes. You might spend thousands of dollars on, if you’re working with an individual or you could buy a course that’ll be, you know, less expensive. Um, what I perceive is that, like, I specialize where I do because, um, these people have no ability to do anything, a course a coach, anything. But the good thing is that once you get that higher salary, like once you can actually make the transition, whether that’s within academia or, or leaving academia. Um, you do have the money once a transition is made to hire professionals. But it can still be intimidating psychologically, like what you just said. Like, okay, I could afford to hire professional, but like, are they gonna help me with my, like, really basic questions that I feel embarrassed to even ask? So I can see why that would be a barrier as well.

Gabrielle (20:06): Yeah. And not even necessarily knowing what kind of professional you need. There are a lot of different, um, a lot of different players in the financial industry. And so it’s, do I need a financial advisor? Do I, how much money do I need to have to make it make sense? To hire someone who’s like to manage things versus just consult with somebody on a one-off basis, um, versus just hire somebody to do taxes. There, there’s a lot of, um, options and, and it’s not always clear what makes sense to invest in.

Emily (20:41): Hmm. And since we’re in this environment right now, I’ll just go ahead. And let people know all the options that you just said are available. So like, you don’t need a million dollars, you don’t need half a million dollars to hand off to an investment advisor to manage for you. Yes, you could do that if you had that kind of money. But as you said, there are so many more people in the last like 10 years offering more of a fee for service model. Um, that’s more about paying someone for their time rather than paying someone to manage investments for you. So you can pay someone for a package. Like it might even be as low as a thousand dollars, maybe a few thousand dollars, um, for okay, you create a plan for me and like it’s on me, the client to execute it. Like that’s not the advisor’s responsibility ’cause they’re just working with you for a limited period of time. But they can answer those questions. And I, I actually, my perception of the industry is that people who have that model of like, you’re just paying for their time, you know, you might work together once, twice or maybe over the course of a year, there’s different models, they’re much more willing to answer those kinds of, like, I feel like I should know this already, but can you just tell me like, what is a 401k like, you know, um. How much should I be, you know, prioritizing my retirement versus my kids’ college? You know, tho- those kinds of questions are, they’re much more open to that than someone who’s strictly focused on managing investments. They might not answer a question for you, like, should I pay off my mortgage faster? You know, they, that might be outside their sort of area of operation, but people who you’re just paying for their time should use that time, however you the client want to use it, if that makes sense. So I think whatever sense, yeah, whatever your level of wealth, whatever your income, you should be able to find someone at that level to help you. Um. But again, it’s getting over the, can I even reach out for help <laugh> part of it?

Commercial

Emily (22:28): 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 2025. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2025 tax season starting in January 2026, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these 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 hosting 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.

The Problem With Academia’s “Not in It for the Money” Mindset

Emily (23:46): Do you have anything else you wanna add to, you know, the common like questions or, or like mindsets that you’ve seen within the group, you know, relating to finances?

Gabrielle (23:55): Yeah, I mean, I do wanna mention again that the, that mindset of we don’t, um, we’re not in it for the money because that is transitioning out of academia involves like a lot of psychological transitions, a lot of identity shifts. And that is a really central one. And it’s just so difficult for people. And the number of people who, when they introduce themselves, we have an intro channel on our slack, and their written introduction of themselves includes essentially some sort of apology for pay being part of their decision making process to, to us, to other people who are in the same boat. Like there’s nobody from the outside looking at this and there’s still this, this, um, guilt that they had to consider something as ordinary as money <laugh> in their, in their, you know, making decisions about their life. So that shows up on a very regular basis of just this feeling of like, there, there needs to be some higher calling reason why I’m changing careers. I can’t just say, you know what, this isn’t enough money for my family to live on and I need to earn more <laugh>. So we try to reassure people that’s enough. If you need that, you need that.

Emily (25:19): Absolutely. What an indictment of academia, right? That they’ve, we’ve been brainwashed by the culture of these institutions that I mean, it’s a racket, honestly, <laugh> like make people grateful for the job that they have so that the pay doesn’t matter, even if the pay is so low that they can’t reasonably afford to live in the city where the institution is located, you know? Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. I’m so glad that you all are, are doing that work, um, in that moment for those people. Like yeah, it can be enough. And not to say that you can’t find mission driven work elsewhere that is still reasonably compensated. Like just Absolutely. It’s because of that, that tie to like the tenure track because they say it’s a one way street and you know, all that kind of stuff. And it’s not true. Like yeah, it’s true sometimes, but like, it doesn’t have to be true for everybody. Anyway. Okay. Thank you so much for bringing that up again. ’cause it is so important. So like same message going out to my audience. Like, I mean, okay. They’re probably already listening to this podcast. They probably understand that money is a factor <laugh> in like living a good life. Um, and if it gets, if the pay is low enough, it might be the only factor telling you. Like, it’s, it’s time to move on from this position or this type of work. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Developing a Healthy Relationship With Your Salary

Emily (26:36): So let’s pull back a little bit from like the people that you usually work with of these, you know, academics or people who work in academia, um, considering a transition out, pull it back to my more typical audience of prospective graduate students, current graduate students, postdocs, people who are still, um, in the academic system, and maybe they’ll stay long term or maybe they won’t. But they’re earlier in their careers. So how can this audience of people start to work on their money mindset so they can have a healthy relationship with their careers and with their earnings wherever they end up? What are your thoughts about that?

Gabrielle (27:13): Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a great question. And what I encourage grad students to do is start doing informational interviews as early on as they can. So talk to people in careers they think they might be interested in, talk to alumni of their program who’ve either are in academia or aren’t. Um, either way, I, I have no skin in the game of whether people stay in academia or leave. I want people to pursue careers that are a good fit for them. And that could be either. Um, so talk to people and ask about money. People are, are generally have the idea that it’s taboo to talk about much more than the reality is that it’s a taboo. People generally are okay answering money, answering money questions, and you don’t have to say like, how much do you make? Um, what I asked people when I was doing informational interviews was, um, how, how, what’s a typical salary for this kind of role? Or, you know, here’s the experience that I have, what’s a reasonable starting salary for me to aim for? Um, so it’s not like you have to come out and just be like, what’d you earn last year? Um, which might feel awkward to ask a stranger. So I would say talking to people and getting kind of just a baseline idea of what, uh, of what people make. And then we tend to approach if, if people are aiming for an academic career, they tend to approach it with this mindset of not what do I need in order to thrive in my life and have all of my needs met, but, um, like, what can I stand to put up with in order to win this prize of having a tenure track position? So I encourage people to start from thinking about their needs and their values. So for example, if somebody values their family and it’s important to them to be near family, where does family live? How much money do you need to earn to live near family? Then that is a filter in your job search process, A baseline filter. You’re not gonna look at jobs that earn less than that because you can’t meet your need of living near your family if you don’t earn at least that amount. Um, so yeah, so I encourage people to, to start not from this sort of almost this end point of what job do I wanna end up in, but what do I want my life to look like? And finances is a big part of that because you need to earn enough to live where you wanna live and to have everything in your life that you want to have in your life travel’s important. You need to think about, well, how much do I need to budget for that? How much am I gonna need to earn to be able to budget that?

Emily (30:06): Yeah, it’s been a minute since I brought up Cal Newport on the podcast. I know I’ve done that a lot in the past, but he has this term that he uses, I believe it’s lifestyle centric career design. And so that’s kind of the, what you just mentioned is like the start of lifestyle centered career design. And I think that even someone who has just finished their PhD, Cal Newport uses a term called career capital. The more career capital you’ve built up, the more you can design your career to fit the lifestyle that you desire. But even someone who’s just finished their PhD has a degree of career capital. It’s not as much as they’ll have five or 10 years later, but they have some <laugh>, um and so that’s a perfect starting point for doing exactly the exercise you just mentioned of like, let’s just baseline, what do I need geographically? Maybe not necessarily a specific geography, but like type of place that I want to live. Um, you can think about your lifestyle too in there. Actually I did an interview, it was published, um, I put it out at the beginning of season, um, 22 of the podcast with, um, Dr. Kate Sleeth from EduKatedSTEM. And we talked about figuring out a minimum salary number in a certain location, kind of what you were just talking about. But one of the elements we added there that I wanna bring to this conversation is don’t just take like your current postdoc salary or you know, wherever, whatever stage you’re at, and then like translate that to a different city. Really think about what you need to add on to that salary to make your life, um, enjoyable. And so of course you’ll have some extra responsibilities of taxes and maybe your student loan payments. Those will be added on as like a baseline. But beyond that, do you wanna take some vacations? Do you wanna buy a home? Do you want to just spend more on entertainment than you have been the last, you know, x many years, um so really think about like intentionally what you want to add into your life when you’re thinking about those minimum requirements of the next job. And I also wanna go back to your first point about informational interviewing, which I think is so powerful. And actually, even if you were staying in academia, I feel like you should still do informational interviews because your one observation at your one institution or your one pi or whatever is not, you know, everything that happens in academia. And I had this, um, I did a very short term fellowship after I finished my PhD in science policy. And it was very intentional. Like it gave us work experience, but there was also a set aside time for like professional development, like a certain number of hours per week we were supposed to spend on that. And part of that professional development was we had to a, conduct a minimum number of inter- informational interviews like it, you know, with other people in science policy. And it was so valuable. And I wasn’t even asking that much about salary and these kinds of things that you’re talking about. Which are very important. But it gave me a much better idea that, oh, actually I didn’t want to stay in science policy and I wanted to pursue this business that I was, you know, starting at that point personal finance for a PhDs. And so it’s such a valuable process and it, and going through that policy fellowship gave me permission to do it. It was like, oh, it’s a requirement. I can just tell people like, I’m doing this fellowship and it’s a requirement that I interview you, you know, or at least that ask, I ask you for an interview. Um, and so it gives you like that permission. So I just wanna tell everyone listening like, you’re required, you’re required to conduct five, 10 informational interviews in these career fields that you want to go into. I think it’s absolutely necessary before you start applying for jobs.

Gabrielle (33:19): Yeah, I completely agree. And my experience has been particularly in reaching out to PhDs that they, at worst, they’re too busy to talk, they’re never offended that you’ve reached out. They’re usually very happy to give their time and, and meet with you. So I think people are very nervous about reaching out to strangers, but folks who’ve left academia are really looking for ways to give back and are generally on board <laugh> with meeting with grad students, postdocs, other faculty looking to transition. There’s a lot of, um, generosity in the community. And I also wanted to come back to one thing that you said, which is one of, I think people overlook the importance of learning what you don’t want to do. Um, and that is incredibly valuable with, with, um, internship experiences, with informational interviews, trying things and finding out it’s not a good fit is fantastic. You’ve, you’ve ruled out a whole area, you don’t have to think about that. Um, you’re narrowing in on what, what you do want. I tend to conduct any job search kind of, I never know what fields exist out there and I don’t wanna accidentally rule things out that might be a good fit. So I tend to rule out the things I know I don’t wanna do and look at whatever is left <laugh>.

Emily (34:40): You know, you just brought up I think another strategy for, um, you know, improving your money mindset even while you’re inside academia, which is going beyond that informational interviewing and going to internship, which you just mentioned. Or any type, any type of work experience. It could be paid work, it could be volunteer work, but anything that exposes you to other workplaces and other missions and other environments and other people like so valuable while you’re a graduate student or postdoc in helping you clarify, as you were saying, what you do, what you don’t want to do going forward. And again, if you’re asking those financially pointed questions like you mentioned, what, what would you suggest as a starting salary? You know, I should ask for a starting salary for, you know, this type of work, um, that can break you out. Because one of the big, big issues with PhDs is that we’ve, we’ve the process of getting that education and the training takes so long that we become anchored at this like stipend or like this postdoc salary, like level of income. And so you’re going into that next position like, oh, well if I just make like a little more, that would be great. Instead of like, I need to realistically understand what this market pays and what I, I can ask for keeping in mind what we talked about earlier about like discovering your own minimum requirements as well and what, what fields are gonna fit with that and what fields maybe aren’t, you know?

Gabrielle (35:57): Yeah, absolutely. That was kind of my mindset going from grad school to postdoc to faculty position. Each one paid more than the last. And so that faculty role that didn’t pay enough for me to really live on was the most I’d made up to that point. And it didn’t occur to me for a ridiculously long time. That <laugh> that didn’t mean it was a good salary just because it was more than my postdoc.

Emily (36:25): I know it’s because we forget, like when you enter graduate school again, it might, it might be your first job, you know, your first full-time position. And like, you again, become anchored at those levels. And unless you’re talking to your peers, you know, maybe who you went to college with who didn’t take that track, unless you’re talking with them, you may forget that you’re vastly underpaid as a graduate student. Yeah. Pretty well underpaid as a postdoc as well. And then depending on what you go into afterwards, still could be underpaid even as a full-time big girl job, you know, academic <laugh>, um, for sure.

Emily (36:56): Okay. Any other strategies that you can think of to, you know, for those trainees just to be working on their money mindsets?

Gabrielle (37:03): I mean, I think any, any kind of opportunity to educate yourself on what we were talking about earlier of like what people don’t know, right? Of the basics of just what, how do retirement accounts work, <laugh>, where should I prioritize my savings? How do you approach paying down debt? Just any kind of education that they can gain around that. It’s easy to write that off because you’re stuck in this low salary stipend situation. And, um, it’s like, well, that doesn’t apply to me. I, I barely have money for groceries, much less investing, but it is still, you won’t always be there. And so the more kind of prep you can do ahead of time, so you’re not very confused when you do eventually make more money, um, I think is really valuable.

Emily (37:53): I totally agree. And like also you just advertised for my podcast, so like, hello listener, if this is your first time listening to this podcast, like please subscribe, keep here because we talk about all this stuff and like you just said, like maybe it’s not actionable right now, but it could be in just next year, three years from now. And you wanna be prepared for that. But I would say don’t, just don’t just listen to my podcast. Maybe if you’re interested in this topic, find a few other, uh, long distance mentors so to speak, you know, gurus or educators that you can listen to. Maybe it’s some other podcasts or maybe it’s, you know, YouTube creators or books that you wanna read. Like there’s so much excellent financial education material out there. Um, yeah. None of it’s tailored for, you know, graduate students, students in postdocs except for mine. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from it and learn from lots of different people. So like, create like a panel in your mind, maybe there’s like five different people who you wanna listen to, to learn from about this topic because as you said, it will become relevant and actionable like before you know it.

Gabrielle (38:51): Yes.

The Recovering Academics Community and Next Draft LLC

Emily (38:52): Wrapping up here, um, you mentioned how um, people can get access to the recovering academics community. Which is through you on LinkedIn. So great place to look for you. Any other places that people can go to follow up with you about anything we’ve talked about today?

Gabrielle (39:06): The group has a, an email address so folks can reach out to me that way too. It’s [email protected]. So anyone can send an email that way. And, um, and I will get back to you with more information on the group. Um, and once we do have websites set up, I can share that with you if you wanna, um, add the link with the description of this, of this episode or anything.

Emily (39:32): Do you wanna tell us more about Next Draft LLC?

Gabrielle (39:35): Sure. Yeah. So one of the things that came out of Recovering Academics was, uh, you know, years of working with a lot of people leaving mid-career who were, uh, essentially having career existential crises and had no idea what else they could do and we’re, you know, mid forties associate professors who were panicking. So part of the idea for next draft, um, came from the idea of, of stepping in earlier in the pipeline. Again, we don’t, we aren’t pushing people to leave academia or to stay. The idea is to provide grad students with the tools that they need to make informed values-based decisions about the career paths that they want to explore so that they can, uh, it kind of building on what we were talking about before, right? Make sure that they are making decisions that keep their actual needs in mind and their deal breakers in mind, and that they’re not just, um, pursuing an academic role at all costs because it’s the only thing that they know that they can do. And this is especially relevant for folks in the humanities and social sciences where the connections between academia, uh, their academic research and industry are, um, not always as clear. So, uh, we do workshops and so our, uh, website is nextdraftllc.com. Um, we do, uh, workshops that individuals can sign up for to work on, um, various aspects of the job search process. We also work with universities to offer those workshops. And we are planning in January to launch a small group mentoring program where people can, uh, get support and thinking through their job search process from somebody who, uh, from their same discipline who has kind of been through the transition themselves. And the mentors that we’re working with have all worked in faculty roles and in non-academic roles. I can kind of speak to both and support grad students who are thinking about whether or not to make that transition.

Emily (41:44): Incredible. Okay. Nextdraftllc.com. Is that right?

Gabrielle (41:47): That’s right.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (41:48): Beautiful. Okay. Last question that I end on with all of my guests. Um, 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.

Gabrielle (42:01): I think we’ve touched on, I think really open communication around money is, is key of just learning about what, what are people earning, what is a reasonable salary? So you have some sense of, of reality to counter that feeling of being stuck in the stipend that you’re making or that mindset of, um, we’re not in it for the money. Um, so I want people to really open up the sources of information that they’re learning from and give themselves permission to think about money and that it is okay to think about we, for better or worse, live in a capitalist society where we all have to earn money to pay our bills, um, and get all of the other things that we actually want in our lives. So it’s okay to think about that and it’s okay for it to be a key piece of decision making. And there’s nothing, you haven’t done anything wrong as an academic to be keeping money in mind.

Emily (43:08): So well said. Thank you Gabrielle, so much for this wonderful interview.

Gabrielle (43:12): Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Outro

Emily (43:24): 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 me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

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Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Turning Personal Finance Knowledge into Action

Tax-Advantaged Retirement Account Options

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Fees Associated With 403(b) and 457 Accounts

Researching Retirement Account Options Before Investing

Achieving a Positive Net Worth

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Why Buy a Home as a First Year PhD Student?

Financial Profile as a Prospective Homeowner and Grad Student

Working With Mortgage Lenders as a Grad Student

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Initial Experiences With Homeownership

Homeownership Considerations and Advice for Grad Students

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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Current State of the PhD Job Market

Advice for the Current PhD Job Market

Pay Transparency Laws and PhD Salary Ranges

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Learning About Benefits Information During the PhD Job Search

Free Career Search and Career Development Resources for PhDs

Additional Insights About the Financial Side of the PhD Job Market

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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Dr. Emily Roberts

Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer

Dr. Ana Romero Morales

Madeline Hebert

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Dr. Brenda Olmos

Dr. Samantha McDonald

Dr. Echo Rivera

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Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Dr. Majumdar’s Book: Thriving as an International Scientist

Startup Expenses as an International Scholar

Navigating the Hidden Financial Curriculum of Life in the US

Commercial

Learning US Systems: A Time-Consuming Endeavor

The Financial Costs of Maintaining Your Immigration Status

Understanding U.S. Taxes as an International Student

Investing While in the US as an International Student or Postdoc

Funding Challenges for International Scholars

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Feeling Financially Dissatisfied in Academia

Recovering Academics Peer Support Group

Common Limiting Beliefs Among Recovering Academics

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The Problem With Academia’s “Not in It for the Money” Mindset

Developing a Healthy Relationship With Your Salary

The Recovering Academics Community and Next Draft LLC

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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