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How Academics Can Apply Self-Compassion to Their Money and Time

February 24, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Danielle De La Mare, a career wellness coach and facilitator and the person behind Self-Compassionate Professor. Danielle recounts how she reached a crisis point in her career and personal life that led her to quit her tenured professorship. This crisis included a financial component due to her avoidant money mindset. Danielle describes how she is healing in the area of finances, especially in relationship with her husband, using self-compassionate practices. Danielle and Emily draw parallels between time management and money management to keep both in balance and sustainable. Danielle ends the interview by teaching two quick self-compassion practices that you can apply immediately to your financial life.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Dr. Danielle De La Mare’s LinkedIn
  • Dr. Danielle De La Mare’s Website
  • Dr. Danielle De La Mare’s Podcast
  • Host a PF for PhDs Tax Seminar at Your Institution 
  • PF for PhDs Tax Center for PhDs-in-Training 
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List 
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
How Academics Can Apply Self-Compassion to Their Money and Time

Teaser

Danielle (00:00): So the healing was really about like me finally just like, ah, turning into the reality that I had to develop a relationship with money and it was really scary.

Introduction

Emily (00:21): 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 (00:49): This is Season 20, Episode 4, and today my guest is Dr. Danielle De La Mare, a career wellness coach and facilitator and the person behind Self-Compassionate Professor. Danielle recounts how she reached a crisis point in her career and personal life that led her to quit her tenured professorship. This crisis included a financial component due to her avoidant money mindset. Danielle describes how she is healing in the area of finances, especially in relationship with her husband, using self-compassionate practices. Danielle and I draw parallels between time management and money management to keep both in balance and sustainable. Danielle ends the interview by teaching two quick self-compassion practices that you can apply immediately to your financial life.

Emily (01:35): The tax year 2024 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/s20e4/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Danielle De La Mare of Self-Compassionate Professor.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:12): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Danielle De La Mare of Self-Compassionate Professor. And we, uh, this podcast interview came to be from an unusual path, which is that we both work with Dr. Jill Hoffman, who you heard from, uh, last season in an interview. So Jill thought it was a great idea to get me and Danielle together and we agreed. So we’re doing this interview now and I’m really excited we’re going to talk about the intersections of money with other aspects of life management, and Danielle has a lot of unique perspective on this. So, uh, Danielle, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast, and will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Danielle (03:51): Oh my gosh, thank you for having me. Um, yeah, uh, I’m Danielle De La Mare and I have been what I call a career wellness coach to mostly mid-career academics, um, for the last several years, since 2019. And, um, sometimes I have early career academics, sometimes I have postdocs, sometimes I have later career academics that I work with full professors. Um, but basically these are people who have hit a wall in their career. They’re not feeling alive in their career. They’re not feeling joy, they’re not feeling well. Um, and basically I have a group, um, program that that sort of works them through that. Now I myself earned tenure in 2018 and then quit my job right after that <laugh>. So the way, um, I engaged with academia myself was very hard on my body. I was very overwhelmed all the time. I was very stressed all the time. I hit burnout. I had small illnesses all the time. And then I had really big major like life-threatening kinds of illnesses as well. Um, two of those actually. So I ended up leaving academia and I started doing this career wellness coaching work, um, diving into it, trying to learn about how to be well in my career and what <laugh> what I found is that those toxic work habits I, um, used in academia I just brought with me to this new job. Um, and, uh, the reason I left academia so quickly is ’cause my husband got a job. Um, he, he was an academic at my same institution and he got a job, um, across the country. So I ended up leaving and I was so happy to leave and thought I can start this new gig and do it all differently. And then I ended up doing the same thing. So, um, yeah, I guess that’s it. The, the core of my work is about self-compassion, like making decisions about your career, taking action in your career from a place of self-compassion. And I guess that’s me in a nutshell.

Emily (06:16): Yeah. Okay. I’m so glad to, I’m, I’m excited to hear more about this story. So like when you were coming up on those maybe the last few years, um, as an academic, um, give us kind of what was going on with you getting up to that crisis point. Um, you’ve mentioned health crises already, but maybe also about your time management, maybe also about your career progression, maybe also your money, like even more holistically. Let’s hear more about that.

Danielle (06:43): Yeah, 100%. Um, so yeah, physical body was giving out. Um, and I think had I been somebody who was a planner, like I never planned anything like weekly planning monthly. I never did any of it. Um, that would’ve definitely helped with my overwhelm. Um, my overwhelm definitely contributed to my, some of my health crises for sure. Um, so I was essentially just focusing only on my work, doing my work, and that was it. I was trying to shut out my life other than that in every way. Um, you know, I was a professor and that was my identity and this is what I did. And, um, I wanted to prove to the people around me that that’s, that I could do a good job and that I would do it well. So I would shut my door <laugh> when I got into the office. Um, and I could hear my colleagues banter outside the door and I wouldn’t communicate with them. I wouldn’t hang out with them. I could hear them and I would kind of have this longing of like, oh, it’d be nice to go hang out with them, but I can’t. I’ve gotta work. Um, I remember, you know, doing everything I could to, to push my daughter off on, um, my mom like, can you take care of Mar she needs, uh, she needs you today ’cause I have to work. Um, I didn’t look at, you know, I didn’t look at my weeks. As I said, I didn’t look at my months, I never looked at my money, I didn’t look at anything. The only thing that mattered was my work, and it’s because I had this core, core belief that I was incompetent and I was bad and I was wrong. And it was this impo-, these imposter feelings. And because of those, I shut everything else out and not shockingly got sick.

Navigating Money, Career, and Relationships

Emily (08:39): Wow. Wow. I can so see how your brand became what it is, <laugh> identifying that as the core issue inside you, your psychology, um, that was kind of like fueling all of this. Um, was there ever going to be an end point or with that like core belief that you were incompetent, had you not left your job, would you just have continued, as you said, shutting out everything else in your life to only focus on the work?

Danielle (09:07): Well, I think I did do that. Um, I, I continued to shut out everything to focus on the work even after I left. Um, I, I remember having an argument with my husband right after he accepted this job across the country. And, um, I was like, I’m fine leaving. This job sucks. It’s not for me, dah, dah, dah, dah. I don’t feel well, this is well after I had hit burnout. And so it, you know, my feelings were very different then. And I was like, let’s go, let’s get outta here. And he’s like, okay, I get that you want to start sort of this entrepreneurial work and I just need to know like, where are we money wise? Like when are we gonna call it quits? Like we can give it a shot, we can move, I can take over, you know, paying for things and doing, you know, supporting us, but then I need to know when you’re gonna, when is sort of the breaking point when we’re not gonna be able to do it anymore. Um, and I remember just getting really angry, like, this is my purpose in life. I’m pretty sure that we can manage it. We can figure this out. I can’t believe you want a number. What is this number thing? And I, I remember getting really, really angry with him and, and he was really angry with me. Like I, he wanted some clarity, he wanted some sense that, you know, we go into this. He, he knew like when the end point was he needed that. And I, I was like, um hmm. It’s like I was offended by it. Like, no, this is my real work. This is the work I’m meant to be. How could you, you know, question that kind of thing. Um, and so I kind of shrugged him off and he kind of let me, and he wasn’t happy about it and he carried a lot of sort of resentment about it. And we got here and I’m in Denver now where he got the job and I ended up taking another faculty job to appease him. But then I got sick. I got really, really, really, really, really sick life, threateningly sick and ended up having to quit six months later. And so it was this, like, it was the body <laugh> was, was communicating things to me. My husband wanted some clarity about money. I didn’t know how to plan my time out in a way that would like actually balance out my life. Um, I was just sort of fully focused on my career and my, my new job, or I guess I should say my new career, my new, what I felt was like my calling, my, my dharma, my purpose. Um, and I was very, very, very imbalanced. And so we got here and started arranging our new life and things just got more and more stressful actually. And I guess a big part of that stress was lack of money because I had to quit that job six months in and then I had to try to build a business and I refused to talk about money with my husband and <laugh>, like all this stuff was happening.

Emily (12:22): Was he more clued in about the money than you were, or were you both kind of flying like in the dark?

Danielle (12:27): So this is kind of how I think of it. I think of our relationship to money as like attachment style. If you’re securely attached, you, you communicate with like your partner and your friends and the people around you in this way that, that, that is productive and loving and truthful and those kinds of things. Well, we have that same relationship to money <laugh>. Um, and if you don’t have a secure attachment style for me, I tend to be avoidant. Um, I will avoid human relationships. I will avoid, um, relationship to money. I will avoid relationship to time. And he, my husband falls sort of on the other end of the spectrum and he is, um, he’s anxious about everything and he tries to push things into being, and it should work like this and it, and he gets really rigid about it. And so I would say that neither of us had a secure relationship to money. Um, and in fact we were talking about money in completely different ways, and each of our ways were like totally unhealthy, <laugh> totally, totally unhealthy, totally toxic. Um, yeah. And actually as I, as I recall this time, like I can feel this sort of pain in my body and the heaviness and the sadness. It was a hard time.

Healing and Building a Relationship with Money

Emily (13:51): Yeah. And I, I think we’re gonna keep the conversation fairly focused around money today and it, and its relationship with these other things, but clearly this was going on for you in multiple areas of your life, right? It’s not just money, it’s not just career, it’s, it’s well beyond that. So you’re speaking about this time in the past tense. So let’s talk about like, emerging from that or, or shifting it or healing from it or however you like, conceptualize that. So like, what’s been the shift from like that point in time to now

Danielle (14:19): Turning into the reality that I need to have conversations with my husband about finances, um, which was really scary to me. I, when we first started, we, we have these weekly meetings every Tuesday, although we haven’t had them for a few weeks, and it’s making me nervous. Um, but I would, I would get shaky, um, when we would sit down to talk about it and he would get angry and they were very stressful. And it was this like turning into like what’s authentically happening right now as we talk about money, when we, what, Like, I, uh, just like I said to you just now, like, I can feel this in my body as I’m talking about it. Like, I started saying that to him, like, I can feel the shakiness showing up in my body and I can feel like a sense that I wanna run away really fast from this and I don’t wanna have this conversation. Um, and so being really honest, and then when I was doing that, he started telling me how he would feel and often we’d have similar reactions like he wanted to run too. Um, so the healing was really about like me finally just like, ah, turning into the reality that I had to develop a relationship with money. I had to develop a relationship with all of these things, with my husband, with <laugh>, you know, with time. Um, and it was really scary. And, um, it, and, and if I compare that to where we are now, I would say that there’s still definitely work to be done in terms of my own relationship to money, but also my relationship to my husband, um, when it relates to money. ’cause that is like the hot point for us and has been for the 20 years that we’ve been married, like it always has been. Um, and so we continue to do the work. I can see when he kind of pulls out and it’s like, ah, I gotta go to a meeting and I can’t meet for our time. And then I feel like comfortable with that, like, yeah, yeah, please go and I don’t have to worry about it or deal with it kind of thing. Um, and so it’s very easy, easy for us to fall into that avoidant place where we don’t talk about it and we don’t think about it. And like I said, for the last few weeks we haven’t been doing it and I’m like, I gotta get back on it. I gotta step back in. This is probably why I’m on the podcast right now, so that I can like force myself to do that. You know what I mean? Like, I’m thinking about like divine intervention or something. I would say that so much of it has been about just holding myself in these difficult moments. I mean, just in the same way when I talk to my husband about money, I get nervous and scared and shaky. Uh, the same thing happens when I look at my, my money. Um, when I look at the actual numbers and I’m, and I’m tracking. And when I’m doing that every single day, which I’ve been doing, um, I really have to take a self-compassion break. I have to like hold my chest. I have to tell myself I’m not alone. I have to tell myself that everything is okay. I have to tell myself that I am competent and I can do this money thing. Like there’s, there’s some real stuff that I need to do to get in, get in a really good, secure relationship with money. Um, and I’m doing it, but it’s a process and I think that’s what I really wanna impart to people. It’s not just you look at the numbers and then you know, you quit avoiding and you transition and voila you’re there. It’s not like that. It, there is some healing work and some time. And to know that I think is really important.

Emily (18:02): I’m very actually impressed that you and your husband have both been able to like, identify that you want to avoid and that you want to run away and so forth. And yet have held yourselves to maybe not the weekly standard, but like a standard of meeting periodically and engaging with the subject and doing the work. Um, as you were saying, like physically to get to that point where you can have those conversations. I’m wondering in the time that it’s been since you have been intentionally engaging with one another around the subject of money, um, what positive things you’ve been able to accomplish, like what keeps you coming back to the table even though it has been so difficult?

Danielle (18:39): I feel closer to him when I can hear the way he’s thinking about things and the way he’s framing sort of our money story. And, um, and, and he actually says to me, thank you. When I tell him, you know, what, where I am and how I’m feeling, um, like he’s, he’s really valuing hearing me and I can feel just this, like, I can feel a real tenderness that he has for me when I talk to him about my fears and when I talk to him about why this is so difficult for me. Um, and that, that is, um, that is absolutely the thing that keeps us coming back, right? Like, wow, wow. To feel that sense of tenderness and, and care for each other when, when money for the 20 years we’ve been married, um, has always been, um, just fraught with pain and, uh, disdain and contempt and um, and so knowing that it’s hard but coming back feels really, really good. It feels like courageous. Like, I can do this and um, and I can and I can love fiercely and I can see he can do the same thing. Uh, so yeah, that’s what comes up for me when you ask that.

Emily (20:13): Hmm. That’s, that’s incredible. And it, it speaks also I think greatly to, um, your marriage, your partnership. Um, I think of there’s various aspects of our lives that we can share with our partners. Not everybody shares money and you’re not even necessarily talking about the dollars and cents, you’re talking about sharing the feelings and the fears and the dreams and so forth. And that’s, that’s really, that’s really precious and it can bring people closer together the way that sharing other aspects of your life can as well. This is just kind of one of those examples. I’m really glad to hear, hear that. That’s really lovely. Is there anything else you wanna talk about from kind of that first question, which is like, coming to crisis point and how you came out of that?

Dharma and Connecting to your Purpose

Danielle (20:58): I think this idea of dharma, I’m a huge Stephen Cope fan. Stephen Cope talks about dharma. He’s a yogi and a psychotherapist. And he had his own like mid-career crisis as a, as a therapist in Boston years and years ago. And, um, during this time when I was in my tenure track job and I was feeling all the stress and all the pain and my husband said to me, you like carry anxiety with you at all times. Um, I would have like these Sunday mornings, um, when I had an infant at home, I would go to the coffee shop and just read Stephen Cope, um, his work. And he had a book, what was it? I’m trying to see it on my shelf. Uh, I think it’s, I think it’s called Yoga and the Search for True Self or something like that. Anyway, in it, I, when I was reading it at the coffee shop on those mornings when I was always anxious and I’d have this from 6:00 AM to 7:00 AM ’cause I had a baby at home, 6:00 AM to 7:00 AM on Sunday mornings, was this like, ah, I can just kinda slip into this place where it feels like somebody understands me and the crisis I’m going through. And this is the person that also talks about purpose and dharma from a, from a sort of yogic philosophy, from particularly he, he, he talks about the Bhagavad Gita, which is um, which is this, this scripture that helps us to understand purpose. Uh, and so that was the thing I think that got me it, one, it was the thing that caused some arguments ’cause my husband didn’t get it and he was like, I don’t like this. Um, like, we can’t have a conversation about money because you’re so, like, this is my purpose. This is what I do, this is what I want. Uh, he thought it was so lofty and ridiculous, so it caused that kind of problem. But what it did for me is it the idea of having a dharma, the idea of having a purpose and then just like putting to work the health of my body, time, money, all of those things in alignment with that sense of purpose. That was the thing that kept me moving because those things bore me otherwise, like, oh my gosh, time, money, it’s boring, it’s dumb, I hate it, but if I have like a real why about why I do it, like this is why I do it, it for me it was dharma. Knowing that I’m doing it because I know there are other faculty out there who are having a hard time and I wanna be able to be there for them and I wanna be able to to, to heal, to help heal with them. 

Commercial

Emily (23:57): 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.

Connections Between Time and Money: Prioritizing Wellness in Both Areas

Emily (24:48): I would love to talk a little bit more about some of the things that you just mentioned. We’ve touched on this a couple times, the time management, the planning, the weekly plans and so forth. And I want to kind of draw a comparison between managing your time and managing your money and see how well, you know, strategies from one can transfer to the other and maybe in some cases where they break down and these things are very different and can’t be thought of in a similar way. Um, so tell me like, you know, having gone from someone who, who wasn’t doing the management of time and now presumably you’re much better at it because. You want it to be part, you know, enabling you to do what you’re here to do. Um, tell me a little bit about like your practice of time management or how you teach other people about it. And let’s just start talking through those analogies with money.

Danielle (25:35): I do weekly planning in my program that I have for faculty. And every Friday we get together and we talk about our career wellness or we, I have them meditate on their career wellness destination, this is where I wanna be. So like, let’s step into that, that let’s feel into that, what is that? And then now let’s set an intention for the week that supports that. Um, so, uh, I would say that as a person, I, I do things, uh hmm. I have to act on things before they sort of integrate. Um, so I had to do the weekly planning with my people for a long time, for probably at least a year before I was really getting good at it sort of myself. Um, and I, that same thing with my dissertation. When I wrote my dissertation, I had to be in the field. I did ethnographic research, I had to be in the field before I could really write my methods section. Like I’m just not the kind of person who can like, you know, put it out there, make a plan, and then, and then move forward with it. Like, I have to act on it, I have to feel it, it has to be part of me kind of thing. So I think that that’s the one thing, like just developing a relationship with the plan every week. And that’s the thing I say to them every time we come together, the purpose of weekly planning is to develop a relationship with our weak so that we can self compassionately protect ourselves, our future selves protect, you know, um, our, our needs and our wants kind of thing. So, so it’s this like, here’s our why, this is why we’re coming together, right? Here’s the, here’s the big why, the career wellness destination, here’s the little why, this is why we’re doing it this week. And um, and doing that with them every week, week after week after week after week really allowed me to integrate that into me and to, um, and to my own practice and develop my own relationship with, um, with time. Because before that it was like I would read what somebody said about time management and what somebody else said about time management, but until I like made it my own, I really couldn’t do it well. Um, so there’s always space for them to, to do it their way as well. It’s not just about me, but I do always want to remind us all of the why before we do the planning.

Emily (28:11): Yeah. So what I’m curious about in trying to draw an analogy with, we’ll say budget planning, right, is the analogous, analogous, um, area there, and it probably wouldn’t happen on a weekly basis. It might be more of like a monthly or quarterly kind of thing if we’re talking about money. But what I’m wondering about is when you and the people you work with are creating these plans, um, what’s the, I mean, you, you said, you know, we have to keep in mind our overall goal, career wellness goal, but then within that, are you emphasizing like accomplishing something this week or rather putting in time for something this week that will like move your career forward versus just keeping your head above water and getting the grading and, you know, all this stuff that doesn’t really move the needle? Like is that more like what you’re talking about, like making sure you make space for overall progress or is it more about, um, scheduling in time for, um, self-care or, or like, or all of that? Or like how do you think about maybe the different components of the week that should be present?

Danielle (29:16): Yes. The, the bigger picture is we’re trying to be more well in our careers. And so with that, we’re always scheduling in rest. You know, you spend three hours a week with each of your classes, well, there needs to be three hours of rest time for you, space that you get to do whatever you need to do to feel more connected to yourself. You know, body, mind, spirit. Um, so there’s that piece, but then there’s also the piece of like, let’s figure out what our priorities are. Um, this week I have all of these things on my list for work, but what’s actually priority and how can we, Martha Beck talks about, and I always use this, she talks about the three Bs, right? How can we, like, if you look at something and you don’t wanna do it and you have this weird relationship to it, like, oh, I really don’t wanna work on this thing this week. How can you one, bag it, how can you two, barter it? Like, and she says barter it is just sort of like give it to somebody else, right? Um, and three, how can you, um, better it? Like I’m gonna, I don’t wanna grade, but I’m gonna sit in this chair that I love and listen to music that I love while I grade. So, so, uh, and then I had, I had a client once say, and then we should do botch it, so do it imperfectly, right? And um, so, so we go through that like what is the list? What are your list of to-dos? Now let’s just get rid of ever-, let’s get rid of all the things we can get rid of. Let’s delay the things we can delay. Let’s, uh, let’s commit to doing things imperfectly, that kind of thing. And so now we’re gonna find our priorities for the week. Now we’re gonna find, um, like I said, our time that we’re gonna do rest. Now we’re gonna find time that we need to take care of our ourselves. Like, are you scheduling lunch every day? You should have a lunch every day. And that is not something faculty ever think about, right? Like, oh, I haven’t eaten for 12 hours. <laugh>. Like, that is common. That is very common. So those kinds of things. And just staying in relationship to the week and knowing that that weekly relationship is gonna contribute to the larger goal of career wellness.

Emily (31:33): I just love this advice on its own. I mean, if this were a time management podcast, we would just talk about it because I, I love that stuff. Um, but I’m still trying to draw these like analogies with money. Um, and I’m thinking about how when we’re planning a budget we have to plan for, and the typical term, which you actually mentioned earlier is like needs and wants and also saving. And I feel like the saving is more like the rest actually that you were just speaking about because it’s, um, it’s shoring up your ability to roll with punches in the future. It’s shoring up your own health, um, both in the long term and in the short term. And so that to me is like, it’s something that you can neglect on a weekly basis, monthly basis, maybe even for a year, maybe even for a few years. But it will come back with a vengeance if you never ever address it. Um, and it’s so much better to build it in cyclically like on a weekly basis like you’re talking about. So that to me is like a saving, kind of like saving, um, building in your own, again, ability to kind of continue to live your life with all the like, you know, the, the punches that you know, life is gonna throw your way. Um, and then also like thinking about the needs and the wants and the priorities. Um, like you were saying about okay, there’s maybe a list of tasks that need to happen. There may be a list of things that you want to spend money on in the course of a month, let’s say. And some of those are more important than others. Some of them can be delayed, some of them can be frugalized, <laugh>, some of them with a little bit of, you know, creativity. You might be able to use something for free or lower cost. Um, some things may just need to be deferred into the future. And so that’s kind of the analogy I would draw there of like, but with money, and probably with your time you have some big rocks that are just standard, right? Like you gotta pay your housing costs every single month. You have to spend a certain amount of money on food every single month. There’s gonna be some staples going on. But similarly in, in your time management, there are probably staples depending on what your job actually is and what your life consists of. There are some things you gotta do, um, every single day. Yeah. Do you have any comments on, on that?

Danielle (33:41): I love the way you just broke that down. Um, and, and drew an alignment to, uh, money. And I will say that money is something I’m still building a relationship with, and so I don’t think I can speak about it in the way I just spoke about time, right? And so, and I think that’s really important to say, like, it’s really important to be really honest about that. Like every day I sit down and I do something that helps me to feel inspired with money, right? Like have a little mantra or I tell myself this is why I’m doing this. And then I look at my, and then I look at my tracking and just like developing that relationship that isn’t a scared, shaky relationship, um, feels like the only thing I can do right now. And so having this sort of big eagle view of my money at the moment is really hard. But having that, that, and I eagle view versus mouse view, I’m again drawing from Martha Beck, mouse view is this like, you know, the the little daily thing I can do to stay in relationship and to develop a deeper relationship, that’s all I’m doing right now. And so talking about it, um, in big lofty terms with somebody who’s an expert on this feels pretty intimidating. ’cause it’s just not where I am yet. Um, and I, and I want people out there who really are hearing this and being like, oh my god, I can relate to that and I’m scared and I wanna get away from it. And, and hearing all the financial terms and all of, and hearing people who are really good at it talk about it all the time, that is scary. And it makes me wanna shut down. I want those people to hear me say that it takes time. And I know I just said it, but I wanna say it again.

Emily (35:37): Thank you so much for pointing that out because part of the purpose of this podcast is, um, and the listeners, hopefully regular listeners will know this, but you may not, is that I interview regular people. Like yeah, they may be regular people who are willing to talk about money, which is not everybody in the population, but I don’t interview other experts almost ever because I think it’s much more relatable, useful, actionable to hear from people who are more similar to the listener rather than more similar, like to me who’s like devoted my career to this, right? So like we already have one of me on the podcast. We don’t necessarily need two <laugh>, at least not every episode.

Danielle (36:08): Totally.

Using Automation and Routines to Support Wellness

Emily (36:09): So that’s kind of my like, uh, approach there. So I’m really, really glad that you said that. And I actually, I’m gonna think more about this mouse view versus eagle view <laugh>, uh, terminology that you just pointed out. And like, yeah, what can be done to draw the connections between the two? Like if you have an eagle view, how do you develop mouse? Uh, I don’t know, habits or actions? And if you only have mouse views and habits and actions, like how do you get up to the eagle view as well? Um, one thing I wanted to ask you about, again, in this analogy between like money and time management is I really love automation in the area of money, and I’m wondering how much automation comes into your view of time management. And by automation I could mean something as simple as like, well actually something you just said reminded me of, uh, Kendra Adachi of the Lazy Genius. Are you familiar with this brand?

Danielle (36:55): No.

Emily (36:56): Okay. So what you said earlier that reminded me of her is that, uh, she’s very intentional to schedule her lunch because she realized that she was not taking lunch like ever and that it was ineffective overall for her wellbeing and also for her work to not be taking lunch breaks anyway. One of her so-called lazy genius principles is decide once, and that’s a form of automation. It’s not necessarily carrying things out automatically, but it’s okay, I only had to think about this one time. This decision is gonna last for a while and I can just carry out that decision without revisiting it every single time it comes up. So that’s kind of a form of automation. Um, so yeah, I’m wondering what you think about that in, in the area of, of time management.

Danielle (37:35): Hmm. The thing that is really automation for me is when I sit down to do weekly planning, I have questions for inner wisdom. Because when you look at your week and you’re like, ah, I don’t know how this is gonna work and I still need to, to contact this person and figure this logistic out and blah, blah, blah, all these things are happening, right? And you don’t always know the answers to everything. You don’t always, um, know how to exactly plan. How am I going to find the capacity to get such and such done this week? Um, that might be an inner wisdom question or whatever it is, but if you just have those questions listed and then they’re not like taking up space in your brain and they’re not like, uh, and you’re not ruminating on it and you’re not getting, um, like scared about that. And then after you know what your questions are, you take space to go listen to what the answers are. So I’m gonna, now that I’ve done my weekly planning, I’m gonna gonna schedule some time this weekend to just go for a walk and really jus- like I look at my questions before I go for my walk, and then I’m really just gonna let the answers come to me as they need to, right? Um, and trusting that they will, and they will, they will, I mean sometimes they’ll say, don’t do this yet. Like pause and, you know, postpone this until next month or something. They might not have an answer in that way, but at least you have some kind of an answer.

Emily (39:02): The automation is the listing of the questions. And then scheduling reflection time again because you mentioned earlier like not, not wanting it to take over all of your brain space to ruminate on these questions. Like you’re just gonna give it a dedicated time where you’re like, I know from doing this process many times if I just have these questions working in my subconscious during this time, a few answers will arise

Danielle (39:25): 100%.

Emily (39:26): I’m actually also thinking about in terms of automations like routines. So have you developed, for example, a morning routine or a sitting down to work routine or an evening routine or anything like that? Or do you like those or do you recommend them?

Danielle (39:39): I do. I love the getting up in the morning and doing what I’ve been calling a trust practice, um, which is just kind of like, um, feeling into gratitude or feeling into a celebration of yourself or anything that’s gonna make you feel good. And I call ’em trust practices because they allow you to trust the moment they allow you to trust your journey. Um, and if you don’t do them, you often will feel distrust and like you can’t do the things you want to do in your life. Like you’re not gonna be able to make it happen. Um, so I would say one, some kind of a trust practice and usually for me, um, I am thinking about things I’m grateful for and I’m thinking about ways I’m really proud of myself and in the evening I’m always doing right before bed. I’m always just taking a second to really feel into my career wellness destination. Just like, this is what I really want and this is how it feels to have that. Um, and I do that just because, um, you know, those people who, who talk a lot like in the spiritual world, right? And manifestation world, they talk about that. And um, and how if you do that just before bed, you know, it sort of sets your psyche up for, for the next day to do things that are in alignment with that. I also love Cal Newport’s shutting it down thing at the end of the workday. Oh my gosh, I feel so much better when I do that, that kind of like, okay, I need to get this done, this done and this done first thing tomorrow. And then these are the things that I need to think through for the rest of the week. Like, and then now I’m gonna check the box because I have his like calendar. I’m gonna check the box that says shut down. I did the shutdown and I am done. And I’ve noticed that I don’t look at my phone as much. Um, when I do that, I just feel better and the whole day because I’m just intentional about how I spend my time.

Emily (41:41): I also have used Cal Newport’s, um, time block, time block planner, which has that shutdown, uh, checkbox in it. And I don’t always use it, but when, as you said, when I do, I certainly feel like a difference. And I’m actually trying to draw another analogy with money here. And this would again, probably happen on like a monthly or yearly basis instead of on a daily basis. But like knowing when you can call something good enough and done and that you don’t need to devote the additional hours that day. Analogously, I’ve done enough with my money this month. I’ve hit my minimum goals. It’s okay if I haven’t used every single last dollar optimally or whatever. Like, it’s okay to have some flexibility and to set your goals realistically, <laugh> like, I mean, Cal wouldn’t want you to schedule, you know, 12 hours of work into a six hour day. That’s not feasible at all. And so similarly, like you need to rightsize your money goals according to the means that you have at that time so that you’re not in this like dissatisfied feeling all the time. Like you have to get to a peaceful conclusion <laugh> at least some of the time with your time and your money. So yeah, that’s just another analogy I was thinking of there. I wonder if you could leave us with maybe one or two self-compassion strategies. You’ve actually already brought up a couple in the course of the interview, but maybe like one or two more that you haven’t brought up yet that we could use across different areas of life wellness or management, including money.

Self-Compassion Practices for Academics

Danielle (43:06): Yeah. So the first one I brought up was a self-compassion break. And this is, uh, from Kristin Neff and Chris Germer’s work in mindful self-compassion. And essentially it is when you know, notice you’re nervous, and it might be while you’re planning, it might be like while you’re planning your week, it might be while you are working through your budget, it might be something else. Um, maybe it’s, maybe it’s even your body, right? Like, I don’t want to exercise right now. And everything in me is like, eh, I don’t wanna exercise. And so a self-compassion break would be to just feel those feelings. Oh yeah, this is what it feels like in my body to feel terrible about this, whatever it is, the anxiety, the stress, the anger, whatever. And then you place your hands either over your chest or somewhere else, that is, that feels very supportive, right? You could like cup your face or um, you could hug yourself, whatever it is, but you’re finding a way. And I really like wrapping a blanket around myself, like really just feeling the warmth of the blanket and letting and, and doing it tightly so you can really feel it tightly. But that that sort of nervous system thing where you’re really giving your nervous system some soothing, um, and then you’re just gonna lean into your own hands or into the blanket and let all the feelings you’re feeling be there while it holds you or while your hands hold you. And then you just remind yourself, I am not alone in this. This is life and life is hard. And, um, everybody’s on their own journey and everybody deals with hardships kind of thing. Um, the other thing is you wanna soothe yourself with words. If you can find something that feels really good to you, so you know, this too shall pass, or I’m doing this for a reason, I’m doing this because I want to, you know, for me it would be to fulfill my dharma, whatever it is. Um, so just you’re, you’re holding yourself with your hands, you’re holding yourself with your words and you’re reminding yourself you’re not alone. Those are the big self-compassion, um, pieces to a self-compassion break. Um, so that’s one way.

Danielle (45:24): The other way is just pausing. I, I think pausing is huge. Like, I’m moving through my day and I’m starting to get stressed and this is happening and I’m triggered. I just went to a faculty meeting <laugh> and I’m triggered because faculty meetings are, I don’t know why they seem to be like triggering 80% of the time, but you walk out of there and, um, for many of us, we just keep, continue on with our day and um, instead pause, right? And I could do this too, especially when I, as I’m developing this relationship with money and I’m trying to heal my relationship with money,

Connecting with Dr. Danielle De La Mare

Emily (46:00): Thank you so much for explaining how to be more self-compassionate in these, you know, times when we might need a little bit of extra. And certainly I know there are people in the audience who are gonna be feeling this with respect to money and will appreciate those strategies, um, when it comes to opening up their bank account or meeting with their partner or whatever, whatever is, um, causing those that trigger to come up. So thank you so much for that. And if someone is listening and they realize that they’re kind of in the, the audience of people that you serve, um, can you tell us just a tiny bit more about how they can find you, how they can learn more about your work and what it looks like to work with you?

Danielle (46:35): Yeah, thank you. Uh, selfcompassionateprofessor.com. You can go there and you can come to one of our monthly coffee chats, um, where we just make space for career wellness. So we spend an hour every month, anybody who shows up and we talk about anything you wanna talk about, whether it’s like toxic workplace, feeling like you, you know, are burned out, whatever it is, you come, you chat. It’s, it’s free, it’s an hour every month. Sign up selfcompassionateprofessor.com, just click on Coffee chats. And then I also have Self-Compassionate Professor, the podcast, um, for people who, who are interested in, in that as well.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (47:14): Excellent. Thank you so much. And let’s end with the, uh, question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that can be something that we have touched on already in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

Danielle (47:29): It doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to have it all figured out. All you have to do is be in relationship to your money. That’s all you have to do.

Emily (47:42): Could not have phrased it better myself. Thank you so much, Danielle, it was absolutely a pleasure to speak with you.

Danielle (47:46): Yay, you too.

Outtro

Emily (47:58): 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.

Sustainably Moving in the Right Direction in Your Finances (with Dr. Kate Henry)

January 13, 2025 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Kate Henry, a productivity coach for academics. Kate was a workaholic who equated her work with her worth until her declining health forced her to stop overworking. Now, she coaches grad students and academics in how they can achieve career success in a sustainable manner. Together, Kate and Emily explore several overlapping concepts and strategies between productivity and financial management. We also learn from Kate what it takes to start a service-based business in terms of finances, scheduling, and mindsets.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • PF for PhDs Quarterly Estimated Tax Workshop
  • PF for PhDs Tax Center for PhDs-in-Training
  • Dr. Kate Henry’s Website
  • Dr. Kate Henry’s Newsletter
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Sustainably Moving in the Right Direction in Your Finances (with Dr. Kate Henry)

Teaser

Kate (00:00): For productivity, often I hear folks who are like, I’m going to write my dissertation every day. I’m going to go to the gym three times every week, or I’m going to do like X all the time. And then when they don’t do that, there’s this feeling of failure, this feeling of like, oh, why should I even try? I am not never going to get where I want to get. So in a a productivity lens, we would think of like you’re trending in the direction that you would want to go.

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 (01:04): This is Season 20, Episode 1, and today my guest is Dr. Kate Henry, a productivity coach for academics. Kate was a workaholic who equated her work with her worth until her declining health forced her to stop overworking. Now, she coaches grad students and academics in how they can achieve career success in a sustainable manner. Together, Kate and I explore several overlapping concepts and strategies between productivity and financial management. We also learn from Kate what it takes to start a service-based business in terms of finances, scheduling, and mindsets. By the way, I forgot to plug in my external mic during this interview, so the audio quality on my end is pretty poor. I apologize for that, and please listen anyway, as I believe the content of this interview is definitely worth it.

Emily (01:56): 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 2024 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 Wednesday, January 15, 2025. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate, named savings account for your future tax payments. Calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives.

Emily (03:08): 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 today, Monday, January 13, 2025 at 11:00 AM 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/s20e1/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Kate Henry.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (04:13): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Kate Henry, who’s a productivity coach for academics, and I’m really excited to speak with her and find some overlaps between productivity and time management. And Kate, I’m just so delighted to have you on, and will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?

Kate (04:29): Yes, thank you for having me on. I’m so excited. Um, so again, I’m Dr. Kate Henry, and I am a productivity coach who works with academics, so graduate students, postdocs, professors, and I approach my work with a lens of sustainability, a lens of wellbeing, slow living, and really making productivity more accessible, which we need in the world of academia.

Emily (04:56): And I already see the same keywords that pop up in finances as well. So that’s awesome. Give us a little bit more like background about, you know, yourself, your finances, your financial mindset through, you know, when you were growing up and then like into graduate school

Financial Mindset From Childhood Through Grad School

Kate (05:10): Of course. Absolutely. So growing up, I’m from a small town in Pennsylvania and I grew up really modeled for me was a, like a working class bootstrapping mentality, working hard and working all day was very valued and, you know, tied to worth and respect for an individual. And so I was, I did that, I worked very hard. I started working as a teenager. I actually moved out of my parents’ house when I was a senior in high school and began working and sustaining myself then. And I really carried this, um, sort of attaching my worth to my work and my output and worked very hard, had multiple jobs in college and in graduate school. So I was very intent on doing things perfectly and needed multiple jobs to sustain myself in graduate school in addition to my stipend. So I certainly, you know, um, tied my worth to my productivity and the output and really approached work with a feeling of financial scarcity, which I think had been, it’s something that I picked up as a child and then also, you know, living on my own as a senior in high school and then in college. So that certainly influenced me, you know, across decades. And I was, I’m sure that many folks can relate to this who are listening, but working multiple jobs, really trying to bring in income in addition to a graduate stipend was pretty stressful as well.

Emily (06:40): Yeah, it’s something that I do like to encourage side hustling when it’s necessary. Uh, but I’m always like trying to tell people about that time, money, energy trade off on it. Like at some points certain types of jobs are not worth it and maybe you can find something with, you know, fewer hours but higher pay rate and, but they’re all hard trade offs because it’s just, it’s a difficult time of life where you’re strained in a lot of different, you know, areas. And so this mindset of tying your worth to your work and the hustling and everything, how did that ultimately impact your health?

Kate (07:14): Well, not well <laugh> as you might expect and as many people experience, and actually I’m a productivity researcher and I publish about that. Many folks in the productivity scholarship world often come to study productivity because they have some sort of physical, mental, you know, like breakdown and hit a wall with their physical or mental health. And for me, in 2017 when I was in my PhD program, I actually developed, you know, pretty severe lower back pain and issues with fatigue and chronic illness that wouldn’t get diagnosed for three years. So I was forced to stop working as much as I had because I truly could not sit at a desk for long and I had to attend so many appointments to try to find a diagnosis or to find a way to relieve that pain that I was experiencing. So I had to halt the overwork that I was doing at that point. And in order to find a new way to still be productive, I turned to external support. So I turned to podcasts, I turned to books, self-help books, time management books, and that eventually led me to start researching productivity, which led me to where I am now in my job. But initially having to find a different way to truly be an academic and work at my desk is what forced me to acknowledge that I was a workaholic. This was not sustainable. Um, like my body stopped me from doing that overwork that I was doing.

Dr. Kate Henry’s Business Origin Story

Emily (08:45): Thank you so much for sharing that. And I know it’s gonna be relatable again to a lot of the listeners and maybe not at this point in their lives, maybe they’re still in graduate school and their youth is holding up or something, but like at some point if you work like that, you’re gonna hit some kind of wall. And so how did like all these events coming together and this mindset and everything lead to you starting your business? Can you tell us that story?

Kate (09:06): Yes, I love to tell this story. So I started researching just personally looking at productivity and time management and self-help, uh, you know, podcasts and books as I said in 2017 and found that I was really, really into it and I was doing these little experiments on my own. And at the start of 2018, I was like, I want to explore this even further. So I set a goal for myself that if I could blog every single week, trying out a new tool, practicing it, writing it up, creating how-tos for others and blog every week for a year, then I could consider shifting my career path and going into productivity coaching. And it went super well. I did it for a year and then I decided to do it for a second year. So that was two years straight of weekly blogging about this, which both increased my knowledge of what I was doing and also just helped me to share a lot of free resources for folks. So folks started to get to know me and during that time I started practicing doing some productivity coaching while I was still in graduate school. So by the time I graduated in 2020, I already was prepared to start my business. I knew I was going to officially do that. I had made the decision to not go on the job market because I wanted to start the business and I already had all of this really great content there. So I started planning for my business around two years before I actually finished the PhD. But I also knew I wanted to finish the PhD. I liked my topic, I had a great advisor. Um, but it was this really nice playground, I guess to start to develop a mailing list and start to develop clients and for folks to get to know who I was as a productivity scholar,

Emily (10:50): I love how intentional that was <laugh>. Um, and it’s, it’s actually advice that I took like from the personal finance space, like if you’re planning on starting a business, like give yourself runway, right? So like you gave yourself runway both in the sense of you’re doing those early steps that are not gonna immediately, you know, see monetary ROI but are building you up to be able to offer that, you know, in the future. Um, at the same time on the financial side, we would say like, okay, you’re saving, you know, you’re, you’re getting ready for like potential, not having as much income once you, you know, commit to the business maybe. And again, I find parallels with my story, although you were much more intentional. So I was doing the same thing of, you know, blogging and so forth about personal finance and figuring out that people needed more education on this topic that was, you know, specific to my peer group of graduate students and postdocs. Um, yet, you know, there wasn’t anyone doing it. And so I was kind of like stepping into that vacuum, but I didn’t actually plan to start a business until it was like upon me that I was starting a business. So I didn’t give myself the same intentional kinds of runway that you did, which is amazing. So for the listeners, if you’re thinking about starting a business or even honestly like doing any kind of alt ac career, like this is the stuff you start in graduate school years ahead of time to lay that groundwork, to do the internships, to do the networking, to get the experiences because you know, chances are you’re not gonna get those things automatically in the course of your time in graduate school. So, and I also love it because I think you used the word like experiment. You were experimenting with the productivity, you know, tips and so forth, but you’re also experimenting with can I become a business owner and can I be committed in this area? And it’s that same thing for anyone coming up on a career change, like go ahead and experiment if you’re not sure what you wanna do, do you know, low stakes, little, um, experiments, different things as you go along, and then it’ll help you make those decisions as well as get you ready for that next step. So I just love <laugh> that how intentional you were about that. Um, we’re gonna get back to like what your full fledged business, like what you’re up to now in a couple of minutes. And before we get there, I kind of wanna, you know, riff for a bit here on like these parallels between productivity and finances and what, you know, what a person who’s maybe more competent in one sphere can draw into the other one and back and forth and, and those things. So let’s see, let’s just go through a couple different items, like what productivity principles can we apply to our finances so that we can give them the right amount of time and attention and they’re not <laugh> taking over our life?

Parallels Between Productivity and Personal Finances

Kate (13:15): Yes, certainly I am really excited about this question. So I really approach productivity through the lens of how can we make it accessible, how can we personalize it for each person? And in that way, I think about what I would call personal resources. So this is our time, our energy, our focus, also our physical health, our mental health, our mood, how we’re doing, and really approaching our productivity in a way that goes with the flow of that. So for example, are there certain times of day or certain days of the month where it would make more sense for you to schedule time to work on a particular productivity task? Like for me, I block off the last day of the month and the first day of the month to do my accounting and do my, you know, things like that. So that’s a way I approach that. But I think in terms of checking in with your personal resources and coming up with a plan that’s not going to overtax those or cause additional stress works for productivity. So I imagine that it might also work for like certain types of financial practices that would be potentially stressful or really need more time or energy or effort. So that’s one thing that, yeah,

Emily (14:25): Uh, what that is making me think of is actually sort of using that tip as as you just, you just gave an example in the financial realm. Like I know that this is a good time of the month to be working on my bookkeeping and accounting. So that could literally be in other areas of your finances too. Like especially if you’re partnered up like having that weekly, biweekly, monthly, whatever it is, like money date with your partner or if you’re not partnered up by yourself, that’s okay to do like a general check-in. Um, I would also say figuring out, like you were kind of just saying like what is sort of easy and natural for you within the financial realm and what is gonna require you to set aside some time and put some more intention behind it. Like I’ll say for example, at this point in my life, it’s like very habitual for me to like check in on my expenses, my spending, you know, keep on track, keep on top of those transactions. What’s been new for me recently is having to do a little bit more hands-on management of my investments because I opened a new type of account and I don’t quite know everything about that company and how their website works and what I can automate. So I need to, I literally did this today I need to like set aside some time just like do some actions and also learn how to automate those things in the future. And it’s not something that’s top of mind, so I have to like put it in my schedule just to make sure it gets done because I can’t leave those things, you know, un uh, untended to forever and ever.

Kate (15:43): Yes, of course. Absolutely. I, I feel that, and that also makes me think of something else that, you know, for me when I think of like ways that things may align with our approach to productivity and finances and personal finances is like outsourcing and having folks who can help you or automation programs that can help with that to sort of lighten that load. Of course, like different types of outsourcing are going to cost different things and they’re an investment. But that’s something certainly in terms of like, what can you streamline or like, are there folks you can go to who can provide you with information that will ultimately save you time and not needing to self-teach how to do it? That also comes to my mind and that’s something I’ve done before working with, you know, hiring professionals to help me learn how to do x, y or Z or like having an accountant do my taxes instead of even trying to do it myself. Right. Like, so that comes to mind in terms of outsourcing, which I imagine is super like also happens in financial world too.

Emily (16:43): Absolutely. And I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m not gonna remember all of these, uh, points to this like acronym, but with any sort of task that comes across your plate, you can either like do it, delegate it, discard it, like there, you know, a limited set of things that can happen like for something that comes to you and within your finances. Like you gotta be careful because there are certain things that you should not delegate. Like you do really need to be intimately connected in some areas of your finances, but others, like you said, preparing the tax return, you can totally delegate that to someone else. You should take a look at it once it’s done, make sure it seems okay. But the actual process is totally fine to delegate and on a budget, you know, that’s using free tax software, that’s using very low cost tax software that can be totally adequate as long as you’re, you know, comfortable with the interface and so forth. Um, I, a lot of people feel differently about this, but I just mentioned, you know, tracking finances, tracking transactions, I like to do that manually, but I also have a tool that helps me with it. So like I use Empower, which is kinda like a dashboard. It like brings all my uh, different accounts together into one place. So I have one place that I log in and sort of check on everything and some people might even be more hands off and they don’t need to even log in that often or check that often. I like to be a little more hands on, but that’s kind of like a personal choice as to how, what’s gonna work best for you in terms of ultimately making decisions about your money. ’cause that’s what it kind of comes back to is what decisions are you gonna make and are you prepared with the information that you need to make those decisions well and that amount of information’s gonna be different for different people.

Kate (18:07): Yes, absolutely. I mean I still, I, I use QuickBooks but I also have my like tried and true Excel file that I’ve been using for like eight years that I update individually. Right. So I think there’s like different ways that I can do that in like a low tech way and also like a high tech like legit way. Um, and that works well for me ’cause I get to feel like I have, you know, I’m really engaged and I know what, what my numbers are and things like that.

Emily (18:33): Yeah, and this also goes back to our previous point about like that finding that rhythm of if you are gonna do something like manual tracking, manual updates like once a week, once a month, whatever it is, like schedule it and, and find the best time because you know, maybe late at night <laugh>, like when you’re sleep deprived, it’s not the best time to be looking uh, at your accounts. Like you need to find for your, uh, chronotype or whatnot when you’re most, um, open <laugh> to looking your finances and making decisions about that. So what is another idea that you had about some crossover here?

Kate (19:01): Another idea I had about this was thinking of like trending in the right direction. So for productivity, often I hear folks who are like, I’m going to write my dissertation every day. I’m going to go to the gym three times every week, or I’m going to do like X all the time. And then when they don’t do that, there’s this feeling of failure, this feeling of like, oh, why should I even try? I am not never going to get where I want to get. So in a a productivity lens, we would think of like, you’re trending in the direction that you would want to go. So even if you don’t do something every day, you’re still, you know, developing a habit, you’re still chipping away at it. Some is better than none. And that’s something that I like certainly see being a successful way that folks can reframe their approach to their productivity and, you know, feel better about making progress even if it’s not some idealized magical way that you know, where every, all the planets align and you always have energy and nothing goes wrong, right? So trending in a the right direction you want to go is something that I think probably has a crossover as well with finances.

Emily (20:07): Oh my goodness, very, very good point. Um, sort of like what you’re just saying, like I think the phrase I’ve heard from other people in the space is like, start where you are. Okay, let’s take a, let’s assess where we are and take a small step as you were just saying, in the direction that you wanna go. But if you are gonna like do a whole schedule makeover or a whole budget makeover and think that you’re gonna be an entirely different person being able to adhere to this new plan, uh, it’s just not realistic. And especially if that causes you to feel discouraged and go back to you know, where you started from or even like regress from that point, like that is not helpful <laugh>. So let’s take like one thing at a time and move in the right direction Absolutely. Within your finances that could be like, oh my gosh, you know, you realize you’re, you’re kind of overspending and maybe you’re going into debt or you’d, you’d rather save more or whatever and you know you’re gonna be frugal in every single area of your life you possibly can. And um, it’s just, it’s just not realistic. It’s not gonna happen. So let’s, like this was actually some fun experiments I did back when I was blogging. Let’s take like one frugal tip at a time, try it out, uh, I would say maybe for 30 days and just see what kind of time and energy did you put into it? What kind of money was actually saved for, or you know, reduction in spending from it and weigh those against each other. Was it worth it or not? And then I like that to find period of time because you have that natural reevaluation point and you can really say, okay, I’m, I’m not just gonna automatically continue this forever, I’m gonna make sure that it’s actually working in my life. And then you can eventually layer on the ones that work for you, but give it time and give it space, you know, for it to become a habit. I’ll actually tell you within, ’cause you mentioned, you know, going to the gym three times a week, uh, I am gonna the gym three times a week and I was not doing that a year ago when I joined this gym and I, I gave myself some space, like I gave myself some time to figure out if it was the right place for me, if I really enjoyed it, how could I fit into my schedule. And gradually over the course of the year, I’ve gotten up to that frequency and that might seem like a long time, but uh, I’m really happy with it now and I’m okay that it took that time because I, I got to the point that I wanted to be with it, you know?

Kate (22:09): Yes. That’s a congratulations. That’s amazing. And it like if it took a year, that’s fine. That’s like the perfect amount of time for it. That makes me think too as well, like something for productivity and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts of how this works in the finance world, but like something like developing a new habit, going to the gym or let’s say for productivity like writing or you know, like applying for jobs or whatever it might be, setting up the external accountability, whether that’s through coworking or body doubling. So I was thinking like, oh maybe you have a gym buddy or you tell your partner, I’m gonna go to the gym. So then your partner can say, Hey did you go, that’s like such a helpful thing in productivity worlds so you can have more, um, more potential to show up and do the thing because you have that external accountability. Is that something, are there like ways that like in the finance world there’s like coworking or like scheduled things that cut- with others, like I’m curious to hear what you think.

Emily (23:04): I would love it if that were a thing and I’m not very connected to social media right now so it’s possible there are things like that going on that I’m not aware of. But no, I do think there’s, you know, that taboo around talking around about finances is in play here. And so if people find accountability partners in this area, I’m suspecting they’re gonna be like their spouse, their sibling, their best friend. Like it’s gonna be someone very close or like a mentor, you know, someone very close to them already. I don’t necessarily think this is something you’re gonna find a casual acquaintance who’s willing to do this with you <laugh>.

Kate (23:37): Yeah.

Emily (23:37): But I’m just thinking that there are probably some like sub areas like doing things that help with your finances, but the focus isn’t on finances, it’s on the doing of the other thing. So I’m thinking of meal prep for example. That is something that you could probably find a community that’s supporting you in that maybe do even doing some body doubling, you know, body doubling like Sunday prep day or whatever they call it. Um, and that’s gonna have a major impact on your finances, but you don’t have to approach it with like, yeah, that’s the reason I’m doing this and let’s talk about how much money we’re, you know, not spending on other things. It’s more just like let’s do this action together and whatever positive effects it has are sort of outside of that. So I could definitely see that happening. But yeah, it’s probably, if you’re talking money, it’s probably gonna be with someone really, really close to you.

Kate (24:18): Yeah, And I probably with productivity as well, like there are like platforms where you could like do coworking with like a random person who you’re paired with like from all over the world, right? But also often things happen with folks who you know, um, but yeah. Okay, cool. Body doubling effective for productivity can be effective in ways for finance as well.

Emily (24:39): Yeah, if you can find the right pers-, the right person, yeah. To be part- with it.

Commercial

Emily (24:45): 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.

Spoon Theory and Personal Finances

Kate (25:38): Now one thing, another thing that I thought of is, I mentioned personal resources earlier. So we were thinking around like everyone has their individual experience with their time and their energy and their focus. I’m also really invested in my approach to productivity working with folks who have chronic health conditions or chronic illness, chronic fatigue, long covid. And I’m thinking there around this term called spoon theory, which for folks who haven’t heard of this, um, this was coined by Christine Miserandino and the concept is that you, if you do live with a chronic health condition, you have a limited amount of energy to expend each day. So she used the metaphor of spoons saying like, you only have a certain amount of spoons that you can exchange. She said that ’cause she was out to dinner with her friend. So spoons were readily available, but really with spoon theory we’re thinking that you have a limited amount of energy units you can expend. It changes day to day. If you’re having a chronic health flare, you might have three spoons and you have to decide does one go towards a shower, one goes towards work and one goes towards, I don’t know, like warming up leftovers to eat right? And like some days you might have 10 and the concept here is that it’s a way to um, communicate with others like others who are close to you around your ability to do certain things, but also as a way that you can think of what is truly going to be accessible to you. So in in the productivity realm, I often encourage folks to think about like what is the type of day that you are having? Is this a very high focus day or is this a day where you have a migraine? How might you approach your product different productivity differently to make it more accessible? So you will like first and foremost take care of yourself but also you know, progress on your productivity in a way that feels actionable and achievable. So spoon theory can be a helpful thing when we’re thinking around what do I act-? What can I actually do for my to-do list today that’s going to be accessible and help me to move forward on my goals. So I’m curious like what comes to your mind when you think around like having to adjust your approach to, you know, your finances dependent on like if you, your health is shifting or you have much lower energy or you’re sick or things like that.

Emily (27:50): Hmm. Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say decide what are the real essentials within your financial life and what is an extra. So like I mentioned earlier, I love manual tracking. That’s an extra, I don’t need to do that at this point. It’s something I enjoy doing to a degree, but it’s not absolutely something that needs to happen. Now do my credit cards need to get paid off every month? Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that needs to happen <laugh>. So, but what I would do is I would automate as much as possible something like a credit card payment. It’s on auto. I’m never gonna forget or fail to follow through on that. So like I think it would be about like setting yourself up for those periods that you know are coming when you’re going to have fewer spoons and understanding like what is absolute baseline things that have to happen and automating as many of those things as possible and also having a really realistic sense of how much time or energy certain actions take. So like, um, I actually had a period in my life it was around, um, two years ago when I couldn’t do my manual tracking for a long period of time. I had, it was a sandwich generation situation that ultimately resulted in a death in the family and it was a difficult time and that was something that I could drop. Okay. I’d love to hear a little bit more about like your personal finance, your personal story and how finishing graduate school and becoming a business owner has actually affected your personal finances.

The Impact of Grad School and Business Ownership on Finances

Kate (29:17): Yes, totally. So I feel like I am lucky. Like I, my dad before he retired, um, ran his own autobody mechanic shop. So he was self-employed and I had this model of someone being successfully self-employed from when I was literally born. So that, like when I started a business, I of course didn’t know like everything that I would need to do do, but I at least knew like, yes, this is an accessible thing, this is something I could do and I can try. And I felt really proud to do that. And I also, when I started my business, reached out to folks, like hired a business coach to be like, what do I need to, what do I even need to know how to do? Do I need a business bank account? I really didn’t have the literacy for what you needed to do. So I learned like what’s a sole proprietor? Do I want an LLC? Just really was a beginner to learn that sort of stuff. Um, and I also was a little stressed to immediately, you know, like after my six month grace period to go into paying student loans and I have a lot of student loans. I did undergrad and then I did 10 years of graduate school, two master’s and a PhD. So that was also a real shift for me after having been in grad school for forever and not having had to pay student loans. Um, which I’ll say something about later when I share a tip. But, so my experience in my business was I need to learn like what are the things I need to know how to do to start a business and how do I navigate shifting to pay student loans? And um, also, you know, how do I sort of grow my income when I’m a bit of a newbie? So I, the first couple of years of my business I had part-time jobs as well. I worked as a tutor, I worked as a writing consultant and I did these things so that I could earn income while I was developing my books. So my personal finance experience when I started a business was that when I had been setting things up intentionally just to launch the business and to have the website and things like that, um, I still needed to be procuring that external income for a few years before I could shift to just fully earning income from my business. So that was a shift in my experience with personal finance as well. And I think from the outside perhaps people didn’t know that from the outside folks might just be like, wow, Kate’s thriving as a coach and realistically like I was working part-time as well to sustain that. So that certainly affected my personal finances behind the scene while I was developed starting to develop my business.

Emily (31:52): Yeah, I’m so glad you share that. That’s an excellent example of the runway that I was talking about earlier. So you gave yourself runway before launching the business if it, you know, in in the new way of like taking in revenue and so forth. And then you also had runway after that of like, okay, revenue’s coming up over here, but while it’s coming up I still need <laugh> some income coming in from another source. And I did the exact same thing. I worked like freelance, you know, part-time for several years after I started my business and eventually I got to drop it and that’s great. But like I was glad that it was, you know, there for me when I needed it. How have you been doing with um, I guess, you know, keeping your health in mind and of course the subject matter that you like coach in, but how do you apply that to yourself in your business?

Building a Business and Prioritizing Well-Being

Kate (32:34): Certainly. I was actually just talking to my own business coach the other day about this and we were talking about the metaphor of like, I’m sure you’ve heard of this, everyone’s heard of this, but like you have your jar with the largest rocks in the bottom and you put those in first so the pebbles can fall in the sand. And like thinking around like it’s really important for me to like approach my business where the first thing I’m thinking about is my own health. So when am I available to book coaching client calls? Like how many calls can I book in a day? What days do I need to have off in case I have to have doctor’s appointments? And really approaching my business with that stuff has to be the, that has to happen first or else I’m not going to be able to show up for my business. Um, so that’s something I certainly think about and I limit the amount of clients that I can work with and I also regularly schedule to take time off. Like if I know that there’s gonna be a busy season and I’m gonna need long weekends or need to take, you know, a whole week off or something like that, scheduling that in which I’m able to do because I have a service-based, you know, business. Um, so I’m certainly approaching it in that way. And also, you know, many of my clients, almost all of my clients have some sort of similar experience. Either they’re working parents or they’re working full-time and going to grad school or they also have a chronic health condition. So I set up my business in a way that, you know, can make things accessible to them as well. Like, so I’m thinking about that in terms of my availability.

Emily (34:02): I think one of the issues I know that I dealt with, I’ve talked with other academic business owners about this, um, that I dealt with, especially like in the first few years of my business coming out of graduate school was, um, setting pricing. Because you might think if you’ve never run your own business that you can bill 40 hours a week and just whatever you wanna make, divide it by 40 and 50 weeks a year and whatever it is and that’s gonna be your rate and it’s just so not that way <laugh>. Um, and so if you’re willing to, would you like to talk a little bit about like how you make that balance with your time but also make those pricing decisions, you know, again, keeping your clients in mind?

Kate (34:41): Yes, certainly. I’m, so this is like an excellent question. I’m so glad you asked this. I love talking about this stuff. So as a business owner, like once I started my business, I like it totally changed my mind in terms of like the folks that I work with where I’m like, oh, these people are really only making like 60% of what I, they’re billing me ’cause they have taxes, they have overhead, right? So that’s a little side note where I’m like often thinking about that now. So when I approach coaching, right, like I’m thinking of my pricing not just for the hour that or the two hours or whatever the thing is, but also like what is the extra labor that goes into this? So I think something I do that not all coaches do is I create really elaborate detailed notes for my clients and that’s something that’s going to take me up to an hour to do. So when I’m like scheduling out my day and making myself available to clients, I also have to know like that’s an extra hour where I’m gonna be looking at a screen and how many hours a day can I truly look at a screen? And so I’m thinking about like what I would call this like behind the scenes labor or this invisible labor that we might not think about when we are doing something like just scheduling for a one hour call. So I’m thinking about that in terms of how I approach my prices. Certainly that’s one thing that comes to my mind. I’m curious if there, there are other things that come to your mind as well.

Emily (35:59): Well I was just thinking that it probably was a great thing to have your parent as a business owner and being able to see how much work goes into running business aside from just the time you put into specifically the service that you’re performing if it’s a service-based business. Um, do you have any comments around like specifically like graduate students or people coming out of academia or generally being anchored at like sort of undervaluing themselves in this thing, in this, you know, um, consideration of how much to charge because it’s something that can come up for everyone at some point. Like whatever type of job you take, whether it’s in academia or later, like you’re gonna have to value your time and yourself and your skills in some manner and like, it’s just so difficult when you’ve been underpaid for a decade or more. <laugh>.

Charging For Your Services as a Business Owner

Kate (36:46): Oh my gosh, certainly. And I also think this as well, like when folks are starting a business, I know at least for me, when I started my business, my coaching calls were like $30 to $60 sliding scale an hour, right? And they’ve certainly increased since then over the years. So that’s something I think as well that like when folks are starting out, if the it is like, yes, you wanna get testimonials or you wanna build your books or you wanna get recc- yeah the recommendations or network like having a lower rate, you know, but then shifting to raise that and like I’ve raised my rates every year that I’ve been in my business. Um, certainly thinking about that and valuing that labor. And also I know for me, like there are truly, and this is one of the reasons I started a business, I cannot have a 40 hour a week full-time job because of my chronic health conditions. So I truly only have x number of hours a week that I can put towards my business and I need to make x amount of money in order to thrive. So like that affects my what I’m charging and like that affects my rates as well. Um, and that’s also something I think about in terms of sliding scale as well, like offering sliding scale. When I do that, knowing for me like what, like how many sliding scale spots I might have available or like what is the lower level that I can do in a way that’s not going to overtax me as well. Um, so that is something that I have in mind and like I encourage folks to, to think about as well, like how they can meet their enough number, how they can meet a number that can help them to thrive.

Emily (38:16): Yeah, it’s interesting like, because both of us are service-based business owners and we’re also have to apply our area of practice to our own lives and businesses like we think about a little bit differently. ’cause I don’t think as much about how many hours per week I work, I think more about how much money am I making <laugh>, you know, because, and I have that like bias, right? Because of my subject matter. So that’s really interesting. Let’s take a minute here and just have you tell the listeners a little bit more about your, your business, what you actually do with clients and how they can get in touch with you.

Contact Dr. Kate Henry, Productivity Coach

Kate (38:47): Yeah, of course. So I’m a productivity coach, I work with academics and my main offering is a six month productivity coaching offer. I call it, um, success and accountability coaching. And I actually created it because it’s what I wanted when I was doing my dissertation. I couldn’t find anyone doing it. And it’s a really hands-on coaching approach where we meet every other week, I take really detailed coaching session notes and share them with you and then we’re in conversation between calls. So it really helps to break down the goals, the projects that you’re working on. And I work with folks on dissertations promotion and tenure materials, book proposals, book manuscripts, things like that. So I only work with a, as this fits with our conversation today, I can only work with a small handful of folks at a time because of the time and energy and effort I put into that. So you can learn more about success and accountability coaching on my website, it’s katehenry.com, easy to remember. And I also have a free newsletter and a ton of free resources because I spent those two years blocking and I have that at katehenry.substack.com.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (39:54): Well that is so great to hear and it’s just lovely to hear your approach to everything. Let’s end with the question that I ask all my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it can be something that we touched on early in the interview, I think you gave us a teaser or it can be something completely new.

Kate (40:12): Yes. So I’m thinking with this, like what I wish I had known when I was starting my PhD. That’s what I, I thought of with this was like, I wish that- I did not have financial literacy and I did not understand how things worked. I did not understand credit cards, I did not understand student loans. I did not understand how to buy a car. And um, I really do like now me wishes that back then me had like even gone to this, the financial aid office on campus and been like, can you under-, can you explain to me how student loans work? Like I wish I had known that I could have paid my student loan interest while I was still in graduate school and like things that would have really shifted that experience for me that I’m dealing with now with paying off loans. Um, so that’s something that comes to my mind is really just like, how can you access other folks who can help to inform you of things that will set you up for success, whether that is with loans or whether that’s with retirement or interest or how those things work. Um, and yeah, I feel like that all-, that’s what I did when I finished my PhD and I started my business as well, reaching out to folks and sort of, um, going towards experts who could help me to streamline and teach me things that I didn’t know on my own.

Emily (41:26): And this is not a criticism of you because I think this is absolutely natural what you did, but when you were in graduate school, those on campus resources were free for you. They were included in the whole package that was going on. And if you had asked those questions to financial aid or financial wellness or whatever it’s called on your campus, maybe you could have taken some different steps and maybe you could have, you know, learned more along the way and not have to have paid the higher price that comes, you know, in your thirties, et cetera. Uh, once you have the, the big job and, and so forth for, you know, similar kinds of advice or education or content, right? So like it’s like with compound interest, like that early investment just keeps compounding and growing and uh, if you don’t do it early, then you gotta do more later, right? So I am really glad you shared that. Again, not a criticism because I think it’s pretty much what everybody does <laugh>, but, uh, I will say that I have had the opportunity to meet many, many people who work, um, in financial aid offices in similar kinds of roles where they help students with their finances and they are lovely. Everyone I’ve met has been wonderful and approachable and just eager, eager, eager to help. Um, even in areas that seem a little bit off of maybe what they normally do. So like you could walk into financial aid and ask a question that’s not precisely about financial aid and they, they’ll either help you or they’ll point you in a direction where you can get help from someone else. Um, and you know, the more you ask those questions, the more these people on campuses realize that graduate students and postdocs need this kind of support as well, which of course is the drum that I’ve been banging for many years now. So it’s all helpful to our community just to get more attention on making those early educational investments that turn into financial investments, um, you know, early, early on in our career. So thank you so much for, um, that advice and it’s been wonderful to speak with you and I’m really looking forward to listeners getting to hear this.

Kate (43:16): Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me on.

Outtro

Emily (43:31): 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: 2024 Edition

December 16, 2024 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

Emily published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 223rd episode, and over the last six and a half years, the podcast has featured over 300 unique voices in addition to my own. For our last episode in 2024, we are catching up with the guests from Seasons 12 through 14, 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

  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Excel Spending Tracker
  • PF for PhD Website
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • Sam Hogan (from PhD Home Loans): Season 2, Episode 5; Season 5, Episode 17; Season 8, Episode 4; Season 13, Episode 1
  • Dr. Tina Del Carpio: Season 6, Episode 10
  • Dr. Gertrude Nonterah (from The Bold PhD): Season 8, Episode 6
  • Dr. Alana Rister (from Science Grad School Coach): Season 10, Episode 4
  • Dr. Jay Zigmont (from Child Free Wealth): Season 12, Episode 1
  • Dr. Inga Timmerman (from Attainable Wealth Financial Planning): Season 12, Episode 3
  • Dr. Haley Sanderson: Season 12, Episode 4
  • Brittany Trinh (from Beyond Your Science Podcast): Season 14, Episode 4
  • Host a PF for PhDs Tax Seminar at Your Institution
Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2024 Edition

Teaser

Jay Z (00:00): What do I do if the path I’ve bet on, the money disappears? It’s just one of those things you gotta think about in which probably nobody wants to think about and that’s a reality check.

Introduction

Emily (00:16): 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 (00:47): This is Season 19, Episode 9, and today I am featuring many guest voices! I published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 223rd episode, and over the last six and a half years, the podcast has featured over 300 unique voices in addition to my own. For our last episode in 2024, we are catching up with the guests from Seasons 12 through 14, 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. You are going to hear a common theme throughout many of today’s audio segments. The audio clips in this episode are ordered by when the original episode was published. If you’d like to circle back and listen to any of the previous interviews, you can do so in your podcatcher app or at my website, PFforPhDs.com/podcast. To keep up with future episodes, please hit subscribe on that podcatcher and/or join my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice. You’ll hear an update from me first, followed by the rest of the guests. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e9/. Happy listening, happy holidays, and happy new year! See you in 2025!

Dr. Emily Roberts

Emily (02:23): 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! My update last year at this time was a bit of a downer, and I’m pleased to report we’ve had a much better year overall in 2024. Some personal highlights from this year included: living and working from my parents’ house for a month over the summer and meeting my new nephew, vacationing in Hawaii for the first time, attending Family Camp in Sequoia National Park for the third time, camping with my daughter’s Girl Scout troop several times, including a Roar & Snore at the San Diego Zoo, seeing Hamilton in Los Angeles, and becoming a regular at Orange Theory Fitness. My husband and I also purchased our very first new car, an electric vehicle, and are enjoying having two cars at our family’s disposal. My daughters are doing really well in school and having fun in their extracurriculars. We’ve continued our family traditions of reading together—I’ve read 61 books so far this year—and playing strategy board games like Dominion and Ticket to Ride. Despite some personal health challenges, it’s been a great year.

Emily (03:40): As for Personal Finance for PhDs the business, I’m really pleased with how the year evolved. Over the summer, I revamped all of my live seminars to be true workshops, and my clients and audiences have responded quite positively. I believe this teaching style is more effective than my previous one, and the template spreadsheets and worksheets that I provide have been appreciated. My clients are also getting back to hosting me in person more so than in previous years, which is my preference by far. In 2024, I delivered workshops in person at Yale University, the University of California at Los Angeles, The Scripps Research Institute, the University of California at San Diego, Michigan State University, and Boston University, and all the engagements were delightful. I also attended two conferences, the Graduate Career Consortium in Philadelphia and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Summit in Pittsburgh. The business revenue and my income are up over 2023’s numbers, though I’m still gunning to get back to where they were in 2022. In 2024, my family has made great use of the manual expense tracker that I mentioned in last year’s update, which incorporates some of the principles I teach in my workshops. If you’d like to download the tracker, please register for the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list through PFforPhDs.com/tracker/. 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].

Sam Hogan

Sam H (05:18): Hello, this is Sam Hogan. I’m the mortgage originator who specialize in graduate students and PhDs and Emily’s brother. I’ve given interviews on the podcast about various aspects of mortgage and home ownership for graduate students and PhDs in multiple seasons. Season two, episode five, season five, episode 17, season eight, episode four, and season 13, episode one. In 2024, I switched employers and I’m now with truist Bank. This has been exciting because truist offers a non repayable grant for down payment or closing cost assistance to low income borrowers in certain states that graduate students are perfect for. I’m currently exploring with them the possibility of extending doctor mortgages to PhDs as well as MDs. You can find more information about this in my mailing list or on Emily’s YouTube channel. In 2024. I also attended the National Post-Doctoral Association annual conference, which was great fun, and I plan to go back in 2025. If you happen to be there, please stop by my booth and say hi. On a personal note, 2024 has been incredible because my fiance and I had our first child, a healthy little boy named Grant. If you’d like to learn more about mortgages that I offer or have a question about the lending process, you can call or text me at (540) 478-5803 or email me at [email protected]. If you’d like to download a free PhD friendly mortgage guide that I wrote, you can find it on my website, PhDhomeloans.com. Rates are expected to keep coming down through 2026, so this is a great time to get in touch.

Dr. Tina Del Carpio

Tina DC (06:57): Hi, my name is Tina Del Carpio. I was a guest on season six, episode 10 talking about figuring out my life after a broken engagement in Los Angeles. I’m happy to report that last December in 2023, I finished my PhD and I started a job as a data analyst for the state, and I’m really happy with my job and with where I’m at. Um, the pay is not as good as it could be an industry, but I work fully remotely and that’s such a huge benefit to me. Um, the more important life update is that this past November I got married to my partner Tess and I still live in Los Angeles, but now with Tess and our three cats, Tuka, Gem, and Goose. So all is well here.

Dr. Gertrude Nonterah

Gertrude N (08:00): Hello Emily and the personal finance for PhD’s podcast team. And thank you for giving me this opportunity. My name is Gertrude Nonterah and I run theboldphd.com. I was interviewed, um, on this podcast in February of 2021. It was episode six, season eight, I believe, season eight, episode six, and we talked about personal branding and how to use that to land a job and also build a business as a PhD or academic. And since then I have continued to talk about personal branding and have the opportunity to speak at over 20 universities in different countries on the topics of personal branding, career change, and also my own career within medical communications and the biotech space. My best financial advice for early career PhDs is to really begin to think about investments early on, right? I am in my early forties. I turned 41 this year and a part of me wishes I knew what I knew now about investing when I was in graduate school because it’s only recently in the past, let’s say five years, that it has occurred to me that in graduate school I could have been putting away $20 here and $10 there and I could have actually started building investments at that time. Instead, I started in my thirties, which was later than I hoped, but it’s still better to start than never to start, right? And so if you are starting out your career, use your career as a launchpad to start funding investments. Learn about the different investments that are out there and how you can get started with them. You know, do your due diligence and start building wealth because it’s going to compound over time and every year you don’t invest, you are losing money, but every year you do invest, you are compounding it and, and that’s what’s exciting about investing. So that would be my best piece of advice for early career PhDs. If you wanna find me, you can go to my website, it’s theboldphd.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Gertrude Nonterah PhD.

Dr. Alana Rister

Alana R (10:19): Hi, I’m Alana Rister and I was on personal finance for PhDs Season 10, episode four. I am the founder of science grad school coach and when I was on the podcast, I talked about how I had worked through grad school in order to pay off about $13,000 of student loan debt from my undergraduate loans. Since then, I have become a full-time data scientist in a Fortune 500 company and I have been able to actually pay off an additional $40,000 of my undergraduate student loan debt. At this point, with my current plan, I’m about one year from actually having all of my student loan debt paid off, and when I graduated, I graduated with about $70,000 of student loan debt. My best financial advice moving forward, especially from the experiences that I’ve had since um, graduating grad school, is while you’re in grad school, start thinking about retirement, especially if you’re in the US and think about the different accounts that you might want to work with. Then when you’re in grad school, you typically have a lower income. So if you have any bandwidth within your income to set aside for retirement, you’re going to have, um, certain tax advantaged accounts in the US that you might not be able to fully use whenever you are fully fledged into a job, um, your income might be too high. So I really wish I would’ve taken more advantage of retirement and wouldn’t have that stress on my income now. Um, looking forward to trying to retire within the US at least. If you’re interested to find me, you can look at my YouTube channel @scigradcoach. Thanks again for having me and letting me share my update.

Dr. Jay Zigmont

Jay Z (12:22): Hi, I am Jay Zigmont. I am the founder and CEO of Child Free Wealth, a financial planning firm dedicated to serving child free childless folks. My PhD is in adult learning from the University of Connecticut and I joined the podcast on, let’s see, season 12, episode one. It talked about the garden and the rose and how do dual career couples, figure out the balance between the trailing spouse in the other job and the balance between those two. In the time since then, uh, as any good PhD, I spent the time doing a lot of research and writing. Uh, really excited. At the end of this year, I have a new book coming out, the Child Free Guide to Life and Money. It’s been interesting working with publishers and working through the process and it’s gotten super interesting because of politics. Let’s be real this year, been a lot of discussion about the childless cat ladies and the good, bad and ugly goes there. Uh, it it’s, it’s one of those things when you’re writing about a topic and you’re like, Hey, I can help a lot of people, but you’re not always ready for the politics, the judgments, the social media. I dunno, I’m learning all that. I think my big advice because of the season we’re in right now for PhDs is you need to think about a backup plan if you’re funding goes away. And that sounds a, I mean that’s always been the case. What happens to grant money? But right now when we’re talking about federal funding or departments possibly not existing and the changes, it’s tough. You know, my wife and I have had to have this discussion ’cause her work is in food insecurity and, uh, all of it’s federally funded or most of it is, and it’s one of those things like, oh, what do I do if the path I’ve bet on the money disappears. Luckily for us as a couple, we’re at a good financial place. We don’t have any debt, you know, we’ve got a emergency savings, we can do different things, but it’s just one of those things you gotta think about in which probably nobody wants to think about, but it’s a reality check. You can find me online, childfreewealth.com. You can buy the book anywhere you like. Uh, always love go to independent bookstores and on all the socials at @ChildFreeWealth.

Dr. Inga Timmerman

Inga T (14:46): Hello professors and new PhDs. My name is Inga Timmerman and I was in season 12, episode three. I’m a financial planner who works exclusively with other academics and I’m also an academic. And the best advice I have for new PhDs and this advice has changed since the last time I talked to Emily is that instead of focusing on long-term financials, focus on the intermediate term. Plan your life in the two to five year increments rather than what’s going to happen 20 years down the um, road. What I’ve noticed more and more in the last few years is that professors no longer stay in the same academic job for for the entire career. They move a lot more, they quit academia a lot more. So focusing on the best financial decision for the next two to five years ends up being better long term than trying to guess where you’re going to be in 20 years. The newest thing I have is, um, a brand new podcast for academics is going to come in January, 2025, it’s going to be called Academics and Their Money. And I hope to have all of you as my listeners. If you need any more financial advice, please visit my website at attainablewealthfp.com.

Dr. Haley Sanderson

Haley S (16:01): Hi, I am Dr. Haley Sanderson from episode four, season 12. I’ve been pretty busy since my episode was taped. I finished my two year postdoc at the Vaccine Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan. At that point, I reached the five year limit for postdocs, but before my contract ended, I landed a permanent job as a bioinformatics programmer at agriculture in AgriFood Canada. So I finished my postdoc and then two weeks later I started a job with the federal government. Um, and that job pretty much doubled my salary. I also had my own BioMAT bioinformatics freelance business for about a year. Uh, my mental health has also improved steadily over the years and I haven’t had a major psychotic episode in years and I’m just a lot happier now. Um, right now I’m working on training for promotion at work, um, enjoying the stability that the job I have now provides and saving to buy a condo close to my family. My best financial advice for early career PhDs is to avoid staying in academia for too long and maybe even avoiding postdocs altogether unless you’re learning a new skill that’s transferable to other sectors. Um, try to avoid getting stuck in the academic job market because you can be successful in a lot of different places and always look for how your skills can be used and how they can be more valuable elsewhere. Uh, thanks. Bye.

Brittany Trinh

Brittany T (17:51): Hi everyone, my name is Brittany Trinh and I am the host of the Beyond Your Science podcast. I was previously on PF for PhDs, um, in season 14, episode four where I talked about deferring my graduate school acceptance to work on my finances. Since the last episode, I have now started my own podcast called The Beyond Your Science Podcast, where I talk about science, creativity, and entrepreneurship and what that looks like for people in stem. I also used to work with clients one-on-one and provided workshops on website design, but since then I have shifted away from that model and started working, um, more on the backend side of things where I am collaborating with Jennifer van Alstyne of the academic designer in team VIP days. And in a team VIP day, um, we work together to design a website in one day. In my episode, I shared some advice about using your skills to create extra income and I still stand by that. Um, so an a new piece of advice that I’d like to share is to make sure that, um, when you transfer your 401k from a previous employer, um, is number one, to not avoid it, uh, just call the company and they will help you transfer it into a Vanguard account. And number two is once it does hit your Vanguard account, um, make sure that it is sitting in an actual mutual fund or ETF and being invested and not just sitting in a money market fund. And I’m sharing this advice because this is something that happened to me recently. I was pretty avoidant about calling the, um, 401k company, but it was only like a 30 minute call. And then, um, when I finally did get it transferred over, I assumed it would just be transferred into a mutual fund. And I didn’t really know how the Vanguard website worked until recently and I have now learned that my funds were not being invested anywhere. Um, but you know what we learned from the experience and now I’m sharing that with you all. Um, so that hopefully you don’t make the same mistake. If you would like to connect with me, you can find me on LinkedIn at Brittany Trinh, that’s T-R-I-N-H or on my website brittanytrinh.com for more info about my podcast Beyond your Science and other website Design Tips.

Outtro

Emily (20:35): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

This Former Prof Found True Flexibility and Profitability in Her Academic Editing Business

December 2, 2024 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Paulina Cossette, a former professor and the owner of Acadia Editing. Paulina followed the prescribed academic path, but found herself profoundly unhappy in her faculty position. After leaving academia, Paulina stumbled into academic editing and eventually started working under her own brand. As a business owner, Paulina earns more, works less, and has true flexibility, which has enabled her to design her lifestyle in a way that was not possible within academia.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Host a PF for PhDs Tax Workshop at Your Institution
  • Dr. Paulina Cossette’s Instagram
  • Dr. Paulina Cossette’s Facebook
  • Dr. Paulina Cossette’s LinkedIn
  • Dr. Paulina Cossette’s Academic Editing Website
  • Dr. Paulina Cossette’s Free Video Series on Becoming an Academic Editor
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
This Former Prof Found True Flexibility and Profitability in Her Academic Editing Business

Teaser

Paulina (00:00): The system makes it unsustainable, particularly if you have kids, though, not exclusively. Um, and so I think I just reached a breaking point, you know, and, and it really wasn’t planned.

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 19, Episode 8, and today my guest is Dr. Paulina Cossette, a former professor and the owner of Acadia Editing. Paulina followed the prescribed academic path, but found herself profoundly unhappy in her faculty position. After leaving academia, Paulina stumbled into academic editing and eventually started working under her own brand. As a business owner, Paulina earns more, works less, and has true flexibility, which has enabled her to design her lifestyle in a way that was not possible within academia. 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/s19e8/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Paulina Cossette.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:15): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Paulina Cossette, who is a former professor and currently has a business called Acadia Editing Services. I’m really excited to learn about her business journey, her exit from academia, all that kind of related stuff. And so, Paulina, welcome to the podcast, and will you please introduce yourself to the audience a little bit further?

Paulina (02:36): Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Emily. Um, so I used to be a political science professor. Um, I was in academia for about 12 years, uh, and in 2019, um, I had a 1-year-old child and I was just sort of, uh, very overwhelmed, um, and getting fed up with the lifestyle of academia, having to work seven days a week, you know, just facing that burnout, especially having just had a baby. Um, and so I decided to quit and we moved aco- across the country to live in Maine near our family. And I sort of fell into copy editing. And, you know, long story short, uh, four or five years later, here I am, I have a successful editing business and I work from home for myself. Um, and life is good.

Emily (03:28): I love this concept. Okay. Are you familiar with Cal Newport?

Paulina (03:32): Yes.

Emily (03:33): Okay, so I’m gonna get his like, name of this wrong, but it’s like lifestyle centered career design, something like that. Have you heard him talk about this lifestyle centric career design? Something like that? Um, so that really sounds like, I mean, you said you fell into it, but it, I mean, it really sounds like that’s kinda what you were doing, right? You had built up career capital in academia and then said, Nope, my lifestyle is more important than this particular job, and so I’m gonna pivot and use this career capital in another area that supports how I want my full life to look like. Okay. So very, very great brief introduction, but let’s kind of dive, you know, more into this and sort of starting back from the beginning of the academic journey, like what led you into the career in academia in the first place?

Dr. Paulina Cossette’s Academic Journey

Paulina (04:17): So I, you know, I was always a good student. Um, I was a first generation college student, so I didn’t really have guidance on any of that other than my grandparents who were always saying, you have to go to college because that’s how you succeed. And I just, I liked school and I liked learning, so I just, I went to college, um, I kept, I just kept going and, you know, I started doing research, uh, as an undergrad and then went on to get a, the PhD program and I didn’t really have a plan, you know, I just sort of enjoyed being in school. And then once you get to graduate school, I think this is true for many people. Um, your advisors direct you towards academia and, you know, I was in political science, so there weren’t, there wasn’t any discussion of alternatives of industry or, you know, working in government or anything else. Uh, and I didn’t really know, uh, I didn’t know any other options. And, you know, they said, you apply to these schools and you get the tenure track job, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t like where you’re living, that’s just part of it, you know, you don’t have to stay there forever. And so I, I think like many people, I sort of fell into this funnel, you know, of like, this is, this is what you do, and I just did what I was told. And, um, it worked for a little while, but that was a recipe ultimately for disaster. So, um, so yeah, I, I loved school and I loved learning, but it was just sort of like, I, I just kept doing what I was supposed to do, uh, and ended up, you know, ended up there and not very happy.

Emily (05:56): Hmm. I wonder if I was on a track similar to this myself, um, up until the point in graduate school, um, when I discovered personal finance, actually. And that’s when I figured out like, oh, people have like all kinds of different jobs and businesses sometimes, and like some people work part-time and some people retire. And like all the, it’s just sort of opened my mind. And not that I was on necessarily an academic track, but certainly to stay in research, that was my intention. Um, so that is so interesting, and I totally, I totally understand how that would happen, but also good on you for being successful, even in something where you were like, I’m just following the prescribed path here. Um, but clearly it, it went well for you for a time at any rate. Right? And then you sort of, you know, briefly said earlier that the timing of you leaving your job was, you know, around when your child was very young. Is there anything else you wanna share about that decision to leave and like maybe what you thought you were jumping into next?

Paulina (06:52): Yeah, I think, um, it was a long time coming and I’m actually, I’m reading Annie Duke’s book Quit right now, where she talks about how we put off this decision to quit far longer than we should. Um, and it, it brings back a lot of memories. ‘Cause that was the exact situation that I was in, that I was so unhappy. And I thought, well, maybe it’s just the school I’m at. So I went on the job market and I changed schools, and I was, it was better, but I was still unhappy. It’s still, you know, and like I said, I I, I had my son. I was working seven days a week, and it was just, the system makes it unsustainable, um, particularly if you have kids, though not exclusively. Um, and so I think I just reached a breaking point, you know, and, and it really wasn’t planned. Um, my husband and I had talked for a long time about moving, um, his mom had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Uh, and so all of these factors were sort of playing on our minds until we finally reached this breaking point and said, you know, I said, I just can’t do this anymore. And it was the summer of 2019 and I resigned and we sold our house and we moved to Maine. And I had no idea what I was gonna do. I, you know, I thought I would go on the non-academic job market, trying to find something around here in Maine, which is not, you know, there aren’t a lot of options, um, trying to find remote positions. And I kept striking out, you know, people kept telling me I was overqualified or I wasn’t the right fit, or they decided not to hire anyone. Or like, it was, it was a really demoralizing experience, you know, feeling like, I have all this training and education, I’m smart, I’m hardworking, but nobody sees that, you know? And I think a lot of people go through that where they just don’t know how to translate the academic lingo into industry lingo, um, on a resume. And so I had just written a book and we had worked with a freelance copy editor in as part of the process of publishing it. And I thought, oh, well I could do that. I’m a really good writer. Everybody always tells me I’m, I’m a good writer, you know, I can edit. And so initially I thought it would be temporary, but I ended up loving it. And, you know, like you were saying about the lifestyle change, uh, this was shortly before Covid and then Covid happened and I thought, oh my God, I’m so glad I’m working from home. I’m so glad I didn’t take a job in an office. Um, ’cause especially with little kids, you know, I didn’t wanna be having to go off to work and then come home and potentially, you know, getting sick or something. So, um, yeah, so I really just fell into it, um, and ended up loving it, and everything has just grown from there.

Building an Academic Editing Business

Emily (09:45): Amazing story. And I, I mean, I think so many people in academia, whether that’s just as grad students or postdocs or whether that’s a career in the professorship type position after that can relate to this. I mean, there’s so many like academic exit stories like floating around in the last 10 years. Um, even on this podcast. It hasn’t been published at the time that we were recording this interview, but an upcoming episode is someone with a very similar story of having gotten that tenure track position and then just, it was not the right fit and ended up quitting, moving across the country, you know, familial reasons in the mix, kids in the mix, all that stuff, not surprisingly another woman. Um, so there’ll be echoes of that same like, motivation, um, between these two interviews as well. Um, and so I’m so glad that you found something that you loved, but it, it, it does sound like you are casting around and applying for different things and trying different things and, um, not sitting stagnant, but really like pursuing some different things until you found something that was an awesome fit. And I, I just love that. So let us know more about your business now, like, um, it’s been a few years since you like started it. So what does it look like now?

Paulina (10:47): Um, so when I first started out, I was very much a freelancer. The idea of being an entrepreneur was like, that’s too much for me. That sounds like a lot of risk. I could never do that. Um, and so I started out freelancing for some different companies that we usually refer to as editing agencies, um, where you have scholars from all over the world upload their documents and then the company hires you as a freelancer to edit them.

Emily (11:16): I worked in such a service as a side hustle for several years, yes.

Paulina (11:19): Oh, fantastic. So, you know that it is not ideal and the pay is not very good, but when you’re just starting out, it’s a great way to learn the business. You know, you are, um, it’s essentially, I tell my students it’s on the job training. You know, it’s if, if you’re faculty, you know how to do academic editing, um, but you’ve just never done it at the level that is required, you know, in professional editing, fixing every mistake using advanced tools and word track changes, all that stuff. And so I think working for these agencies is a great way to get that initial experience. And my mistake was that I just stayed there too long. You know, I didn’t have enough confidence in myself. Um, I saw other editors in these Facebook groups talking about how the way you make real money is to get private clients. And I thought, oh, I’m not good enough for that. You know, like the, the academic imposter syndrome carried over into this new life, unfortunately. Um, but eventually I got more and more experience and I decided probably a year or two ago, you know what, I’m just gonna go for it. And I started, uh, connecting with some private clients. And at first it was just a handful of people, but I, my confidence grew and I, and, and people were happy with my work. And so I realized that I really am good at this. And I think, you know, I wish it hadn’t taken me so long. Um, I did have a second child in that period, so I, I, you know, had other things going on. But, um, but yeah, I think I’ve, I’ve learned so much from building a business, you know, and, uh, a lot of it is just having confidence in myself. But a lot of it also is also that, you know, a lot of PhDs, um, think that they don’t have any skills that they can apply outside academia. I think they’re, they’re terrified to leave graduate school or their academic position because they think that they’re not gonna be able to do anything else. But there’s so much about a PhD or other doctoral program that trains you to be successful. You know, you’re hardworking, you’re persistent, you’re creative, you’ve got thick skin, you know, like all of this stuff. You’re a, a pretty good writer, probably. Um, you know how to do research, you like to learn new things. Um, all of this, no matter whether you wanna go into editing or business or, you know, industry or whatever, you have so many skills that you can apply elsewhere. And I think that the process of building a business has taught me that

Emily (13:55): I agree so much. I actually, right when I was, I guess around the time I started my business, which is also the time that I finished graduate school, I was kind of, yeah, I was trying some different things, sort of like you did for a little while. And, um, I, I remember writing a blog post about like, the similarities between like entrepreneurship and, um, the academic life. And in addition, all those, all those characters, which that you mentioned are totally, I totally agree with them. And I don’t remember if you had this in there, but I really focused a lot on like, sort of being, um, like a self-starter slash really in charge of your own work in an independent way by the time you finish a PhD. Or certainly if you go beyond that, um, very similar to being like a solopreneur or like the top person in like a business. Um, and also for me anyway, working alone. ’cause like I am a solopreneur, so I work with contractors, but I don’t have employees of my own. Um, and so that was also very similar to like, okay in, when I was in graduate school, like I had some collaborators, but I, I worked my own projects. And so like, not being part of a closely working together team was very similar to me between those two like environments. So yeah, I mean, and I actually, I really relate also to your experience of like, I’m gonna try this, um, mode of work first as like a freelancer. So working for somebody else’s business, whether as an employee or as a contractor, either way you would sort of learn what the business is and then eventually gaining the confidence, as you said, to strike out on your own and sort of do it under your own branding. But coming with that, uh, there’s much more responsibility for actually getting clients. So like, that’s the part when I was doing the freelance, like editing work, I loved that I didn’t have to get clients, I just had to do the work. Whereas when you become the business owner, like the sales aspect is something you have responsibility for. So that’s a tough, like, that’s a big role to like add when you’re making that shift. Do you have anything else that you’d like to add to that?

Paulina (15:45): Um, yeah, you know, what you just said about, uh, marketing and things being just a bit more challenging. And that’s exactly what I tell my students is like, it’s not ideal to start out working for these editing agencies that pay less, but it lets you focus on that training, uh, and, and really perfect your editing skills before you then go out and try to attract private clients. ’cause marketing does take a lot of work. It is, you know, I don’t wanna paint the picture that entrepreneurship is easy because it’s not, but um, it certainly does pay off when you get there, you know, and you figure out how to connect with people. And I think, um, I also agree with what you were saying about the similarities between being faculty or being in academia and being a solopreneur is one of the biggest things that I hear from people that they’re terrified to leave academia because they don’t wanna lose their flexibility. And I always push back on that because, um, I don’t think academia is all that flexible. You know, there’s a meme that’s gone around that says, academia lets you work, or you have to work seven days a week, but you can choose any seven days a week that you want. Uh, and it’s so true, you know, but being, being an in entrepreneurship, you, you do, you get to keep that flexibility and you’re not working nine to five.

Emily (17:03): Hmm. I agree. Like it might be a big shift for like an employee to then strike out on their own in a business, an employee in the sense of like, not in an academic setting where like maybe you work your 40 or your 45 or your 50 hours, but you can kind of turn it off and you don’t have a ton of responsibilities like outside of that. But in the way that academia can be all consuming business also can be all consuming. And so whatever skills you’ve learned about, like the boundaries that you can put up can, it can also be translated between those two settings. And like you said, academia is flexible in the sense of like, yeah, exactly. You are just gonna have a ton to do. So like, pick what you’re gonna do, all that ton of work. And, you know, business ownership is a little bit different because you can sort of define the scope a little bit better. Someone else isn’t defining it for you of how much work there is to do.

Commercial

Emily (17:47): 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 2024. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2024 tax season starting in January 2025, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students and postdocs 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.

Personal Finances as a Professor and as a Business Owner

Emily (19:03): Let’s talk about the money part of this. So compare, you know, your job as a professor, what that paid and what it required of you to what you’re doing now. Like how have your, I’ll say, how have your personal finances changed with this transition? And there’s a lot of transitions in there. You mentioned, you know, multiple children moving across the country. Care, you know, caring for elderly parents. Like there’s a lot in there. So like how has your financial situation changed from when you had that previous position to, to now?

Paulina (19:30): So, um, with editing specifically, uh, so much of how much you can earn is based on how quickly you can edit because there are some editors who charge hourly, but I think that’s sort of on the way out. I think both editors and clients like to charge per word. So, you know, for each project you can give a quote, uh, based on your per word rate, you know about how much you’re gonna make based on your editing speed. The client knows what they’re gonna pay. And so, um, obviously the faster you can work while, you know, being accurate still, uh, the more money you can make. And so I think I am fortunate because I can edit pretty quickly, um, certainly as I’ve gotten more experienced. Um, and so I would say that, you know, my, I was making about $60,000 when I was a, an assistant professor on the tenure track in political science when I left, plus the benefits. And, you know, you, when you have a salary job, they’re contributing to your health insurance and retirement and all that, which you obviously lose when you go freelance. Um, my first year out of my first year of freelance editing, I made about 45,000, and that was working maybe 20 to 25 hours a week. Um, and you know, just kind of trying to figure out the landscape. Uh, my second year I made the same amount, but I took three months off because I had my daughter, uh, and wanted to take time for that. Um, and then within the last few years, it’s just climbed steadily, especially when I started working with private clients. And, you know, you’re not having to, you can charge much more. You’re not giving up those costs to some other company that’s employing you. Um, and this year I’m set to hit six figures. So, uh, and that’s only working about 30 hours a week. So, you know, there are a lot of editors out there who struggle with finding clients, but I’ve, I’ve somehow managed to find this formula that lets me, that has let me build up a client base with referrals and repeat clients and just new people finding me through Google or whatever. Um, and I’ve had a lot of success. And so, you know, I’m, I’m happy to share that with other people, uh, you know, to, to try to help them find their way out of academia.

Emily (21:52): Hmm. So it’s while not, and immediately upon that transition, it’s the business that you’ve built over time, I would say does compensate you well, more than, um, the academic position did, even after accounting for the benefits and so forth. And you’re limiting your work to 30 hours a week as you said, whereas it was whatever, 60, 70, whatever it was when you were in academia. Um, awesome. I’m glad to hear that both the up the upside of more money and less time both together. That’s amazing. Um, so when you volunteered for this interview, you said that you had a message for academics who are unsatisfied with their jobs like you were. So what’s that message?

A Message for Academics Who Are Unsatisfied With Their Jobs

Paulina (22:33): Um, I, if, if I could just talk to every unhappy academic, you know, I would say you don’t have to stay you if you are miserable. And you know what, if you are in academia and you’re happy, that’s fantastic. Uh, that that’s wonderful. But there are so many people out there who are unhappy and they’re terrified to leave for all the reasons we’ve been talking about, and they just feel trapped. And, you know, in the so many people that I’ve talked to in the last several months, um, you can see the anguish in their faces, you know, you hear it in their voices and, and I know exactly what that feels like. The anxiety, the stomach churn, the do I leave? Do I stay, do I leave? Do I stay? Uh, it’s horrible and I don’t want that for anyone, you know? And so if I could, if I could tell anyone who is unhappy, that’s, that’s my message is, you know, if you wanna go into editing, great. I’d love to help you get there. But, uh, no matter what you wanna do, um, you just don’t stay right. Life is too short to, um, life is too short to be unhappy and to not do what you wanna do.

Emily (23:40): Incredible. I absolutely agree. Life is too short. I’m, I’m 39 now, and so I am, I’m not having a midlife crisis, but I’m having a midlife like rethink, like, yeah, this, this is my life. Like, am I happy with the choices that I’ve been making? Most of them, yes, I am very happy. Um, what can I do differently? You know, going forward, what can make this an even better experience for me? Because you only get one life. And so to spend your twenties and your thirties and into your forties, maybe like as you just described, like dreading every day at work. Absolutely. Life is too short. Um, so totally agree. Will you please tell us more about like, well, one, where can, where can people find you if they want to, you know, employ your editing services? And I understand there’s another arm to your business actually, which is like helping other people make this kind of transition. So tell us about all that.

Get in Touch With Dr. Paulina Cossette

Paulina (24:31): Yeah, so for editing, um, my homepage is acadiaediting.com. Um, and you can also find me on Instagram, Facebook, uh, LinkedIn. Um, and that’s, that’s pretty straightforward. If you have an editing project, I usually just ask to see a draft and give a quote and happy to help whether it’s, uh, you know, a dissertation or journal article or even I’ve edited tenure packets and job market letters. Um, and then yeah, this summer I launched a digital course and group coaching program called Becoming an Academic Editor. Uh, we’ve just wrapped our first cohort. Uh, it’s a 12 week program and we’ve started our second cohort, um, so far over 20 people have gone through it. Um, and it basically, I teach you what I did, right? How to start freelance editing, how to build a website, how to find clients, um, and it’s really awesome because of that we do these weekly Zoom calls and you’re just surrounded by people who are just like you, who understand how horrible academia can be and who are ready to get started with, you know, like you were saying with that, that midlife change of, uh, really starting to pursue what makes us happy instead of what we feel like we were supposed to be doing.

Emily (25:52): That sounds incredible. And actually not to like whatever, get content out of your course, but when you described your transition, you left the job first and then you started and you found editing after having, after struggling to find another position. And so I would imagine what you’re teaching people now is, okay, you already have an idea that you might wanna edit. Let’s start that on the side before we quit the big job. Is that right?

Paulina (26:16): There’s honestly, there’s a mix of people. Um, some found me and I had one student who said she was in a therapy appointment and decided she had to leave academia and she went home and googled it and she found my website and enrolled in the course right away. Uh, other people have started editing on their own and are not having success. They’re struggling to find work, and so they find me and, and are able to get some help. Um, other people, yeah, they just wanna make some extra money, you know, they don’t wanna leave their academic job and they like that with freelancing. They can work five or 10 hours a week editing and bring in some extra cash or do it in the summer or whatever. Um, so it’s really, it works no matter what your situation is, as long as you’re a strong writer and you understand academic publishing, then you know, it’s, it’s totally doable for whatever your timing and all that.

Emily (27:10): I love it. Um, I’ll share that. Like I, when I was doing this kind of work, which I did for, I don’t know, maybe three years or so, four years, um, strictly as a, you know, contractor for another company, um, I did it as a side hustle and I started it after I defended as I was starting personal finance for PhDs and it wasn’t bringing in as much money as I wanted to bring in yet. So it was like another, it was truly like for the money, that’s why I was doing it. I didn’t anticipate having a career in this area or anything. Um, but when I started I was like, wow, I could have been doing this earlier, like I could have been doing this during graduate school as a side hustle. Like, um, and I liked that it was within, it was all within kinda my area of expertise and like that was really like nice that I still got to use those skills. Um, so I think at any stage, if you wanna pick it up and whether it’s gonna be a thing on the side or whether it’s gonna be like you are really doing this like for a lot of time and it’s gonna be one of your main sources of income, uh, maybe transitioning on to being your full-time income, like, that’s awesome. So I’m glad that people can find you if they’re curious about this career path.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (28:09): Um, let’s wrap up with the question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or something completely new.

Paulina (28:22): So, um, so my biggest piece of advice I think is, you know, we all know we’re supposed to save and have a budget and all that stuff, but at some point, if you’re not earning enough money, enough money, you can’t save, right? I, I grew up with a single mom with not very much money at all. And so I know you, you just can’t save if there’s not enough coming in. And so for anybody who is getting their PhD and thinking about going on the job market, absolutely you need to negotiate. Uh, and I think this is especially important for women in particular who, you know, we don’t apply to jobs because we think we don’t, we’re not qualified. Um, whereas men will apply to any job that you know that they feel like they’re extra qualified for, even if they’re not. Um, so apply to jobs when you get an offer. Negotiate, right? Don’t be a don’t be afraid to ask for what you’re worth and, uh, let them tell you no, right? Like don’t, don’t assume that you’re not gonna get it and then be afraid to ask. Just go for it ’cause you deserve it.

Emily (29:25): Awesome. I love it. Okay, we’ll leave it there. Thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast. It was delightful talking with you.

Paulina (29:32): Thanks so much, Emily. It’s been fun.

Outtro

Emily (29:44): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Negotiation and Long-Term Thinking Effected Financial Success for This International PhD

November 18, 2024 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily interviews Wen, who recently earned a PhD in plant pathology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wen came to the US for her master’s degree immediately after finishing undergrad and started learning about the US financial system, even though she had an avoidant money mindset. After overdrafting her checking account, she realized she needed to take control of her finances, start thinking long-term, and work toward financial goals such as investing inside a Roth IRA. Alongside peers, Wen negotiated the research assistantship stipends in her department, they were ultimately given a 13% raise. She has started applying those negotiation skills in other arenas. Finally, Wen explains how she pursued a career in tech transfer, starting with professional development and an internship during grad school.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Wen’s Podcast: Go out with Huo
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • PF for PhDs S14E10: The Motivation and Strategy Behind Biology PhD Stipends
  • Host a PF for PhDs Tax Workshop at Your Institution
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub

Teaser

Wen (00:01): Um, yeah, I, I think I want to circle back, um, the negotiation again. Um, I want to, uh, emphasize, um, negotiation. It’s not only like what the stipend could be like, I think every grad student could ask more from their PI, um, you know, sponsor me to this conference. This is a good workshop I want to do, and this is a career event I want to attend, and can you sponsor me? Can you cover that for me? Um, and there’s everything there. There’s a lot of things online. Talk about negotiation and everything. So I, I do want to share that. Um, when I purchased my second car, um, I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube, how to talk to the dealership, and, uh, just, um, trying to negotiate the best option for myself. Um, it was a quite funny, like real life big purchase that I went to the dealership, uh, and the dealer just thought I’m a innocent, uh, foreigner. <laugh> doesn’t, didn’t know what’s going on. And, um, so I think I, um, really take advantage of negotiation and know that what’s the best for me and, um, argue that, uh, those, those terms. And, um, yeah, I, I learned a lot of from practicing, uh, negotiation. And, um, advocate for myself.

Introduction

Emily (02:02): 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 (02:32): This is Season 19, Episode 7, and today my guest is Wen, a recent PhD graduate in plant pathology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wen came to the US for her master’s degree immediately after finishing undergrad and started learning about the US financial system, even though she had an avoidant money mindset. After overdrafting her checking account, she realized she needed to take control of her finances, start thinking long-term, and work toward financial goals such as investing inside a Roth IRA. Alongside peers, Wen negotiated the research assistantship stipends in her department, and they were ultimately given a 13% raise. She has subsequently applied those negotiation skills in other arenas. Finally, Wen explains how she pursued a career in tech transfer, starting with professional development and an internship during grad school.

Emily (03:24): I have a quick update for you on the tax return preparation workshops that I’m offering next spring. I’m super excited for my planned live in person workshops in California and Colorado and also my live virtual workshops for universities in Minnesota, Missouri, and New York. I’m sure there will be many more universities offering my asynchronous workshops as well. If you want to learn if your university is already on my list for a live or asynchronous workshop or want to help me get one offered at your university, please email me! You can reach me at emily at P F f o r P h D s dot com. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e7/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Wen.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (04:25): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today. Wen, who is a postdoc in tech transfer at a university in Texas, and she’s going to share with us about her sort of financial transition to the United States as an international graduate student and now postdoc. And also about, uh, her pivot to the field of tech transfer. So that’s really exciting. Uh, Wen will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Wen (04:50): Yes. Uh, thank you Emily. Um, my name is Wen and I’m a recent PhD graduate, uh, from University of Wisconsin Madison, and my major is plant pathology. And, um, when I started my PhD, uh, four years ago, um, I, I wasn’t sure about much about financial situations and all my career plans, so I’m glad, um, things are work out, uh, currently and, uh, really, um, happy to share with people in the, uh, going through grad school. Um, so yeah, and I currently start, I just started working as a tech transfer early professional as a postdoc position at university, uh, in Texas and help researchers to protect their, uh, IP and licensing the IP to, uh, the, the industry. So it’s quite interesting and fun new, um, career for me.

Finances During Childhood and Young Adulthood in China

Emily (05:57): Yeah, that is great. Tech transfer was very intriguing to me when I was in graduate school as well, and definitely a career that I considered, uh, before starting my business. I want to actually take a step back and would you please tell us a little bit about how you grew up and your young adulthood, at least in terms of your finances, um, up until the point that you came to the US so we can understand a little bit of your background and your mindset?

Wen (06:20): Yeah, so I came to United States in 2018 when I finished my college back in China, Beijing. So before that, um, before I was 22, I spent my whole life in China. So I would see that the bigger picture of how I grew up is China was, uh, developing country and we have fast economic and financial growing throughout my, the, that two decades is I live there and how that affect my early, uh, adult year is we, not only me, but my parents, they went through a insufficient, uh, lifestyle to kind of going to be self-sufficient and to industrialize and to eventually abundant, uh, lifestyle. Um, I think that affect me in the way that okay, situations always change and I don’t feel like I need to plan for financial situation when I grow up, especially rely on my parents. And that’s quite Asian family culture, um, that parents help children to, uh, uh, fund that college and find job and, um, kind of help them to establish their, the family, new family in the future too. So I don’t have many financial literacy, uh, when I came into u uh, the, the us. And another personal, um, background about my family is my parents they are, uh, they own a family business, so they always talk money, um, in our private family life, and they would argue and things get stressful. And when I went to, uh, sleep a lot of times, and I think that just make me, doesn’t feel positive to talk about money or thinking about what can money do. Um, yeah, so I don’t consider much about learning financial stuff, uh, even in college, uh, when I make, uh, decisions on what to study. So I just follow my interest in biology, went to, uh, plant pathology and decide to pursue higher education. Um, because I wasn’t thinking about making money, it was kind of a hard topic for me to discuss or openly to look into what do I need to do? Yeah. Until I, uh, came to United States and explore things on my own here.

Emily (09:15): Yeah, that’s really fascinating. And I’m sorry if this is like overly like reductionistic, but it sounds like you developed a bit of an avoidant mindset around money because both of being provided for by your parents and in an increasing lifestyle over time, right? Things are getting better and better lifestyle wise, and also because of the stress that money, um, caused in your household and that you absorbed some of that. And so that sort of came together to be like, well, it’s, it’s all okay and I don’t wanna think about it. Does that make sense? Yes.

Wen (09:46): Yes.

Adapting to the US Financial System

Emily (09:47): Okay. So then there’s a big shift right when you get to the us. Can you tell us, uh, about that and, and how it happened and how you were feeling and how you adapted to this new system?

Wen (09:59): Yeah, so when I came to us, I started my master program in Ohio State. Um, and I was awarded the research assistantship, so the regular RA stipend to start. Um, and it was quite efficient for me to, uh, start living there because, uh, to cover rent and, uh, groceries. Um, I was just excited to just experience all things. Um, and I got my first credit card, uh, when I came to United States. It’s not a thing in China. Um, and I got my first a used car, um, in my second year. Um, but I think there is a, there was a turning point when after I pay my, um, car payment to buy the car, my bank account, I didn’t realize it went to negative. Um, and I got, uh, a fine of the overdraft fee, $39. I still remember that. So I went, um, really anxious. I’m like, how could this happen? And, uh, the bank can just take, uh, overdraft fee from me. And, um, I think I was able to argue with them saying, Hey, it was my first time I was, I was new to this system. So at that point I realized, okay, like, um, I need to take serious on my situation. I need to plan and budget very well to buy things, um, and know how much number in my account, how much do I have. And, um, so I’d say more and, uh, during Covid I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, which is a higher cost of living city, um, for grad student. Um, I just starting to saving even more, um, for the moving and, um, adjust to their high rent here.

Emily (12:15): Can you say a little bit more about how you got into that, more of like long-term or annual planning? Um, because I can imagine that’s a really, that’s a really difficult thing for someone who’s, you know, within a year or two of being financially independent from their parents. I know it took me several years to start sort of pushing that time horizon out for the planning, right? Like, did you use any like tools or, I don’t know, anything that would help someone else who’s going through that transition?

Wen (12:45): So at beginning I do ha- uh, in my first year in Madison, I want to focus on getting to know my own financial habits, uh, tracking my spending, and I just downloaded very simple, um, Excel sheet from the website to track down my spending. Um, and I realized I eat, uh, a a I spend more money take out and, uh, some online shopping and necessary fashion stuff, um, into some unnecessary items. Um,

Emily (13:28): Sounds pretty typical pandemic spending though, right? <laugh>

Wen (13:32): I know, and investing couples hobbies. Um, yeah, I think those the first step is getting to know myself and, um, get rid of their, the spending. I didn’t realize I, I was, I was doing. And then I figured out if I want to save extra, um, cutting spend, it’s one thing. And another thing is I found some resources on campus. Um, back then, we do have international student group that, uh, we will go to their, uh, local food pantry that’s on campus. Um, and there are very fresh produce. We’ll go weekly with, uh, a bunch of international students and we, it’s just like, uh, grocery shopping and I will, I got save quite a lot of money from that. And sometimes our dining hall, um, they will have extra dining food and they will pack very well and give to students. I think all this, um, on campus activity, uh, on campus nresources help me allow to save some, um, necessary spending as well. Um, and it’s a way for me to find my community that time.

Emily (15:03): Yeah. Thank you so much for, for sharing that. Um, is there anything else that you wanted to add about kind of adapting to the US um, financial system?

Wen (15:12): I think getting the social security number and um, just a first debit card was, uh, essential for us to get paid. Um, and establish that is very important, especially, um, I need the social security number to apply, uh, the credit card later and, um, be aware that having credit card is essential for, for future, like the credit scores, um, which I wasn’t educate, educated, uh, in that perspective back in China. We don’t use credit score. Um, and also I just think it’s extremely more important for international student have the emergency, um, savings because we don’t have, um, the, the, the support that domestic students have, um, and always have that saving would just help so much. Um, and at the same time take advantage of the health insurance, the benefits that, uh, come with our student staff. And I always use my dental and vision and um, uh, insurance, um, coverage every year. Um, so those are now counted by numbers, but they are financial. Um, they could be financial spendings in the future. Um, yeah.

Stipend Increase During Grad School

Emily (16:53): Yeah, that’s great that you have that insurance provided you by your program. I know not everybody has that, but it’s something that more and more programs are adding if they don’t already have it. So I believe you told me in advance of our interview that you increased your stipend during the course of graduate school. Can you tell me how that happened?

Wen (17:10): Yeah, I think, uh, it’s just a, a process of negotiation between our grad student, um, group, uh, with our department. And when I started my PhD four years ago, uh, we had that huge inflation that like about 8%, um, that year. So I realized our department only increased like about 2% into the student stipend that year. Um, and the something I think it’s critical is timing. Um, most of the universities, or at least our department will decide how much to pay the year ahead for student. So for example, this August we, the department will submit their budget for next, um, next year’s, next fall students, um, payment. So I just couldn’t, um, thinking about like this lack of, um, catching up <laugh> eventually just will make our stipend pay so behind, um, the current raise of rent. Um, so in my first year I realized this financial hardship, but I think we started talking about it. Um, and until second year, I actually joined the student body, uh, kind of our grad student council, and I initiated more discussion. We talked to other departments, grad students as well. Um, and eventually I designed a survey, um, right after actually, uh, nature published a paper on the graduate student stipend survey results. Hmm.

Emily (19:17): Was that the biology PhD stipends one?

Wen (19:21): Yeah, I think so. It has a bunch of, um, PhD programs, data that related to our program.

Emily (19:29): Yeah.

Wen (19:29): Uh, entomology, plant pathology, horticulture. So

Emily (19:32): We’ll link to the episode that I did with the, uh, one of the co-founders of that, uh, database. So we’ll link to that in the show notes.

Wen (19:39): Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, I think getting the information about what’s going on with other universities really help us to push this forward. So I, um, we made, I made a survey about what’s our current inflation rate and cost of living in Madison specifically, um, and stipend numbers we quote from their PhD stipend.com, uh, a bunch of data and make, make, uh, we make a very informed, um, survey plus it, uh, plus like collection of the students data points. And we made a report, so we were able to present a report at our department meeting before they make a decision. And, um, you know, it’s hard to, um, really let them to, um, because they have their budget, uh, difficulty as well. So we will patiently, um, talk about this with our department, um, faculties and administrations, and I think we got their feedback. They want to, uh, so we ask more data from other universities, similar program, um, you can say like a competitor of our programs administration, uh, admission. So I think after two times, like monthly meeting like that, we were able to, they devote, um, increased stipend, um, about 13%, um, which includes a percent inflation and 5%, um, extra for their cover, our student’s fees. It’s, it’s like their activity fee we pay for the university. So our department, uh, help us on that. Um, yeah, so we got, uh, got a pretty good raise on that. And the good thing is, um, it didn’t make our students happier and, uh, have stronger adminis admission data to attract prospective, uh, students applicants. Also our, um, nearby like close program, they were able, the student body were able to kinda refer to what we do, we did and, uh, start some conversation with their department. So yeah, I, I think it was something that, um, really amplify, um, what I think that time was important. Just voice out, um, what we need as grad student, um, and, um, extra, uh, hardship for international student that time.

Emily (22:44): Yes, I love that example so much and I’m, I’m so glad to hear this story as well as we’ve heard a couple other similar ones on the podcast about departmental level negotiation.

Commercial

Emily (22:56): 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 2024. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2024 tax season starting in January 2025, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students and postdocs 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.

Low Stipends and High Costs Impact International Students Most

Emily (24:13): So you just mentioned, especially if you’re international students, so like the way I view this, you can tell me if you agree, um, is that in that period of high inflation or I’d really any time when stipends are not keeping up with basic cost of living expenses, um, the international students are the ones who suffer the most because domestic students have sort of financial pressure release options, which are, you can get a side hustle. I mean, they, your department may not like it, but it’s legal. You can do it. Um, and or you can take out student loans. And these are just not available at least to the, you know, 90% are not available to international students. And so it’s so much more important for the international student community together with domestic students to do the type of negotiation that you just outlined, which is, let’s just raise the stipends. Can we just get these stipends up to a decent level? Do you, do you agree or like, what are your further thoughts on that?

Wen (25:06): Yeah, I, I totally, um, agree on that as well. We’re, as international students, we are restricted to apply for certain funding and look for a, a, a second shift and make extra money. Um, but I, I will say that, um, getting to know the resources out there is still, um, skill to, uh, develop, even though there are, are limited. Um, for example, that’s something related to my stories about professional development and career planning as well. Um, there are, you know, all kinds of event provide free lunch, pizza, <laugh> free dinner. So I, I try to, um, take advantage of that. Um, and it’s also a form of connecting to other students getting to know what’s going on. Um, yeah, I think be resourceful even we are restricted is, um, I think one day it, it just extra skills we develop make out of the, the, the situation. Um, yeah, so I was involved, uh, in a professional development, um, student organization called <inaudible> on campus. Um, so this is an organization help grad students, postdocs to practice, um, um, commercialization of technology. So it’s really something I really want to develop. And, um, in this, uh, organization, they hosted event to, um, work on project and they gave micro grant, which is a grant. Um, I will buy linking per, uh, subscription and take professional headshot and only use for professional development events. Um, so yeah, that covered a lot of my, um, let’s say unnecessary spending, um, that I wouldn’t spend, I wouldn’t have the capacity to spend out on my personal account, but it’s important for me in the future. Um, so I think take advantage of the resources, uh, like that will, um, be very helpful.

Financial Goals During Grad School and Beyond

Emily (27:53): Yes. Thank you so much for adding those examples. For sure. I totally agree. Um, okay, so your stipend is increasing <laugh>, it’s, it’s at least catching up to, you know, the, the damage done by inflation. Um, can you tell us about some of the financial goals that you pursued during graduate school or since graduate school?

Wen (28:10): Yeah. Um, I wouldn’t say I have a specific number to target, but I know that I want to save as much as I can and start, start investing. Um, so it’s more like explore- uh, -ation of what’s going on in the market and where the, uh, where the places and learn about all the ETF, um, and the fire movement and write books about, uh, investing. So set up, um, investing, um, with, with the, the stipend I can save, um, I, I try to, because my pay is biweekly, so I set up other automatic transfer to my saving and, um, brokerage account biweekly. Um, just couple, just not couple hundred. I think like it’s, it’s probably 10% on my paycheck each time it comes through. And I have a individual investment account and a Roth IRA in investment account. Um, and yeah, I, and mostly just looking to their, uh, VOO S-P-F, um, their ETFs, um, trying to not, uh, yeah, I don’t do like day trading and all that. Just put money in there in, uh, in there.

Emily (29:52): Sounds perfect to me. That’s the type of investing that I teach and that I, um, subscribe to. Um, what brokerage firm or firms do you mind me asking? Um, did you open your Roth IRA with or, and or your taxable brokerage account?

Wen (30:05): So, yeah, <laugh>, um, first I think, uh, firstly I use Robinhood for my individual investment account because I think it was, uh, a fun app, uh, for me to get started and to get motivated. And I, I really enjoy, simplify their investing, um, using that app. So later I got to know more about, um, the long-term investing opened. I opened uh the Fidelity, um, uh, Roth IRA and the individual accounts I transferred my, uh, the investment from Robinhood to, uh, fidelity. Um, and one thing I think about learning out this is just finding the community of people comfortable in sharing that and learning that, and listen to your podcast. Um, really at beginning of my PhD to realize, okay, I need to, uh, pay attention to my PhD stipend. I think Sam, someone shared at a grad school workshop thing, so I clicked and I subscribe, and later I did follow some podcast, her 100, uh, her first 100k writes books about like the most important thing about investing. Um, and I think I started action, just got to know people have a similar background like me. Um, there is a website called Women Overseas built by, um, Chinese, um, Chinese Women Study abroad, work abroad. And that’s really the community. I learned a lot of these things from, they will share from life to work career and, and investment. And I, yeah, I think I learned a lot from them, from their experience. A lot of the members, um, in that Open Formula firm room, they started working for years. So it was really good experience to to set up myself to that path too.

Emily (32:26): I love it. I love that, you know, my podcast became a springboard for you to investigate, you know, the subject further, and that you found a community that was like exactly, exactly what you needed. And, ugh, that just makes me so happy. I’m so pleased. There’s such a huge amount of resources, financial education related areas now, um, that kind of, everybody can find their community that reflects, you know, who they wanna see and who they wanna be. Like, and I, I get to be one of the voices in the PhD space, but then, you know, everybody has multiple aspects of their identity, so like we can expand beyond that. And oh, I just, I love that so much. Um, is there anything else you wanna add about the financial goals you’ve, uh, pursued during graduate school, aside from the investing ones?

Wen (33:08): Um, yeah, I, I think I want to circle back, um, the negotiation again. Um, I want to, uh, emphasize, um, negotiation. It’s not only like what the stipend could be like, I think every grad student could ask more from their pi, um, you know, sponsor me to this conference. This is a good workshop I want to do, and this is a career event I want to attend, and can you sponsor me? Can you cover that for me? Um, and there’s everything there, there’s a lot of things online, talk about negotiation, everything. So I, I do want to share that. Um, when I purchased my second car, um, I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube, how to talk to the dealership, and just, um, trying to negotiate the best option for myself. Um, it was a quite funny, like real life big purchase that I went to the dealership, uh, and the dealer just said, I’m a innocent, uh, foreigner. <laugh> doesn’t, didn’t know what’s going on. And, um, so I think I, um, really take advantage of negotiation and know that what’s the best for me and, um, argue that, um, those, those terms and, um, yeah, I, I learned a lot of from practicing, uh, negotiation and, um, advocate for myself.

Current Postdoc Position in Tech Transfer

Emily (35:00): Love it. And that’s a skill you’re gonna be using literally throughout the rest of your life. So it’s fantastic too, um, master that early. And especially I know that the cultures around negotiation are very different. So especially to understand how to do that in an American context, it’ll be received <laugh> by other people in, in this, uh, in this culture. Um, that’s awesome. Okay. Let’s talk about then your current postdoc position and how you got to it and why you chose to, you know, make this pivot to tech transfer. And you already mentioned earlier that, you know, there was this specific professional development group that you were involved with. So maybe you could start back there with like, the preparation and then, you know, like your choice in like, getting your new position. 

Wen (35:38): Yeah. So I would say like, compared to financial goal I had at, um, beginning of my PhD, I’m more really like clear about my career goal. Um, and I took PhD as one of a professional, um, period, um, in on my resume. So I don’t think I, I don’t think I’m a student, uh, in school. I think it as a, a career I’m at right now. So I know that I am not the best person, um, best on myself to do bench science when I went in, uh, grad, uh, the PhD program here and I want to connecting people and I want to bridge the science and market, um, gap. So I know that my goal long, uh, like four years later, my PhD after PhD, I want to do that kind of thing. Um, but I learned lot doing science and talk about science. And so I think I have that goal just over my head and took other opportunities, uh, in the professional development organization. And I took extracurricular, uh, courses, um, I P, uh, that taught by another, um, economic department. And then that lead me to an internship on campus at our tech transfer office. Um, and I learned, uh, really through their internship that one year time and, and got and just confirm my interest in tech transfer space. I really enjoyed talk to scientists and, uh, about their innovation and on different, um, topics of projects and then connecting that idea to their, the, the market, what could we amplify the value of research, um, and, and license this patent. So I think like networking, uh, in, in that space and outside our university and connecting to other tech transfer office, um, just, it was a great, I talked to a lot of PhD working in that space, really see myself can make that transition. Um, so that’s what I did. I applied and talked to people and eventually landed this tech transfer, um, role. And I think it’s very, um, a good fit for me to, uh, really combine my interest in the science background.

Emily (38:34): Yeah. I love how you emphasized like we’re not in a PhD program simply to finish the PhD and do research. I mean, if that is exactly in your professional goals and you wanna just keep doing research in that area and you’re gonna stay in academia or you’re gonna pivot to something really, really close. Actually, my husband followed that path. Like his research is very close to what he did during graduate school research wise. So like, it was a good preparation, but if you wanna make any kind of a little sidestep from that, like you need to start layering on those experiences and the, that networking and, and exploration. ’cause of course you don’t necessarily know right away what your goal is going to be your career goal. So it’s, it’s about figuring things out and exploring the space. And I love that you got to do an internship. Did you say it was for a year with the tech transfer office? And so was that like a part-time thing, um, that you were doing alongside your, your normal PhD type work?

Wen (39:24): Yes. And it’s on campus. Um, it’s very flexible, uh, terms of hours with my PhD, uh, advisor’s requirements <laugh>.

Emily (39:34): So it was something you had to again, negotiate with your advisor, right? To take a little bit of time to do that.

Wen (39:39): Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Emily (39:41): Yeah. Awesome, using that skill again. Um, this is so great. Is there anything else you want to tell us about that, about that career step,

Wen (39:49): Um, about transitioning to a new role or job hunting overall? I think it’s quite, um, a self discovery <laugh>, um, time for, uh, us as PhDs as we are going to this tunnel of focusing things on our field. And then suddenly we have to, I think, set up us to be very open-minded about the careers we’re, we’re, uh, we’re going to explore and I think it’s sometime we got break ourselves a little bit. Um, and it’s okay if we don’t talk in, in our research terms and it’s okay to just talk very, um, I don’t know, simple words. We don’t use scientific words. And, um, and I I think it there, the PhD is, is a, is a journey and that doesn’t represent us going to move forward, um, like connecting with others.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (41:06): This is so great. Well, Wen, thank you so much for volunteering to come on, on the podcast to do this interview. And, uh, we’ve gotten so many great stories out of this. I’m really glad that the listeners got to hear, um, about your journey. Um, would you please tell us what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

Wen (41:31): Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I think just to be able find yourself being financially independent in charge of your finance, um, is extremely empowering. And I have situations about myself going through, uh, co-living with someone and then we broke up and move out. I think all those, um, life-changing decisions need, um, ourselves have their confidence in our financials and now feel obligated to, um, make decisions around others. Especially I think as international students. I, I think the last advice is we prepare to save money for the applying for, uh, work visas EAD card. And if you want to get it on time, um, use a premium, um, service, which adds $2,000 <laugh>, um, to the application. So, um, don’t be shocked how expensive those things can take and, um, make, um, make informed decisions on that. Yeah,

Emily (42:54): I’m, I’m sure you’ve heard this since you’ve been consuming like other financial material, but I just love um, the sort of, uh, mantra or phrase money gives you options. So you’re just definitely able to, um, you know, so fully realize, you know, your potential and get yourself out of situations you don’t wanna be in and you know, pay for that premium service when you need it. Whatever needs to happen if you have the savings built up already. And sometimes we don’t know when we start saving what exactly we’re gonna be using that money for, but it’s just there as like a backstop and insurance policy just to give you, um, options in the future. So I’m really glad that you emphasize that, especially for international students. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. ’cause I totally agree that, um, you just, you need a, a bigger pool of money to draw from for it because a lot of expenses that international students experience are pretty large. Um, irregular expenses as I often talk about, about, um, on the podcast, like traveling home, like visa stuff and all that. So thank you again so much for volunteering to come on. This has really been a pleasure to talk with you.

Wen (43:52): Thank you so much, Emily. Thank you for, um, doing this and I, um, really benefit from this podcast and I, I know you will continue to serve a lot of PhD students.

Outtro

Emily (44:17): 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 Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Your Side Hustle Really Is a Business and Other Tax Insights with Hannah Cole of Sunlight Tax

September 23, 2024 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily interviews Hannah Cole, an artist and the founder of Sunlight Tax. Sunlight Tax primarily serves artists and creatives in their business tax needs, but there are many overlaps between artists and the academic community. Hannah and Emily discuss the best practices and insights that graduate students, postdocs, and PhDs with side businesses need to stay on the IRS’s good side. Hannah clarifies exactly when a business starts, the first step you must take with your finances, and how to calculate and pay your additional tax liability.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
  • Hannah Cole’s Sunlight Podcast Episode: The Right Step at the Right Time
  • Hannah Cole’s Website: Sunlight Tax
  • Hannah Cole’s Free Course: New Rule for LLCs Free Course
Your Side Hustle Really Is a Business and Other Tax Insights with Hannah Cole of Sunlight Tax

Teaser

Hannah (00:00): You know, we have a whole tax industry out there trying to, you know, its marketing is based around making us all hate and fear our taxes and actually kind of implicitly training us not to even look at it, to just feel so fearful. And so, like, hands off that we don’t even look at it. And I’m just here to say I hate that. I disagree with it.

Introduction

Emily (00:29): 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 (00:58): This is Season 19, Episode 3, and today my guest is Hannah Cole, an artist and the founder of Sunlight Tax. Sunlight Tax primarily serves artists and creatives in their business tax needs, but there are many overlaps between artists and the academic community. Hannah and I discuss the best practices and insights that graduate students, postdocs, and PhDs with side businesses need to stay on the IRS’s good side. Hannah clarifies exactly when a business starts, the first step you must take with your finances, and how to calculate and pay your additional tax liability. This whole episode is devoted to business taxes, but before we get started I want to ask you if you or your peers need help figuring out taxes on your academic income, your graduate student stipend or postdoc salary and the attendant benefits. Now is actually the best time to start the conversation with your graduate school, postdoc office, graduate student association, etc. about bringing my tax content to your university in the upcoming tax season—so that they have time to plan their budgets. In this upcoming tax season I’m offering live workshops that I will tailor to your university and state and also pre-recorded workshops that are widely applicable. I would be very grateful if you would issue a recommendation to a potentially appropriate host at your university. You can find links to more information from PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/. Thank you! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Hannah Cole of Sunlight Tax.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:56): I have a really special guest on the podcast today, Hannah Cole of Sunlight Tax. I have been listening to Hannah’s podcast, Sunlight, the Sunlight podcast for, I don’t know, definitely more than a year now, maybe closer to two. And she is an amazing, uh, podcaster and practitioner in her field because she teaches about taxes to her community. I’m gonna have her introduce her community to you, but I see a lot of overlap between Hannah’s community and our community of academics and PhDs and graduate students and so forth. So Hannah is really gonna be able to bring her insight into taxes and specifically self-employment taxes to our conversation today. Um, which is going to focus on self-employment situations that grad students and postdocs are typically in, which is like a self-employment side hustle. So Hannah, thank you so much for agreeing to come on the podcast. I’m really excited. Will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for our audience.

Hannah (03:48): Sure. Um, thank you so much, Emily. I appreciate it. Um, yeah, so I am an artist first. I, I went and got my MFA in painting. Um, and I have a degree in art history and, uh, started my life as a professional artist and was so upset at how I was treated by the world of accounting <laugh> by my dad’s accountant that eventually I, you know, went out to get the information on my own. I went all the way back to school for accounting and studied taxes. Um, ’cause I live with a, you know, artists are solitary creatures. You know, you, when you’re a painter like me, you’re in the studio for long, long hours alone. And the only way to build your career is through a network. So, you know, we are like, uh, super networkers and my community of artists was deeply in need of the same information that I was. And I, I like, knew there was a need out there, and I was like, I’m so upset by the way that this has been delivered to me, if at all. Um, there’s, there’s a market here. Um, so I started my business Sunlight Tax. Um, and that’s my mission is to, it’s much, it’s much bigger of an audience than just creative people, but it is really kind of for people who maybe where money is not the sole interest that they have when they do the thing they do. Right. And I think as academics, you can probably relate to that because most people who go into academics have a passion for their field. Right. They’re trying to do some research, and that probably is a little bit primary over money. And so, you know, that’s very similar to artists that’s very similar to sort of mission-driven people. So it’s kind of a big group of people where money is not the only thing, but these people need to do their taxes too.

Similarities Between Academics and Creatives

Emily (05:37): Yes. I see so much of an overlap between how you described your journey to what you do today, uh, in the tax world, at any rate, and what I do with, uh, as being a financial educator. Yeah. Um, I love you sort of got started comparing the community that you come from the artist community with the academic community. I totally agree about those, um, overlaps. Are there any, would you like to elaborate on that in any way? Specifically? I’m thinking of are there like mindsets or like skills that you’ve observed or perhaps lack of skills among your community, um, perhaps that overlap with ours that either are, um, helpful or not so helpful when it comes to running a business, which some academics end up doing.

Hannah (06:16): Yeah. Well, I’m, the, the world of academia is not foreign to me. I mean, I taught, I was a professor, uh, at Boston University for a brief moment, <laugh> before I realized that I, I, uh, the, the strictures of academia were not, not for me. I think for people like us, when you’re, when your identity is formed around a passion for a thing, um, money can become the enemy by accident. Not really on purpose usually. But I think, um, I see a parallel between people in creative fields where, you know, there’s no artist in the world who’s gonna tell you that they do anything except make the best possible art they can. Right. And I think the same is true in academia. You’re gonna do the best, highest quality research you possibly can. You’re gonna, you know, whether that’s the most innovative or, you know, you’ve got the best ideas, the best protocols, whatever, however you’re doing it. And I think when that’s the case, you can kind of lose, you know, what you focus on is what does well, and if your focus comes off of money, too much money can get, uh, it can atrophy, right? Your skills in it can atrophy. Um, when your attention is not there, you just, uh, it can kind of get away from you. Right? And so I think that that is a sort of similar issue that, um, people in academia have to people in the creative world. Um, and I think just, you know, we’re busy, right? We’re busy doing the thing, we’re doing <laugh>, and this is one of the reasons I didn’t wanna be in academia ’cause of how busy you get <laugh>. Like, I was like, I, I’m never gonna be in the studio again if I do this. Um, and, and you just, it’s hard to check like, you know, self-employment, you know, when you’re talking about like grant income or the types of income that, that we’re talking about here, like track doing, doing, setting up bookkeeping, paying estimated quarterly taxes, like things like that. You know, they are a little bit complex and they do require some ongoing attention. So that’s, that’s a challenge.

Emily (08:23): Totally agree with everything you just said. Underline that. Um, in addition, I wonder if you could speak to, because I think another commonality between these communities is a percep- a perception among ourselves that our work is undervalued by other people and then we end up undervaluing ourselves in some cases, um, which is really dangerous when it comes to business ownership

Hannah (08:45): Very much. Yeah. And I think it’s, it, it’s easy to get into a mindset like that, especially if people around you in your daily life have a mindset like that. You tend to absorb the attitudes of the people you are with all day. Um, and so yeah, if you have people around you who feel like, uh, you know, the good ideas are over here and the money is over here and they’re in opposite directions, you’re gonna start getting outta balance where with, where money is in your life, like, I, I like to think of it this way, that money is neutral, right? Money is a tool. It’s like a hammer. You can do good things with it. You can do bad things with it, right? Like it’s amplifying the power of the person who has it. So if you’re doing good work, if you’re an ethical person, you can do amazing things and you can do more of them when you have more money. I don’t know. Think, um, think Oprah, think, um, Dolly Parton, you know, these are people who have great amounts of wealth and who do truly world changing wonderful things with their money, right? Uh, we could also probably think of quite a few examples of people who do not so great things with their money <laugh>. But I think the problem is when you go from thinking of money as neutral, right? Money as just being an amplifier of your agency to being negative, that that’s where you start getting problems. You start getting in a sort of stuck space around it. Because if you think of money as negative, or if you think that somehow your motives or ethics will be corrupted, if you simply have money more of this tool, you won’t advocate for yourself properly, right? Um, you cannot walk into a job interview and really nail it, um, nail the salary negotiation part of it specifically. Um, you’re not gonna advocate the way with the fierceness in that interview that you would if you believed that money was good, right? Or, or money in your hands was a good thing. If you fundamentally think, you know, having a fully funded retirement is makes you kind of a yucky person, you’re not gonna ever fund your retirement. You know, these things are related.

How Do You Know When You’ve Actually Started a Business?

Emily (10:55): Mm-Hmm. That is so interesting. I’m really, I really like the way you put that. I haven’t thought about it quite that way before. So thank you so much. Um, okay. I wanna narrow down to talking about like business ownership for, again, my community, which has many similarities with yours. Uh, they’re gonna be doing this as a, we’re gonna say a side income though, right? They have their primary thing as being a graduate student or being a postdoc, and they’re pursuing that, but they have a self-employment side hustle as well. Oftentimes what I see is people acting as like consultants, for example. Um, or maybe they’re a writer or an editor in, in this kind of world. So these, these kinds of side hustles, whether maybe, or data science. They’re employing some skills perhaps that they have developed as an academic, but outside of that academic context as a business owner. So, and I love that you’ve talked about this extensively on your podcast, but the question to you is how does someone know when they’ve actually started a business? Because especially when it’s something on the side, it may be a little vague at first.

Hannah (11:50): Yeah. This gets really confusing if you start thinking of the other organizations that think of your business start time as different. Um, and I, I do have a whole podcast episode about specifically when each one thinks you start. Um, so if you want me to, you know, link to that in your show notes, I would be happy to send that link. Um, but, you know, that’s on the Sunlight podcast. So to the IRS and this, you know, I’m a tax person, so I’m orienting towards that. When it comes to when you report the income, when you report the expenses, um, to the IRS, your, your business begins the moment you advertise. And that actually makes a lot of sense if you understand what makes you a business. The IRS says that you’re a business versus being a hobby. Um, so your side hustle is a business and not a hobby. If you have a profit motive, if you are trying to make money with it, right? It doesn’t mean that money has to be, you know, you worship at the altar of money and there’s nothing else in your life and you throw all your ethics and your, you know, value and, and your amazing work out the window. Not that, but it has to be in there, has to be in the mix, and it has to be, you know, strong. Um, and so if you think about that, having an intent to make a profit, which is the IRS definition of you being a business that happens before you make a profit, that happens before you make money. And I think this is where people get confused. They think, I I, I, I only get to report it once I’m making money, but actually no, because you start that business with expenses, right? You have expenses first. Then once you’ve built something, um, let’s use an example of like a pizzeria. ’cause it’s very tangible and we’ve all been to one. Um, you don’t start generating income from that pizzeria day one, right? The pizzeria has to exist first. Like, you can’t sell a slice of pizza if you don’t have an oven <laugh>. You have to install the oven, you have to have a bakery, you have to have flour, right? So you’re gonna have a lot of expenses before you ever can even bring a dollar in the door. And I think it’s really important to get your head around that concept. You are not broken because that’s how your business is working. That’s actually normal, right? And we have in business school, they teach this concept called the break even point. Well, what is that? The break even point is the magical moment when you go from negative income, AKA, AKA spending <laugh> and, and, um, it’s that magical moment when you go from negative income to zero, right? And then over the zero, then the number starts getting positive. That’s the moment you become profitable, right? When your, when your income rises above the amount of your expenses for the first time, and you know what, there is no guarantee or promise that that will ever happen or that it will happen on a certain timeline. That’s all within your control and your profit motive should be driving that bus. But, uh, it’s, it’s good to know that it’s normal to have expenses first. And in fact, you’re entitled to file a Schedule C that is where you put this stuff on your tax return. You’re entitled to file one before you have a profit. So the title of the Schedule C is profit or loss from business. So one, you have to be a business, it’s in the title, but also you don’t have to have a profit that’s also in the title. So that’s kind of a good baseline. So remember, the moment you advertise, and if you think about it is, is the moment that you start that your business starts. And if you think about it, that makes sense. ’cause advertising says hello world, hello clients, I’m open, I have this thing available. If you’re the right person, if this will work for you, come and get it. Right? But also, you know, to somebody who is, let’s say, doing some freelance editing on the side, advertising is not gonna look the way it does for Coca-Cola, right? Advertising for you is probably gonna be an email to a couple of friends and family. You’re still advertising. You probably aren’t thinking of that as advertising, but whatever you do that’s signaling, Hey, hey, I do this thing, are you interested? So maybe that’s an Instagram post. Maybe it’s an email to friends and family. Um, maybe it’s a website going live. Those are all your moment when you started advertising.

Emily (16:14): I’m so glad you gave that example because as I said earlier, I see a lot of like service-based businesses as side hustles, um, for this community. And so just when you were describing that, I was like, yeah, if you put something up on LinkedIn, if you put your services out there on, um, whatever the current version of Upwork is, um, or like you said, an email to a friend putting up a website, Hey, it costs money to host a website. So like, you’re probably having your first expense when you do that. Um, or maybe you’re starting to pay for software to like get client scheduling set up or whatever it might be. Um, I think part of the confusion when people are asking this question is they think somehow it’s like a, a bad or like an onerous thing to be considered a business and have the attendant tax filing, uh, requirements along with it.

Emily (16:57): But what I really learned from your podcast and your attitude around it is no, this is a great thing to be considered a business, especially as you were just saying, when it takes some time to get to that turning point where you actually have profit. So like, if you have a whole year when you have some, some loss, even though you’ve started advertising, maybe you have some expenses, the income isn’t there yet. Um, you can use that to reduce your tax liability, actually. And so it’s not, it’s not a bad thing to be considered a business earlier. It does have some complications, but it’s, it’s, it’s actually a very positive thing to realize that you have a business

Hannah (17:29): Very much. I mean, and it, it tangibly lowers your taxes. <laugh>. I mean, we in this country are supporting business not out of a charitable purpose, but because it’s good for the u- US economy, right? Like when we support us small businesses and, and we count, you and me, Emily, we count <laugh>. Um, when you support a small business, you are, you are helping the US GDP grow, right? That’s in the interest of the nation we live in. Um, ultimately, you know, you’re gonna spend a lot of money, you get business deduction, you get business expenses, they are deductible on your tax return. That’s a incredible benefit given to you by Uncle Sam. I mean, I, I don’t think we all appreciate that quite as much as we should. Um, but that’s, that’s huge. Um, and yeah, and so you’re, you’re getting this subsidy <laugh> and it’s nice to take advantage of. It’s nice to know what your rights are and take advantage of it. Um, and of course, if you weren’t a business, if you were operating as a hobby, instead you wouldn’t get those deductions. So there’s a real difference.

Emily (18:38): Yeah. Thank you.

Commercial

Emily (18:41): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, budgeting, investing, and goal-setting, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2024-2025 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutes enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Best Financial Practices for Early Career Academics With Businesses

Emily (19:59): Okay. So I’m thinking still about this grad student or postdoc or early career PhD who’s, has this business now they know they’re starting it on the side. What are some best practices that they should implement in their finances from day one to make things easier or like totally above board going forward?

Hannah (20:16): Sure. Um, the first is to open a separate bank account. Um, you wanna keep your business income and expenses separated from your personal bank account and personal expenses. Um, there’s many reasons why this is a good idea. All of it is a good idea. <laugh>, there is no negative, um, except that you have to go through the effort of opening an account. Um, but the magic that that separation does is now when you have that business bank account and you deposit all the money you earn from that freelance side hustle, you know, that gig, whatever it is, now you are creating a record of everything into and out of your business. That record becomes the backbone of your bookkeeping. So now from there, setting up bookkeeping, setting up tracking becomes far simpler. Um, Emily, when I started out as a professional artist, before I knew to do all this stuff, I was printing out bank statements going through, you know, like three days before tax time, going through my bank statement, line by line with a highlighter, trying to, trying to recall if that trip I made back in February last year to Lowe’s was for business or for my home, right? <laugh>, Like we don’t want that <laugh>. If you have a dedicated business account and you keep a mindset of I only spend this money on business expenses, then everything in there is deductible. You just have to sort out what category of deduction it goes into. So man, it makes your life simple. And then, you know, once your business grows, this is a thing that grows with you. Um, you can automate that bank feed into bookkeeping software. That’s a next step thing. You don’t have to do that day one, but it gives you the, you know, the easy option. Um, also if you one day create an LLC for liability protection, your LLC will be instantly invalidated if you don’t have a separate business bank account, you, when you have a liability, uh, limited liability corporation, the whole thing you’ve done legally is to separate your business and personal selves. And if you then don’t actually do it in the background, a court of law can say you don’t have an LLC, you don’t have any liability protection, and basically your LLC is thrown out, you’ve wasted all that money. Um, so <laugh>, there’s no downside, in other words, to a business bank account. PS it doesn’t actually have to be technically a business account according to your bank’s rules. It can just be a personal account. That’s another separate account. It’s the separation that’s important. So it can be, you know, technically a personal account according to the bank. That’s fine. Just use it like it’s your business account.

Emily (23:05): Thank you so much for that. Um, that clarification, and actually you threw out a couple of terms there. So I just want to, this is partially some things I’ve learned from you, clarify for the listener. Um, this, this term LLC, the limited liability company, this is a legal status and it’s not, it doesn’t necessarily confer a specific tax status. So when you’re first starting out out, when you’re first starting out with a, a side business or something, you’re likely gonna be operating as a sole proprietor. Then maybe for the entire lifetime of the business, you’ll be a sole proprietor. Whether or not you open an LLC as well, your tax status will stay a sole proprietor. That is, unless you decide that you want to grow your business to the point where becoming a different kind of tax status would make sense, like an S selection, et cetera. But for people who keep businesses on the side, I would imagine many of them continue to operate as sole proprietors indefinitely.

Hannah (23:55): Yep. I would say that’s probably true. Yeah.

Preparing for Tax Season as a Business Owner

Emily (23:58): So you just mentioned this core first step, which is to open a separate bank account, and I totally agree with it. You know, when I first started out my very first side hustle, I didn’t have that, but I knew by the time I started this business that it was important. So that was the first thing that I did when I started this, um, this business, even though I’ve been a sole proprietor the whole time as we were just talking about. So is there anything else that someone should do, um, like at this point in the year, you know, we’re sitting in September when we’re recording this. Is there anyone, anything that, uh, business owners should do outside of their actions during tax season to set themselves up to, you know, prepare a tax to return easily to minimize their tax liability beyond this core, as you said, the backbone of having a separate account?

Hannah (24:39): I mean, there’s a whole world of year-end tax planning. I would say independent of year-end tax planning, which is coming up, we are coming upon that time of year. But independent of that, I would say from your separate business bank account, just setting up some basic bookkeeping is a good idea. Having the separate bank account isn’t bookkeeping itself, though. It forms a basis for it. So if you don’t love the idea of like sitting with your bank statements and pulling everything into a category, you know, before tax time, doing that in advance is quite nice and quite helpful. <laugh>. And I actually think if it’s at the level of a gig or a side hustle, I actually think you don’t need bookkeeping software at all. I think bookkeeping software, if I’m just being totally honest with you, it’s very easy to make very expensive mistakes that compound and, uh, that you can only get undone with very expensive accounting help. Um, so I actually don’t really think people with very, very small like side hustle level businesses maybe even should have software for bookkeeping at all. Um, but that doesn’t mean you do bookkeeping. You can just do it on a spreadsheet. So have a spreadsheet, lay out your expense categories, track your income, and just do the tallies. Um, because knowing if that will help, you know, in an ongoing way if you’re profitable or not, which is a, a big deal, it’s also what your taxes are based on. So, um, paying estimated quarterly taxes, for example, if you need to, is only going to be possible when you know what the number is, <laugh>. Um, so you wanna be able to know what your profit was for the quarter. So you can do a little calculation about what percentage of that you need to pay to the IRS and to your state for taxes.

Side Hustles and Estimated Tax

Emily (26:29): This is a little bit nuanced. Um, what I’d like to specifically talk about is how to like sort of add the estimated tax process on top of an existing salary, right? Because this is a side hustle business, so. What would you tell someone who’s, uh, who has that situation, how they should handle their estimated tax?

Hannah (26:50): Yeah, I might tell them to avoid it altogether. Um, honestly, because human behavior being what it is, estimated taxes are manual. You have to do the calculation, you have to make the payment. And we just know from data, you know, from behavioral science that people don’t do things like the, they do the default more often than not. So if you can default your taxes, that’s what you wanna do. So if you’re in the side hustle zone, the thing you wanna understand is that your taxes are holistic. They are all of your income lumped together and your spouses lumped all together and put onto one tax return with one number of what you owe, or you know, what you got a refund for if you overpaid. So if three quarters of your income comes from a job, you know, where you’re an employee and you have payroll withholding your taxes throughout the year, and one quarter of your income is coming from this gig or side hustle, you have enough proportionally money that you could take out of your W2 to never have to pay quarterly taxes. But what you need to do, the action you do need to take is to file a new W four with your employer to adjust your withholding at your day job to over withhold. In other words, you don’t wanna withhold only enough taxes to cover the tax obligation formed by the employment. You wanna overdo it and go into taking enough taxes to account for your self-employment. Um, your gig, your side hustle income that is considered self-employment income. FYI, um, and the taxes on that are always higher than you think because self-employment tax applies to self-employed income. So your employer is paying one half of that amount. It’s one of your wonderful benefits as an employee. You pay both halves when you’re self-employed because you legit are the boss <laugh>. You pay the employee and the boss half of Medicare and social security. And we call that self-employment tax. So my tip there is pull a W 4 off the internet, go to irs.gov, grab yourself a W 4, fill it out. You might need some old pay stubs. You might want last year’s tax return. If you have any bookkeeping from your business year to date, that’s great. Um, or just last year’s tax return. Um, hopefully if that gig was going already last year. And then you just wanna fill out the little, um, paycheck checkup tool on the IRS website that will help you, um, adjust your withholding to essentially give you, you know, the refund level that you wanna have. Um, I recommend zero <laugh>

Emily (29:34): I, it’s the same way I would approach things. That’s how I also teach. Um, anyone, anyone who has a fellowship income, which does not have withholding on it, but who also has W2 income, their spouse or them, that’s the same thing. I say, make this easier on yourself, just fill out a new W 4. But let’s add the added wrinkle of they don’t have the W2 position. Let’s say they’re receiving a fellowship, it already doesn’t have tax withholding on it. Maybe they’re already doing estimated tax because they have that fellowship. Um mm-Hmm. How should they incorporate the self, the self-employed income and, and the income and the self-employment tax from that, um, in with their ongoing like fellowship type income, uh, calculations?

Hannah (30:12): Yeah, well they’re gonna, you’re gonna need to do some degree of bookkeeping or else it’s gonna be a very stressful moment before the tax deadline. Um, and you will, you know, you’ll need to pay quarterly taxes every single quarter that that’s your legal obligation. So under US tax law, if on last year’s tax return you owed more than a thousand dollars, then you have to pay quarterly taxes this year or else you’ll get penalties and interest. Um, and you can pull out last year’s tax return and you can check if you’re in this category. So line 37 of your 1040 personal income tax return is gonna tell you what you owed last year. And if you see a number on there and it’s greater than a thousand, you gotta be paying quarterly taxes this year. Um, PS line 38, the line just below that is your estimated tax penalty <laugh>. So you can look at that line to see if you’re already being punished for not doing this. Um, I think that people, you know, we have a whole tax industry out there trying to, you know, its marketing is based around making us all hate and fear our taxes and actually kind of implicitly training us not to even look at it to just feel so fearful. And so, like hands off that we don’t even look at it. And I’m just here to say, I hate that I disagree with it. Your taxes are yours. Your 1040 is your information and you can, you know, the first two pages of it summarize every single thing that is in that big tax packet. And if you just look at every line on the first two pages, you have massive power. You know what’s happening. Um, and I just told you two lines, the power in those two lines, line 37 and line 38 and that, you know, that will, that will help you kind of get your head around <laugh> whether you have to pay quarterly or not. If you do, um, you know, if you think about what line 37 tax, you know, what you owe, like owing something at tax time is not supposed to happen, right? It does happen. It’s okay. It’s a reconciliation document where we reconcile the actual amount paid versus the expected amount, um, and we settle up the difference. But essentially owing anything means you underpaid your taxes throughout the year. ’cause we live in a pay as you go tax system. You’re supposed to pay your taxes as you go through the year, not all on April 15th.

Emily (32:40): I think what I would say, in addition to what you just said, um, the, the form form 1040, ES, the estimated tax worksheet is a very helpful document in calculating your estimated tax due. Um, people in the audience listening may already be familiar with this for their fellowship income, but you just have to add in a few more lines relevant to the business income and so forth. But if they don’t wanna do more calculations, I think I would tell them just to kind of, as a rule of thumb, set aside an additional 15.3% of their business profit. If there is a profit for that self-employment tax pay, that plus whatever their marginal tax rate is, let’s say it’s 12% usually for graduate students, maybe 22% for some postdocs. Um, if they’re single and just doing that much, if you don’t wanna do like a full calculation is gonna get you, that’s an 80 20 <laugh> on that is to add mm-hmm, that additional amount of money in with either your W 4 or your estimated tax payments if you’re doing it on your fellowship already. Um, but doing the detailed calculation is always gonna be the most, uh, thorough and the most accurate way to go. But Hannah, uh, when you were.

Hannah (33:46): Sure, although keep in, keep in mind ’cause it’s stressful for people. I think like especially if you’re coming to this and you’ve not learned about how estimated quarterly taxes work, um, it’s really important to remember the first word. It is an estimate and you’re not gonna know, like fundamentally you can look at your tax rate from last year, but last year’s tax rate does not guarantee this year’s tax rate, right? So even if you do it in good faith and you did the best possible job, you could, you can still be wrong. And so really, I just encourage you like 80 20 is a good attitude on this because it is called an estimate because you don’t have a crystal ball, like the law cannot compel you to accurately predict a future. So we can all just breathe a sigh of relief and just estimate and that’s okay.

Emily (34:35): The other good thing about paying those quarterly taxes, um, as you go, as you were saying is that, um, there’s never gonna be such a huge balance built up. Like something that often happens in our community with fellowship income is that people get to tax season and they realize they owe three, four, $5,000 because they never paid estimated tax or had tax withholding during the year. And that is a huge shock on like this level of income that we’re talking about. And it can happen with business income too, um, especially if you’re taking distributions from your business and then you’re spending that money. Um, so either keep the money in your business account and don’t take the distributions or as you take the distributions, make sure you’re putting aside something for either your quarterly or your annual tax bill so it doesn’t, doesn’t get away from you <laugh>.

Hannah (35:17): Absolutely. Yeah.

Sunlight Tax and the Sunlight Podcast

Emily (35:19): So just a few minutes ago when you were talking about how, um, you know, our, our system, mostly the tax industry that’s built up around our regulations, they want you to feel a certain way about taxes and in fact you should be empowered about this, et cetera, et cetera. This is a taste of what people can get on your podcast. So I would love you to take a minute and just tell everybody where they can find you, what you put out there, what you do in your business, and if they want to learn more from you or work with you in some way, how they can do that.

Hannah (35:46): Sure. Thanks Emily. Um, well, so my business is Sunlight Tax. If you go to sunlighttax.com, you’ll find everything there. So if you miss something, sunlighttax.com, I have my podcast, which comes out every Tuesday, Sunlight, um, you can find that on my website, sunlighttax.com. Um, I also have a bunch of free resources like, uh, deductions guide, a visual Guide to Tax Deductions, which you can also find on my website. Um, I offer a lot of free courses, including a recent one about, um, LLCs. If you go to sunlighttax.com/llc, if you happen to have formed an LLC for your side hustle or your business, um, there’s a mandatory, a mandatory new report required, um, from the US Treasury <laugh>. Um, but also I have a program called Money Bootcamp where I teach, um, people how to set up very simple systems to track your taxes, um, pay your estimates and fund your retirement using tax advantage accounts. So, um, all of that you can find @ sunlighttax.com and,

Emily (36:51): Excellent.

Hannah (36:51): Yeah.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (36:52): Yes, and I will definitely personally vouch for the podcast because I am a listener every single week and I learn something new every week and I think it’s great. Um, okay, Hannah, I’m gonna end by asking you the question that I ask all my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for an early career PhD? A grad student, a postdoc, someone recently out of their PhD training? Um, and that can be something that we’ve touched on already that’s related to tax, or it could be something completely aside from what we’ve discussed.

Hannah (37:19): Sure. Um, I’ll say this, it’s a bit of my personal religion, but, um, if you have never played with a compound interest calculator and seeing what the power of your money is when it is invested, um, please do yourself that favor, <laugh>. Um, and I would say do not just write yourself off. Say, I am broke right now. I will wait to put money in an IRA I really highly encourage you, if you do nothing else, maintaining an annual habit of maxing out your IRA will put you in a better position. Um, it, it will, you know, you invest the money inside the IRA so it will grow with compound interest and tax sheltered. So it’s really a wonderful thing that works when you start young <laugh>. You don’t wanna miss five years of compounding because you’re in grad school. Um, if you can, you know, just make it your religion to do it every single year without skipping, I think that is my best piece of advice. And believe you as a 45-year-old woman, woman, <laugh> talking to you, I, I wish for everyone here that we could all have started at the age that you are now. Um, and the age you are now is only it, you know, the best time to start this investments your investments was 20 years ago, but the second best time is now.

Emily (38:41): Love that advice. You touched on my two favorite topics today, taxes and investing. So it’s amazing. <laugh>. I will also just say, I mean, I love the goal of maxing out an IRA, but that’s not gonna be possible for many people. So even if it’s just, um, $50 a month, a hundred, 200, whatever you can do, be in the habit of it. And do as much as you can. And then absolutely, once you get that higher income from your lovely post-PhD job, then you can really ramp it up and use your 401k and use everything else. But having that habit of doing it from earlier and having sort of developing the identity of I am an investor and understanding things like compound interest that is gonna serve you so well later on, um, not just the dollars and the numbers, but all that psychology that comes along with it.

Hannah (39:24): Absolutely. Yeah. They, they show that even very, very poor people who have a savings account save more because just having it there helps you do it. So if you haven’t opened an IRA yet, I encourage you to do it this year. Even if it, even if you put 10 bucks in <laugh>, like open it. The fact that it’s there is setting up the infrastructure to make it easier to do that, you know, thing. And really saving, savings and investing is a muscle. So think of it as like a muscle that you have to get in some reps to get good at.

Emily (39:55): I love it. Hannah, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been a wonderful episode and thanks again.

Hannah (40:02): Thanks so much, Emily. I really loved joining you today.

Outtro

Emily (40:15): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

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