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Why and How I Started Personal Finance for PhDs

January 8, 2024 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily narrates the origin story of her business, Personal Finance for PhDs, which started as a personal interest when she graduated from college. She also shares why she has devoted her career to financial education for PhDs and the behind-the-scenes business operations. This episode is for you if you are an avid follower of Personal Finance for PhDs, a personal finance enthusiast, or interested in solopreneurship yourself.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • PF for PhDs Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients 
  • PF for PhDs Tax Center for PhDs-in-Training
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List 
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Why and How I Started Personal Finance for PhDs

Teaser

00:00 Emily: You are so smart, so talented, so capable, so visionary—you are such an extraordinary group of people—that I want you to be able to experience personal wellness and satisfaction and live out your values and have a wildly impactful life. I don’t want you to feel hamstrung by money. I want you to be free to apply your incredible energy to your professional pursuits and personal lives and not be stressed or distracted or held back by your finances.

Introduction

00:33 Emily:  Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

01:01 Emily: This is Season 17, Episode 1, and today is a solo episode for me on Personal Finance for PhDs. I’ve been asked more and more in recent years how and why I started the business, so I’m taking this opportunity to tell you the origin story of Personal Finance for PhDs, why I’ve chosen financial education for PhDs as my career, and what my day-to-day work looks like. This episode is for you if you are an avid follower of Personal Finance for PhDs, a personal finance enthusiast, or interested in solopreneurship yourself. 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.

01:50 Emily: Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2023 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is January 16, 2024.

02:12 Emily: 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.

02:48 Emily: If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s17e1/. Without further ado, here’s my solo episode behind the scenes of Personal Finance for PhDs.

03:38 Emily: I’ve noticed that in the past half-year or so that I’ve been getting more frequent questions about how I got started with my business, whether it’s my full-time job, and just generally why I do this. I realized that while I’ve answered these questions and told these stories numerous times over the years, I’ve never put it together coherently on my website or on this podcast, so that’s what I’m taking this episode to do. In this episode, you’ll hear the origin story of Personal Finance for PhDs, why I’m so passionate about equipping PhDs with skills and knowledge around money, and how I run my business currently. I hope you’ll enjoy this behind-the-scenes look!

Origin

03:38 Emily: My interest in personal finance goes back to my first post-college position, which was as a postbaccalaureate fellow at the National Institutes of Health. I frankly was quite privileged to not have to have given money much thought prior to that point, although in retrospect I absolutely should have. I grew up in the DC area in a middle class family, and my parents really never taught me overtly or explicitly about money beyond going with me to open a checking account when I got to college. When I started my postbac fellowship in 2007, it was the first time I had a full-time non-temporary job, so to speak. My annual stipend was $24,000. Since I had grown up outside of DC on the Virginia side and was now moving back to the same area to work on the Maryland side, I knew that $24,000 was really, really a small amount of money to try to live on in a fairly high cost of living area. I decided at that point to start learning about personal finance. I read a few books, and the one that made the biggest impression on me was Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties by Beth Kobliner. I think my baseline motivation was that I wanted to be responsible with the salary I was receiving. I wanted to do all the right “adulting” things financially, although I don’t believe that word was in popular use yet. The main actions I took following my initial reading were to track my expenses, which I did in Excel; open my first credit card; and start investing for retirement. I didn’t really let the fact of my low income or status as a trainee stop me from following the advice I was reading. Somehow, I didn’t absorb from the books the importance of having an emergency fund, and I kept absolutely no cash savings on hand. I essentially lived paycheck-to-paycheck with the exception of my Roth IRA, to which I was contributing $200 per month, exactly 10% of my stipend income.

06:04 Emily: I started my PhD in biomedical engineering at Duke in 2008, and shortly after was when the financial system and economy really started going downhill and we entered the housing market crash and Great Recession. I felt very secure in my position, so I didn’t have fear or anxiety around the continuity of my income. I again was paid a $24,000 annual stipend, but that effectively felt like a raise since Durham was a moderate cost-of-living city. During those first couple of years of grad school, I kept living pretty much paycheck to paycheck aside from my Roth IRA contributions, and I kept reading personal finance books. In 2010, I got married. My husband was also a grad student at Duke at the time. In 2011, I started reading and commenting on personal finance blogs, and I started my own personal finance blog. This was the heyday of the personal finance blogosphere, and participating in that became a serious hobby for me. I posted three times per week, mostly short essays or musings on personal finance tactics or strategy and updates on how we were spending our money. My blog was always small in terms of readership. What I observed in Google Analytics, however, was that my posts about grad student-specific topics actually had sustained traffic from search engines, specifically my posts about taxes and IRAs. I didn’t know a lot about those topics at that point, but I knew my own experiences and what I had read on the IRS website, so I was simply sharing that. But the insight I gained was that grad students were searching for these topics, and there weren’t many good sources of information, because my little blog was actually ranking well enough in search that people were visiting it. Also in that period, I attended any and all financially-related seminars that Duke hosted. I want to say first that I appreciated and still appreciate that Duke was making any kind of effort at all to provide financial education to its graduate students, but the content of the programming wasn’t exactly what was needed, in my opinion.

07:58 Emily: I remember a couple of seminars in particular from around that time. The first seminar was when a local wealth management firm sent a couple of representatives over to give a talk on investing. I attended with high hopes that they would discuss how to invest in IRAs. Instead, they talked about utilizing 401(k)s while repaying gigantic student loan debts. These advisors were clearly speaking to the professional students in the room, the future doctors and lawyers, about how they could invest post-graduation, while completely overlooking the PhD students who actually had the cash flow to be able to invest in the present. The second seminar was on tax return preparation by a local CPA. While I did glean some useful insights, my overall impression was that the person wasn’t speaking to the specific situation that the stipend-receiving graduate students in the room were facing, spending way too much time on general background information and the less-relevant higher education tax benefits and no time at all on how to deal with Duke’s confusing reporting of fellowship income. Basically, they were speaking from their experience preparing tax returns for the parents of college students, not to the audience’s experience of receiving a Form 1099-MISC but not a Form 1098-T.

09:11 Emily: In 2012, Duke started a personal finance initiative called Personal Finance @ Duke, and I volunteered as the grad student representative on the planning committee. Basically, I was there to make sure that some PhD student-specific educational programming was offered, and later on to help orient the speakers to the financial peculiarities of our population and the types of questions the audience would have. However, despite our best efforts with that tax firm, for example, we were never able to get the speakers to really meet the unusual concerns of our audience. That was when I started thinking, “I could teach this material better than these professionals are. I’m less qualified, but I know this audience better.” Fast-forward to the summer of 2014 when my husband and I both successfully defended our PhDs. My husband decided to stay on as a postdoc in his PhD advisor’s lab to get a couple more papers out the door. My advisor moved from Duke to Columbia, so there was no opportunity for me to stay on in a similar way, and in fact my defense date had been rushed due to my advisor’s schedule. The last six months of my PhD were incredibly busy, so on the other side of my defense I became happily ‘funemployed,’ as I called it, for the next year. Basically, I gave myself some time to explore and figure out what I wanted to do for my career, since I didn’t want to stay in research any longer. I explored a few career tracks through a short-term fellowship and contractor work, but nothing was exciting me as much as personal finance was. My blog had made a small amount of money in 2014, so I decided to use it to attend FinCon, the financial bloggers conference, in October. What I learned from that conference was that I had no interest in turning my blog into a full-fledged business. However, I attended a session on public speaking, which was the first time I was exposed to the concept of professional public speaking. I learned that there are three strata of public speakers. At the bottom, there are people who speak for free to promote a product or service that their business offers. That’s what those financial advisors and CPAs were doing at Duke. At the top, there are celebrities and politicians who command enormous speaking fees because of their fame and prestige. And in the middle, there are the professional public speakers who receive modest speaking fees in exchange for sharing their professional expertise or personal story. The person who ran that conference session actually spoke on personal finance in K-12 schools, so that was a little indicator to me that schools might host such speakers.

11:34 Emily: The final piece of the puzzle that would become Personal Finance for PhDs was that, with my abundant free time that fall, I volunteered to give my own seminar for Personal Finance @ Duke. Basically, I wanted to teach everything that I had learned about personal finance from books and the blogosphere specifically that would be relevant and actionable for current stipend-receiving graduate students. I had the best time creating the slides, delivering, and answering questions! I knew I wanted, somehow, to make that my career. At that point, I had identified what I consider the three core aspects of my business: 1) The people I serve are my peers on the PhD track, from undergrads applying to PhD programs through to PhDs in their first or so “Real Jobs;” 2) I help these people with their personal finances; 3) I do so through teaching or one-to-many communication. What took a little more time to figure out was exactly who would pay me for this teaching. While I have tried at different times, I am deeply uncomfortable trying to sell anything to my audience directly, particularly the graduate students. Through trial and error and learning from my peers in Dr. Jen Polk’s community, Self-Employed PhD, I identified that my clients, the people who are in a position to pay me for this work, are those who provide professional development programming to graduate students and postdocs, primarily. Mostly they are staff members who work in graduate schools, medical schools, postdoc offices, etc., but I also occasionally work with graduate student groups as well.

Commercial

13:07 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

Mission

14:00 Emily: I just gave you the narrative of how I came to start Personal Finance for PhDs, but I haven’t really told you why I cared so much about my personal finances while in graduate school and why I decided to devote my career to helping my peers in this area as well. This is the first time I’ve tried to articulate this mission, so forgive me if it’s a little rough going. There are a couple of foundational truths that I learned about personal finance early on that made it a very compelling area of interest for me. 1) How you use your money is an expression of your unique life values. 2) Having money gives you options. Let’s explore those a little further each in turn.

14:39 Emily: 1. How you use your money is an expression of your unique life values. The more closely aligned your use of money is with your individual values, the more satisfaction you will derive from that money. Money is not the only way you can express your values, but it is a very useful tool. With graduate students and postdocs, and really anyone with a lower income, it’s very difficult to align your use of your money with your values because such a large fraction of it goes toward your basic living expenses. When the vast majority of your income goes toward housing, food, and transportation, you have very limited agency to express your values and derive satisfaction from how you use your money. I find the puzzle of optimizing your use of money within the constraints of life as a graduate student or postdoc very compelling.

15:26 Emily: 2. Having money gives you options. This is an expansion on the first point. When you have money, whether that is in the form of savings, investments, or income in excess of your expenses, you have a greater ability to make choices in your life. You can extract yourself from toxic professional or personal relationships. You can choose where and how you live. You can add a child or a pet to your household or materially support other family members. You can give to causes that you believe in. How can a low-earning young professional generate this kind of financial agency?

16:03 Emily: This probably won’t be a shock to anyone listening, but after my first year or so of graduate school, I didn’t find my research to be consistently fulfilling and it felt very out of my control. I didn’t have consistent or predictable success. I only have this perspective from the many years that have elapsed since I finished my PhD, but I think my interest in and let’s face it at times fixation with my personal finances was a response to those feelings of failure and helplessness in my professional life. Improving my personal finances was something that was much more within my control. I could set and achieve process-based goals and oftentimes effect positive, measurable outcomes. So my interest in personal finance was a form of escapism. Yet, there were downstream benefits of this attention and effort, and I think they can be replicated without the large time and energy investment I underwent. My husband and I experienced what I consider to be great financial success during our seven years of PhD training. We took our combined net worth from a negative number in 2007 to over $100,000 in 2014. That’s an excellent outcome, right there in black and white. What I didn’t appreciate until that point, though, was how having that nest egg and the skills and experiences it took to build it actually could help us in our professional lives. For me, the first thing was that I could be funemployed for that first year after I finished my PhD without sinking our household. My husband’s income went up a bit when he transitioned to being a postdoc, plus I brought in income in fits and starts from my various experiments, so we were still making it month to month. But I felt a lot less pressure about needing to commit to a career and increase my income because I knew we had that nest egg working for us. That money gave me time to explore and eventually find my calling.

17:50 Emily: My husband actually had a similar experience when he finished his postdoc in 2015. He had always thought he would continue in academia or work for a large company—something stable. He came across a job listing for a role that seemed tailor-made for his research expertise and interests. The hiccup was that the job was at a start-up. We didn’t know much about that world, but we knew that he would be paid a bit less in salary and there was a higher possibility of job loss in comparison with being hired by an established company. Again, our nest egg gave him the confidence to take a professional risk and accept that role that he was so well-suited for. I had known from the beginning that your career affects your finances via the income and benefits provided to you. But this is how I learned that your finances can also affect your career. We didn’t know when we started saving and budgeting and everything that those small actions, compounded over time, would end up freeing us professionally to this high degree. This agency and confidence is what I want for all of you, the PhDs and PhDs-to-be. You are so smart, so talented, so capable, so visionary—you are such an extraordinary group of people—that I want you to be able to experience personal wellness and satisfaction and live out your values and have a wildly impactful life. I don’t want you to feel hamstrung by money. I want you to be free to apply your incredible energy to your professional pursuits and personal lives and not be stressed or distracted or held back by your finances. I will feel satisfied if I can, through my teaching, play a tiny role in enabling that success in your life by giving you financial best practices and mindsets and so forth. I don’t want you to have to go through all the self-education and experimentation that I did to get to that point. I’m delighted to interpret and refine general personal finance education for the unique circumstances of a PhD’s life.

19:45 Emily: I’ve been describing working on my own personal finances and teaching you how to work on yours, but it’s become more and more apparent to me over the years that this personal responsibility is only part of the equation. While I still consider that to be core to my teaching, it’s foolish to gloss over the responsibility that universities and funding agencies play in each PhD’s finances by setting the pay rates for assistantships, fellowships, grants, etc. and constructing benefits packages. For graduate students and postdocs to flourish and succeed in their roles, not to mention their lives, they must be paid a living wage and in fact significantly more than a living wage. Of course, personal responsibility is a requirement, but a higher income also confers the benefits I spoke of earlier. It’s obvious to me that graduate students and postdocs must be paid fairly to fulfill their potential and produce the wonderful research and become the wonderful scholars as is expected of them. In fact, by underpaying its trainees, the academic system is undermining itself and driving talented people into other sectors. Related to this issue is one of equity and the hidden curriculum that I often refer to in this podcast. Academia is more diverse and is endeavoring to become more diverse with respect to race, gender, socioeconomic class, etc. than it was in the past, but that means that more and more trainees lack access to the innate resources that their predecessors had, whether that is familial financial support, certain types of financial acumen, or insight into how academia functions, financially. If you are a first-generation college student, your parents are not necessarily able to help you decide how to manage your student loans during graduate school. If you come from a family that has never saved for retirement, you have no one to clue you in about IRAs. If your parents always had simple tax returns that they prepared with software, you don’t have easy access to a CPA to ask questions about your fellowship income. And if you’re an international student or postdoc, you’ve got to figure out how to navigate the US banking and credit systems on top of everything else. I believe universities have a responsibility to teach or at least offer to teach about these nuanced, academia-specific financial topics so that all graduate students and postdocs have access to this information that is critical to their personal wellness—in addition to paying them decently. So that’s my internal motivation for doing what I do. I want all PhDs, regardless of background, to experience personal and professional freedom and fulfillment, similar to what I have, and I believe that money is a crucial tool to master in that process. You have so much to offer the world, and I want the world to benefit from the work you do that is your true calling, all without compromising your personal wellness.

Operations

22:30 Emily: In this final section of this episode, I’d like to give you some details on how I run my business. For example, I am often asked if it’s a side hustle or my full-time job. Personal Finance for PhDs is my sole professional pursuit at this time. I would describe it as a lifestyle business. That is a pejorative term to some people, but I don’t see it in that negative light. I’ll go through now what I do for work, when I work, where I work, and with whom I work.

What I do for work

23:00 Emily: There are two main avenues by which I offer financial education, paid and free. The free financial education includes this podcast, articles on my website, and social media posts. The paid financial education is my work with universities, and, to a much lesser extent, the products I sell to individuals. The educational services and products I provide to university clients include live seminars and webinars and pre-recorded workshops. At this point, the only products I offer to individuals are my pre-recorded tax workshops and membership to the Personal Finance for PhDs Community. What might be interesting to learn about solopreneurship is that only a tiny percentage of my work time is spent actually delivering my revenue-generating financial education. The great majority of my own time as well as my assistants’ time goes to marketing and networking, communicating with clients, preparing presentation materials and rehearsing, and professional development.

When I work

24:00 Emily: I work around my children’s school schedule. In a regular 5-day school week, I’ll work about 20 hours, typically exclusively while they are in school. This gives me a bit of personal time during their school day as well as work time. I take off all of the academic year holidays and vacations that they have, such as Thanksgiving, winter, and spring breaks, federal holidays, etc. Over the summer, when we’re not on vacation, we generally put the kids in day camp so I have those weeks to work as well, maybe with a few extra days off here and there. The exception to this rule is when I travel, when I’m typically working much longer hours. I like this balance personally as well as for our family. I find I’m able to accomplish what I set out to professionally in those limited hours by being very judicious about what I take on, and I also get to spend a lot of time with my children and facilitating their relationships and development. In recent years, I’ve become a student of time management and productivity, and I try to conform my schedule and work habits to the principles I’ve learned. I theme each one of my work days so that I know what I need to do and what I don’t need to do on each day. Mondays are for creating paid content, Tuesdays are for client check-ins, Wednesdays are for business operations, Thursdays are for catch-up, and Fridays are for creating free content. That’s not to say that I don’t do other types of work on those days, only that they have to wait until my tasks related to the theme of the day are complete. I learned this strategy from the podcast Productivity Straight Talk. I only open my schedule for appointments between about 10 AM and 2 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I only record podcast episodes on Fridays in that same window. I’ve become a bit of a devotee of Cal Newport recently, so I try to follow his time block planning method, reserve time for deep work, and not let my work bleed into my personal time.

Where I work

25:48 Emily: I set up the business from the start to be location independent, meaning that I can operate the business no matter where I live. I have always worked primarily from home. Pre-pandemic, I spoke mostly in person, so I would travel to university campuses to do so. Since the pandemic started, my deliverables have transitioned primarily to live webinars and pre-recorded workshops, and I travel only very occasionally to speak in person or attend conferences. While working remotely is very convenient and easy, I desperately miss connecting with audiences and clients in person, and I don’t believe webinars are as effective as in-person seminars. I’m hoping that more clients will shift away from webinars toward either live, in-person seminars or pre-recorded workshops.

With whom I work

26:33 Emily: I call myself a solopreneur. The tax structure for Personal Finance for PhDs is a sole proprietorship, and the legal structure is a single-member LLC. My business doesn’t have any employees, only myself as the owner. I work with two contractors on a part-time and ongoing basis; you hear their names if you listen through to the end of each of the podcast episodes. Dr. Lourdes Bobbio does all the editing on the video and audio files for this podcast and my workshops, and Dr. Jill Hoffman prepares the podcast show notes, assists with delivering the pre-recorded workshops, and does other miscellaneous administrative work. I also work with other professional service providers as needed, such as CPAs and lawyers. That’s all I have to say on the matter of my business for the time being! If you have questions for me, I would be happy to try to address them in a follow-up social post, as I know solopreneurship is a path of interest for many PhDs. Please email me at [email protected]. And if you’ve been inspired by this episode to support my mission, the best way you can do so is by hiring me, if you’re in a leadership position at your university, or recommending me to a professional development-type staff member or student group leader at your university. Thank you in advance for making the effort!

Outtro

27:51 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Financial Advice from PhD Career Development and Financial Wellness Professionals

August 28, 2023 by Jill Hoffman 1 Comment

In this episode, Emily shares the microinterviews she recorded at two higher education conferences this past summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What piece of financial advice are you glad you followed or do you wish you had followed as a grad student or postdoc?” Listen through the episode for excellent financial strategies that have stood the test of time for the interviewees.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting (GCC)
  • Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance (HEFWA) Summit
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • Dr. Katy Peplin, Thrive PhD
  • Kirby Williams, Advantage Publications
  • Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Financial Advice from PhD Career Development and Financial Wellness Professionals

Teaser

00:00 Beth H: So thinking back to grad school, the things I’m glad that I did is is really just stick to the fundamentals of looking at what my income was and make sure I was budgeting it, saving. I was investing in my Roth IRA and now 20 years later, has made all the difference. Even the $50 a month I found back then is setting me up for financial success now.

Introduction

00:30 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others.

01:01 Emily: This is Season 15, Episode 6, and today I’m sharing the microinterviews I recorded at two higher education conferences this past summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What piece of financial advice are you glad you followed or do you wish you had followed as a grad student or postdoc?” Listen through the episode for excellent financial strategies that have stood the test of time for these interviewees.

01:36 Emily: The two conferences I attended were the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting or GCC and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance Summit or HEFWA Summit. GCC is primarily attended by university staff members working with PhD students and postdocs in career and professional development. The HEFWA Summit is attended by university staff members working in financial wellness and financial aid across undergraduate and graduate populations. These two conferences were excellent networking opportunities for me on top of the built-in professional development. However, there are plenty of universities who were not represented at these conferences. Would you please consider recommending my financial education seminars and workshops at your university? My most popularly requested events for the upcoming academic year are How to Survive and Thrive Financially in Graduate School or Your Postdoc, How to Not Hate Your Fellowship During Tax Season, and Up-Level Your Cash Flow as a Graduate Student or Postdoc. Please direct an appropriate potential host within your graduate school, postdoc office, grad student association, etc. to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ where they can learn more. Thank you in advance!

03:00 Emily: You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s15e6/. Without further ado, here are the microinterviews recorded at GCC and the HEFWA Summit.

What piece of financial advice are you glad you followed or do you wish you had followed as a grad student or postdoc?

Tax Implications: Kaylee Steen, University of Michigan Medical School

03:19 Kaylee S: My name is Kaylee Steen. I work at the University of Michigan Medical School. The piece of advice that I would have financial advice for postdocs would be that if you are on a training grant, you need to be aware of the tax implications and the fact that they they’re not going to withhold your your paycheck for tax purposes. And so that will change or make your W-2 non-existent. And that can be really complicated. So make sure that you talk with your training grant administrator about the implications for taxes and any other kind of financial implications.

Value as a Student: Stevie Eberle, Stanford University School of Medicine

03:57 Stevie E: Stevie Eberle, executive director and assistant dean of BioSci Careers at Stanford University School of Medicine. During graduate school and postdoc training, I really wish I had understood my value that as a student I actually had value and I had the right to say no or to ask for more. That being said, as soon as I learned my value, I, I ran with it. And I have taken every opportunity to actually ask for more or to reject offers that don’t offer either enough or anything to. Examples were recently with an event that I was planning where it was a DEI related event and they were going they wanted me to do this for free. It was a 300 person event and I said no until they offered me something and I ended up getting a very nice package out of it. Another example was when I was I wanted a promotion and everybody around me had this and I had had the same title except for me. And everybody was making a certain amount of money except for me. And I had all the data and they were not listening to me and they told me, You love it here. Let’s face it, you’re not leaving. And I said, Oh, that is not true. I love it here if I’m being paid equitably. So I found something else. And then they were surprised. And then I miraculously got a promotion and more money. So what I was saying is I wish I’d known, but as soon as I knew I ran with it. 

Retirement Savings: Alicia Roy, Gladstone Institutes

05:39 Alicia R: My name is Alicia Roy. I work at the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco and I received a piece of advice that came from a cohort member’s parent telling them to open a Roth IRA immediately, which I had also heard from my parent. But hearing it from multiple places really helps. And the two of us did it together. We sat down with our laptops next to each other and we’re like, How? How does this work? Where do we go? And I think that really helped me actually open that account and actually make that happen for me. And I’m really glad that I did that along, for now. Now is actually a pretty long time ago. At the time I was like, Is it already too late? And I now have colleagues. I’m in my mid thirties and I have colleagues who still haven’t opened one and I’ve had one for over five years now and that already makes me feel a lot better about the future.

Financial Habits: Melissa Bostrom, Duke University

06:32 Melissa B: My name is Melissa Bostrom, and I’m the assistant dean for graduate student professional development at Duke University. What piece of financial advice am I glad I followed during graduate school? Well, I really kept myself to a budget and really watched my expenses and made sure that I saved money for surprise expenses, emergency expenses like car repairs and also conference presentation opportunities. And I feel like those and a little bit of buffer in my budget really helped me take advantage of opportunities when they arose. And some of them are very positive and others car repairs not so positive.

Housing: Yasmine Farley, UC San Diego

07:10 Yasmine F: So hello, my name is Yasmine Farley. I am a senior associate director at UC San Diego. And the piece of financial advice that I guess I’m glad I followed or wish I would have followed while I was in grad school. When it comes to I’m glad I followed was being flexible in my housing arrangements and making sure that I was getting the cheapest option. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into when I first moved for my Ph.D. program. And so then being willing to chat around with colleagues, classmates and move in with one and then looking for others each year really helped to cut costs for me. And what I wish I had followed during grad school is to not take out as many loans. I had a full ride. However, I took out loans so that I could live and pay for rent and food and gas. But I wish I would have taken out the bare minimum so that I wouldn’t be saddled with all the debt that I have now.

Socializing: Anonymous #1

08:18 Anonymous #1: One piece of financial advice for graduate school and actually for life, but that I developed with my spouse when he was doing his Ph.D. Was that be very thoughtful about who you are socializing with and what kind of approaches to finances they have, what kind of class background do they have, and genuinely try to find people who are spending less money than you, you know, for their socializing, for their life and hang out with them and get to be friends with them, use them as models for how to budget and save money and most of all, not spend money. So stay away. Stay away from the free spenders or the or the loose spenders and stick with the people who spend very little to not at all, especially around socializing.

Retirement Savings: Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann, Humanities without Walls Consortium

09:20 Maggie NH: Hi, Emily. My name is Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann. I’m the associate director of Career diversity for the Humanities Without Walls Consortium. Which is a grant for a Mellon funded, grant funded project at space at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But I am located at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I think what I wish I had done while I was a grad student was to continue to think about my investments after leaving a career that I left, that I had spent about six years in before starting graduate school. So as I shared with you earlier, I used to work in wealth management for Financial Advisor based at what was then an affiliate of MetLife and no longer exists. And I worked in that role during the Great Recession from about how I was in that role from about 2005 to 2011 when I started graduate school. And right like I was completely in that world thinking about investments, watching people have to make really challenging decisions just to save their homes. Right. Seeing people pull out money from their 401k plans before they hit hit the age that you’re supposed to raise when you can start drawing contributions from your 401K. And they did that in order to continue to make their mortgage payments. Right? So I was I was there and watched people go through those decisions to save themselves and their families, or at least to protect themselves and their families after in some cases losing their jobs for up to two years, which was not an uncommon phenomenon during the recession. But then I started grad school and right like every little bit of money that I made through my stipend and my assistantship I had to use to meet my material needs, as opposed to continuing to think about how do I put a little bit of that into savings or how do I put a little bit of that into my existing 401K or what I now have A 403b plan since I work in higher ed. So I wish I had continued to do that because now I’m kind of faced with all three. I’ve got about 25 years before retirement and I don’t know that my investment savings are going to be where I need them to be when I retire in my mid to late sixties. Right? And so that’s I think the advice I would give to students or even faculty who might be listening to your podcasts. You have to be thinking about what, how much income are you going to need to draw from your retirement accounts when you get to 65, especially for our generations who might see cutbacks in things like Medicare or Social Security, how much money are you going to need to live when you’re retired and you might not? Right. So I think that’s that’s what I wish I had done.

Retirement Savings: Delaney Dann, Scripps Research Institute

11:58 Delaney D: Hi, my name is Dr. Delaney Dann, I work at the Scripps Research Institute. My piece of financial advice is as much as possible. Maxed out your Roth IRA during grad school and your postdoc.

Retirement Savings: Eric Vaughn, University of Rochester

12:13 Eric V: Hi, this is Eric Vaughn from the University of Rochester. My piece of financial advice would be start investing early so you can retire earlier.

Financial Habits: Penny Baga, Vanderbilt University

12:25 Penny B: Hi there. My name is Penny Baga from Vanderbilt University, and I encourage everybody to spend less than what they make.

Funding/Income: Elizabeth Harrington Lambert, Vanderbilt University

12:34 Elizabeth HL: So I’m Elizabeth Harrington Lambert from Vanderbilt University. And I think the absolute best piece of advice that I can give you is apply for funding before you need it. And don’t apply for 20 awards, but apply for three or four. Give yourself a plan B, a plan C and a plan D.

Funding/Income: Jessy Ayestas, University of Kansas

12:53 Jessy Ayestas: So, hello, I’m Jessy Ayestas. I am awards and outreach coordinator at the University of Kansas and also Fulbright scholar. So my piece of advice for any anybody thinking of attending grad school would be to consider applying for fellowships for scholarships, for grants. That will definitely facilitate at least the first years of your graduate education. And if the support that you receive is for a timeframe that is smaller than the time that you will be in grad school, then definitely try and think about the options that you will have and what opportunities may be available at your institution to continue being funded until you complete your program.

Financial Habits: Lindsey Cauthen, Baylor College of Medicine

13:35 Lindsey C: Lindsey Cauthen. Baylor College of Medicine. And I’m the head of career development. So I think the piece of financial advice that I’m glad I followed was really thinking about exactly how you spend your money each month and being very, very intentional about the way that you spend it and accountable. Right. So when I was in grad school, I had my own place and I was able to go on vacation and I was able to manage my money well, and that was because honestly, I had parents that taught me how to do so. So I had the proverbial envelope system and everything had a place. I think what I also did was I bought life insurance back in that time. That was really, really good life insurance. And I’m so glad I did that. And I did a little bit of investing and I didn’t have any debt coming out of undergrad. So that made a huge difference. And I didn’t come out of grad school with any debt either. So that’s made a big difference at this point.

Funding/Income: Colleen Gleeson, University of Texas at Austin

14:41 Colleen G: I’m Colleen Gleeson. I am the assistant director for advanced Degree Employer Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin So when I did my master’s program, I didn’t really get any funding, and I just thought that was the end of that. But now, having worked with worked with master students on the other side, I’ve seen how current master students have asked, researched and just pushed to actually to get more funding and to advocate for themselves and to identify additional funding resources. So I wish that someone had told me to be more persistent because there is there are funds out there. You just have to you just have to put the time and the research into it.

Funding/Income: Derek Attig, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

15:22 Derek A: I’m Derek Attig I work in the Graduate college at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. And as a graduate student, I’m really glad that I saw that opportunity is to get income. Even small amounts of income from a variety of places, because it gave me a lot of skills as also as well as just consistent, reliable money coming in.

Retirement Savings: Peter Myers, Washington University in Saint Louis

15:47 Peter M: My name is Peter Myers. I’m at Washington University in Saint Louis. The piece of advice that I’m glad I took as a postdoc is to put everything I can into a Roth IRA.

Employment: Kelly Graham, New York University

16:01 Kelly G: Hi, my name is Kelly Graham and I am from New York University. One of the best pieces of financial advice that I ever got and that I followed was that to go work at the university that you want to get your degree from because then you can go for free. Most universities offer tuition remission, so identify the university I wanted to go to. I got a full time job. I went to school for free and I built my resume at the same time.

Funding/Income: Erin Brown, UCLA

16:29 Erin B: Hi. So I’m Erin Brown. I am the associate director of Graduate Career Services at UCLA. And I guess the piece of financial advice that I wish that I had followed when I went to graduate school is I should have done my research and I should have applied for every extramural grant or fellowship that I could have found. I think it would have made my life so much easier after graduate school. I think that what I did was I used my savings to finance graduate school, and that money would have been really helpful when I left graduate school because I feel like I ate up all of the savings that I had while I was in grad school.

Funding/Income: Baron Haber, UC Santa Barbara

17:11 Baron H: my name is Baron Haber I’m the assistant director of Professional Development for Graduate Division at University of California, Santa Barbara. So one piece of financial advice that I wish I would have followed during graduate school better is I wish I would have had a calendar that was alerting me to deadlines for fellowships and other extramural funding opportunities. Like I always found out about them like two days before the deadline and then, like, talk myself out of trying to throw together an application. So I think I could have taken more advantage of applying for those opportunities if I had been more organized and kind of like known to be anticipating these things. And also that if I would have just had like standard statements prepared for those sorts of things a little bit earlier on in my career by the time I figured out I should be doing those things, I was like beyond the university requirements for that. So

Funding/Income: Shawn Warner, UC Santa Barbara

18:06 Shawn W: My name is Shawn Warner. I’m the director of Professional development for the Graduate Division at UC Santa Barbara. And one piece of advice I’m very glad I followed was when I was considering applying to grad school, I talked with someone who was about to finish their grad program, and they said, Do not do a study program unless you are paid to do so. And so I was unfortunately applying to grad school in 2009 during the recession, and I applied lots of places and I only got a financial funding offer from one. Thankfully, that was my number one pick and that’s where I went and I’m very glad I followed that piece of advice.

Financial Habits: Katy Peplin, Thrive PhD

18:50 Katy P: Hi, I’m Katy Peplin from Thrive PHD. You can find me at thrive dash PhD dot com. I work with graduate students all around the world on being a scholar and a human and the piece of financial advice that I am so glad that I followed during grad school was. Pay attention to your finances. I know so many people got sort of caught unawares by tax bills that they didn’t have, like living expenses that they weren’t prepared to handle. And I was really grateful that I kept an eye on. My budget is activating and nerve wracking as that could be sometimes when I was low on summer funding and always took extra jobs to make sure that I felt as secure as I could because I knew I wouldn’t be able to study if I was panicked about where I was going to eat next week

Financial Habits: Roshni, Johns Hopkins University

19:36 Roshni: Roshni from Johns Hopkins University. And I’m answering the question what piece of financial advice did I wish I had followed during grad school or post-doc? And that would be to not be afraid about talking about money. Culturally, it’s not the norm from where I grew up. And so if I knew to get over some of the intimidation around money, I may have made more empowered and more informed decisions.

Commercial

20:04 Emily: These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2023 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is September 15, 2023. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at time tax, 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. If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. Now back to our interview.

Retirement Savings: Sonali Majumdar, Princeton University

22:11 Sonali M: Hi, everyone. I am Sonali Majumdar at the Graduate Career Consortium Annual meeting. I’m Assistant Dean for Professional Development at Princeton University. And I just wanted to say in terms of, like, what I wish I had done as a graduate student and postdoc in terms of financial decisions, I wish I had created a Roth IRA and started my investment portfolio early. That’s the best way to. It. Also incentivizes and motivates you to save and invest, and I wish I had done that sooner. So that’s my little advice.

Financial Literacy: Diane Safer, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

22:48 Diane S: So, hi, I’m Diane Safer, the director of career professional development for graduate students and postdocs at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. And I think the idea of just welcoming new post-docs and graduate students to the idea of financial literacy right from the start so that they understand, considering especially that postdocs are international and don’t know about saving for retirement and how to live on a paycheck, that’s not a lot in New York

Housing: Kathryn Sawyer Vidrine, University of Notre Dame

23:16 Kathryn SV: I’m Kathryn Sawyer Vidrine from Notre Dame, and I wish that when I was starting graduate school in South Bend that I had just gone and bought a house instead of dithering about it because I wasn’t sure if I was going to stick around.

Housing: Tom Meyers, University of Notre Dame

23:32 Tom M: So my name is Tom Meyers. I’m also from the University of Notre Dame. And to Kathryn’s point, one thing I do with graduate students now is when I get incoming graduate students, I tell them, you can rent an apartment that’s a studio for 1100 dollars a month across campus, or you can drive five miles and pay a mortgage of 858.77 every month.

Retirement Savings: Karin Lawton-Dunn, Iowa State University

23:51 Karin L-D: Hi, I am Karin Lawton-Dunn at Iowa State University. And this question is, what piece of financial advice do are you glad to follow during your graduate program? And that was a long time ago for me. But I did have a I did work three years professionally before. And my colleague, we came back to grad school and she cashed out her 401K and I left mine in and I’m getting closer and closer to retirement and I’m very thankful I left that in. So I do not cash out 401Ks.

Retirement Savings: Megan Brock

24:22 Megan B: Okay, so I’m Dr. Megan Brock, and I think that I wish I would have I would to really look into the retirement plans that people offer you, because as a new grad moving into the field. I’m in the state of Georgia, you pick a program and you’re in it. There’s no switching up. The only way that you leave is if you leave the system. So where everybody else has something that they can if they want to purchase a home, they could pull out there for a1k or whatever type of retirement plan. Well, I’m a teacher retirement system and then I’m, you know, my pension, so to speak, is invested for ten years. All my friends can go out, purchase a home and have that saved up because that’s like kind of and of course, it’s for retirement. But, you know, a house is an investment, right? I can’t do that. I didn’t think about it. I was like, Oh, it’s easy to click the button and now you’re in. And now there’s no way that I can kind of help myself. The first generation, everything first, you know, the first person in my family to be able to do this is like, I can’t I can’t leverage that kind of like professional benefit of having retirement savings accounts. I didn’t select that option. So, yeah, I would say like, you know, just ask people about their options. The pros and cons, pause, don’t feel rushed. Because it will seem like you have to fill your paperwork out by a certain deadline, but you can always ask for those types of extensions. You can always ask to meet with, like whoever the H.R. officer is. You can always ask for that, you know, more time to get it sort of position for whatever school system that you’re going to be with. And so that’s my biggest like, dang, I wish I would have known that other that other than like living within my means. But like, the biggest thing is like, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And it we have to be prepared to be the people who can honestly retire at 50 and 60, like enjoy the rest of our life if we plan accordingly and not just like pick something that’s the easiest option. So that’s my piece of advice.

Retirement Savings: Christine Krieger, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

26:13 Christine K: Hi, I’m Christine Krieger. I’m with the training office, with NIDDK and my question is, what piece of financial advice are you glad you followed or do you wish you had followed during graduate school or as opposed to. So the advice I wish I had followed was that you are always welcome to follow your dreams. Just open a Roth. From the very beginning.

Funding/Income: Katie Homar

26:40 Katie H: So I’m Katie Homar, and my advice is take advantage of small travel grants from student organizations and campus offices to travel to conferences and grow your professional network.

Financial Habits: Mabel Perez-Oquendo, MD Anderson

26:52 Mabel P-K: Hi. My name is Mabel Perez-Oquendo. I am a current admin public fellow at MD Anderson. So one piece of advice that I wish I knew when I was doing my graduate school is to have saving accounts. And this is because, like, unexpected things happens. And also we want to have some like personal work life balance and we want to like travel and we want to take vacations. But if we don’t have that saving account, how we can accomplish that goal. So I wish that someone told me, Hey, you shall save part of your salary to go out and have fun and travel when you feel overwhelmed. So that is my piece of advice.

Negotiation: Hecmarie Meléndez-Fernández, West Virginia University

27:35 Hecmarie M-F: Hi, my name is Hecmarie Meléndez-Fernández, and I’m a recent Ph.D. grad at West Virginia University. And the one piece of financial advice I wish I had followed was to negotiate your benefits package for your job. There’s always room for negotiation. So.

Housing: Amanda Figuera, University of Washington Tacoma

27:55 Amanda F: My name is Amanda Figuera. I’m the senior director of Student Transitions and Success at the University of Washington Tacoma. And during graduate school we got creative with housing arrangements, and so I shared a one bedroom condo with a roommate who was doing lab work. And so we had like a hoteling bedroom almost in the living room. And that was one way that we were able to afford the cost of living in Seattle.

Employment: Mallorie Smith, Mississippi State University

28:19 Mallorie S: My name is Mallorie Smith. I’m the financial wellness program coordinator at Mississippi State University. And one piece of financial advice that I’m glad I followed as a grad student was that I sought out employment with my school that I wanted to attend first. And because of that, I got free classes two free classes this semester, and I was able to get my MBA that way. And now I’m about to get my Ph.D. in the same way for free. So all I’m paying for is textbooks, and I know where to find that cheap.

Moving: Helen Colby, Indiana University

28:49 Helen C: Hey, I am Helen Colby. I’m an assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University School of Business, and I am the chair of the Heck for Research Committee. And the piece of financial advice that I didn’t get in grad school that I wish I had gotten was to plan for that post-graduation move because I was in grad school in New Jersey and I got a postdoc in Los Angeles. And I realized about three months before I actually started the job that I was going to have to pay to move all my stuff across the country and put a down payment and pay first month’s rent and live for a month because I got paid monthly as a postdoc. But I didn’t get my first paycheck until I had been working for a month. And I was already a little strapped because I was in grad school and my husband’s in law school, I wouldn’t have any money. And then to move, that was very complicated. So we worked it out by being broke and side hustles and the one credit card we had that had a $1,000 limit on it. But if I had thought about having to move as opposed to just this is great, I’m going to have a better job that pays more. Not a lot more, but more. I would have planned for that better and at the very least spread my side hustling across more.

Financial Habits: Matt Hertenstein, DePaul University

30:04 Matt H: Hi, my name is Matt Hertenstein, a college professor at DePaul University, received my Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley in 2002 the piece of advice that I wish I had followed in graduate school would be. Even then, I had a little bit to save, and I wish I had done a little bit better job at putting that away into a retirement account and started the snowball. Then rather than waiting a little bit

Debt: Eric Monday, University of Kentucky

30:35 Eric M: Eric Monday Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration at the University of Kentucky. I think the financial advice that’s most helpful when I think back to my grad experience is a professor told me do not take on an extreme amount of debt. You know, figure out a way, even if it takes you a little bit longer, don’t take on a lot of debt. So that’s the advice that helped me the most.

Debt: Byron Kerr, Texas State University

31:01 Byron T: Hi, I’m Dr. Byron Kerr with Financial aid and scholarships at Texas State University, and I received my Ph.D. from Florida State University in Tallahassee working on my Ph.D. I had developed a lot of debt over the years, like a credit card debt, and to get out from underneath that, I reached out to a nonprofit credit agency that helped negotiate with the credit card companies to help me get that debt that paid off.

Financial Habits: Anna Sheufelt, Duke University

31:23 Anna S: My name is Anna Sheufelt. I work at Duke University, overseeing the educational programing and outreach for the Office of Student Loans and Personal Finance. The piece of financial advice that I wish I would have followed when I was in graduate school, I would be to spend less and save more. It sounds pretty simple take to managing money, but I really wish I would have built up that financial foundation because once I increase my knowledge of other things I could be doing with my money, I would have been in a position to just act. And I sort of had to continue with that foundation of, Nope, I have to save first because I didn’t do a good enough job when I was in my master’s program.

Financial Assistance Programs: Gilbert, University of Texas at Austin

32:04 Gilbert: My name is Gilbert. Financial advice I wish I would have followed was maybe just looking more into assistance programs or basic needs programs here in the city of Austin, especially coming from an area that where the cost of living was pretty low. And we went to a city that has one of the highest cost of links in the nation. I wish I would have looked more into like rental assistance programs, and Austin has a couple of them that will help people with low income cover partial or full rental cost and also just any assistance with regards to just basic needs like food and Internet subsidies. That would have helped me focus more on my graduate program. Also, it’s in Edwards and working at U.T. and not have to worry about budgeting too much and sacrificing like someone’s and some needs to continue going to grad school and living here in Austin.

Financial Literacy: Anne Xiong, UC Berkeley 

33:02 Anne X: So, yeah, my name is Anne Xiong. I am the program manager for Financial Wellness Program at U.C. Berkeley. Answering this question, it is what piece of finish or otherwise are you glad you followed or do you wish you had followed during grad school? So yeah, there’s a reason is kind of related to the reason why I’m very passionate about financial wellness education because I didn’t have any. So I wish I had have someone that taught me more about money management so I can start to pay more attention to manage my finances. When I was in college, in grad school, I just felt like if I had someone provide me with more guidance, I probably will and was less staff and more resources. And then when I started my first job, I probably will just have a better start. So. Yeah.

Mindset: Kirby Williams, Advantage Publications

33:59 Kirby W: So I’m Kirby Williams, and I am the owner of Advantage Publications. We do financial education, Learning Materials. So I, I didn’t realize until just now why my father always said that if you would pay for high school in college and we would have no loans and that wasn’t very important to him. But that if we want to wanted to go to grad school, that that would be on us to pay for. And I think he really wanted us to see the return on our investment. But, you know, it’s a whole different feeling when you have to pay the bills for it. And he didn’t want us to stress about that for college, which is a wonderful gift that he gave us. You know, you didn’t have to stress about that. Um, but at some point you have to grow up and you do stress about it, and you should stress about it because it’s your career and it’s your life. And if you’re not going for something that gives you joy, then all the career and, you know, stress and the money, stress and the time is wasted.

Financial Habits: Becky Sparks, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

35:02 Becky S: My name is Becky Sparks. I’m with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and my advice that I wish I had followed is to save as much as you can while you’re in grad school. I know that’s a very difficult thing to try to do, but your future self will thank you and take it from me who did not take that advice. You will definitely be glad that you did Absolutely

Funding/Income: Robert

35:27 Robert: Yeah. So my name is Robert. I had a lot of helpful advice from people in my department and also people at the university who were able to direct me to different ways to apply for different fellowships and other kinds of opportunities to help me pursue my research in ways that I didn’t really know where there. So that was looking beyond the department, looking for other opportunities for external scholarships, external fellowships, and then finding those two and finally get me to complete my research in the end with that funding.

Student Loans: Sara, Baylor University

36:00 Sara: Hi, I’m Sara. I am at Baylor University. And then my big piece of advice that I followed after leaving my graduate program and currently is I utilize public service student loan forgiveness. And I think a lot of grad students who are either going into academia or the government or any type of nonprofit or education work often don’t know that they can really lower that Student loan monthly repayment if they go down an income driven repayment plan and then utilize. Public service student loan forgiveness. So definitely check that out as we’re going into student loan repayment.

Financial Habits and Retirement Savings: Beth Hunsaker, University of Utah

36:47 Beth H: My name is Beth Hunsaker with the University of Utah’s Financial Wellness Center. I’m the associate director, So thinking back to grad school, the things I’m glad that I did is is really just stick to the fundamentals of looking at what my income was and make sure I was budgeting it, saving. I was investing in my Roth IRA and now 20 years later, has made all the difference. Even the $50 a month I found back then is setting me up for financial success now.

Tax Implications: Ben Raines, Ohio State University

37:19 Ben R: So Ben Raines Program Coordinator for financial education and a student life at Ohio State University. So I was lucky to have a graduate tuition stipend as part of my one at the university. And I’m glad that I went through and thought about how much $25,000 taxable income would affect my income over the course of a year. And while that was unpleasant, I was at least prepared to have my take home income go down $800 a month for six months of the year.

Funding/Income: Michael Dedmon, National Endowment for Financial Education

37:47 Michael D: My name is Michael Dedmon. I’m the research director at the National Endowment for Financial Education and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Syracuse University. Graduate students approach the Ph.D. journey and get a different range of support from their institution, depending on sort of where it’s ranked, the kind of resources they have, and then where they hope to place their graduate students. I know that for me, I was a teaching at a pretty teaching heavy department where almost all of the financial support was really, really tied to doing that teaching. I wish that I would have realized earlier on the importance of seeking out external sources of funding, and I wish that I would have advocated more for myself. I wish they would have advocated more for fellow graduate students with the graduate school and with my department to provide those resources because of how critical they are, because it’s very difficult to do your work, to finish your degree, and to produce the knowledge that the university wants if you don’t get that additional support. But also the process of achieving and getting that support is really critical. And so I think the universities like the country over, especially the ones that are outside of the top ten that don’t have right, those kinds of resources need to think better about how to support graduate students in getting resources to specifically support their research.

Employment: Gilbert Rogers, University of Oregon

39:01 Gilbert R: My name is Gilbert Rogers, Senior assistant director of financial Wellness at the University of Oregon. So the piece of advice I wish I would have followed during grad school or during my doctoral studies was to seek out an employer that would pay for that. I didn’t know I would land in higher education. I was currently still working in corporate finance, and that’s where I first kind of caught wind of all the loans and loan debt. So I didn’t have zero debt until my doctoral degree. So that’s a piece of advice I work out.

Outtro

39:37 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

University-Level Policy Ideas to Improve the Financial Lives of Graduate Students and Postdocs

August 14, 2023 by Jill Hoffman 5 Comments

In this episode, Emily shares the microinterviews she recorded at two higher education conferences this past summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What policy at your current university or one you worked at or attended in the past would you change to improve the financial lives of the PhD students and/or postdocs?” Listen through the episode for numerous ideas for policy change to advocate for at your university.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Graduate Career Consortium (GCC) Annual Meeting
  • Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance (HEFWA) Summit
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • Dr. Katy Peplin, Thrive PhD
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
University-Level Policy Ideas to Improve the Financial Lives of Graduate Students and Postdocs

Teaser

00:00 Michael D: And the reproduction of knowledge requires financial security. And when you’re in a situation where you’re not getting paid a living wage, it’s very, very difficult to achieve that financial security. So for me, that’s definitely the major policy change that I would love graduate programs across the country to adopt.

Introduction

00:19 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others.

00:50 Emily: This is Season 15, Episode 5, and today I’m sharing the microinterviews I recorded at two higher education conferences this past summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What policy at your current university or one you worked at or attended in the past would you change to improve the financial lives of the PhD students and/or postdocs?” Listen through the episode for numerous ideas for policy change to advocate for at your university. The two conferences I attended were the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting or GCC and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance Summit or HEFWA Summit. GCC is primarily attended by university staff members working with PhD students and postdocs in career and professional development. The HEFWA Summit is attended by university staff members working in financial wellness and financial aid across undergraduate and graduate populations. These two conferences were excellent networking opportunities for me on top of the built-in professional development. However, there are plenty of universities who were not represented at these conferences.

02:10 Emily: Would you please consider recommending my financial education seminars and workshops at your university? My most popularly requested events for the upcoming academic year are How to Survive and Thrive Financially in Graduate School or Your Postdoc, How to Not Hate Your Fellowship During Tax Season, and Up-Level Your Cash Flow as a Graduate Student or Postdoc. Please direct an appropriate potential host within your graduate school, postdoc office, grad student association, etc. to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ where they can learn more. Thank you in advance!

02:53 Emily: You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s15e5/. Without further ado, here are the microinterviews recorded at GCC and the HEFWA Summit.

What policy at your current university or one you worked at or attended in the past would you change to improve the financial lives of the PhD students and/or postdocs?

Understanding Financial Priorities of International Students: Karin Lawton-Dunn, Iowa State University

03:11 Karin L-D: Okay. So I’m Karin Lawton-Dunn and I’m at Iowa State University. And what policy would you change when you’re current or former university campus to improve financial life for graduate students or postdocs? Since I work primarily with international students, I think I would try to change the understanding of faculty and staff of all of the different priorities that international students have with their money, and so that, you know, they really will go without food, without meals, so that they’re able to send some money home to their families that are also in need and struggling with food and housing. And I think that we need to be understanding of that and not punishing them for doing that.

Fee Exemption: Laura Farrell-Wortman, University of Arizona Cancer Center

03:53 Laura F-W: I’m Laura Farrell-Wortman. I’m the assistant director for academic programs with the University of Arizona Cancer Center. So I think that the policy that I would change would be to exempt PhD students from required fees, because I think that it really is, you know, important revenue generation for the university. But it does feel a little bit like kind of like the company store right where you are getting the money for working there, but that you’re turning right around and giving the money back to the university so it doesn’t feel like it’s a really sustainable system. And I would I would be interested to see what kind of revenue generation they’re actually getting from the PhD students and whether or not that could be found in an alternative means.

Postdoc Stipends and Benefits: Kaylee Steen, University of Michigan Medical School

04:41 Kaylee S: My name is Kaylee Steen. I work at the University of Michigan Medical School, and my advice for changing a policy at our institution that we’re actually implementing is ensuring that all postdocs at least make the minimum NIH stipend for their years of experience at the university. I think is really key. And another policy that we have not implemented would be that postdocs receive the same retirement benefits as are the rest of our staff, with the 2 to 1 matching.

Postdoc Benefits: Chris Smith, Virginia Tech

05:19 Chris S: My name’s Chris Smith. I manage the Office of Post-Doc Affairs at Virginia Tech. And one policy I’d like to see change really across the landscape is treating postdocs more like employees with employee benefits, especially retirement matching. Some institutions do that. We are one of them, but a lot of them don’t. And I think it’s important for them to kind of set them up for success.

Postdoc Training and Benefits: Weiwei Xu, Tulane School of Medicine

05:40 WeiWei X: My name is Weiwei Xu. I’m the academic and career advisor for a biomedical sciences graduate program within the Tulane School of Medicine. I think we can actually provide postdocs with more training programs as well as social benefits and retirement benefits so that they feel more supported by the school and by their training programs.

Cost of Living Adjustments: Beth Hunsaker, University of Utah

06:05 Beth H: My name is Beth Hunsaker with the University of Utah’s Financial Wellness Center. I’m the associate director, and the policy that I would want to see changed is to have cost of living adjustments, how much it costs to have rent. When that’s over half of what their stipend is and they’re not able to go and work somewhere else does doesn’t work for their families.

Consistent Funding and Transparency: Chris Hamm, University at Buffalo

06:28 Chris H: My name is Chris Hamm from the University at Buffalo. And the first prompt it was asking about what policy would you change in your current or previous campus approved financial life for grad students? And for me, just working with graduate students, noticing the opportunities for GA TA and RA positions, we do have, you know, minimum amount of financing for those positions that are agreed upon. But I think it’s not consistent across the board for each of different departments. And also true, since it’s a larger university, it’s very siloed as far as what information’s available to graduate students. So I think being able to have that be a little bit more transparent, giving them the opportunity to be more competitive, get themselves these positions and also make them aware of it, because a lot of times it’s only specifically in departments and I think it’s a really great opportunity because that’s something that I did when I was in grad school as well to help fund my education and get my experiences.

Postdoc Benefits: Alexandra Schnoes, Science Communication Lab

07:22 Alexandra S: Hi, I’m Alexandra Schnoes. I am the director for professional development at the Science Communication Lab. One of the things that I think about a lot is, is how postdocs at different institutions are often under these weird sort of employment categories. They’re often in different employment categories at the same institution. They often don’t have access to things, even though they’re considered employees are also considered trainees. So they also often don’t have access to things like sometimes even health care. But potentially child care support or retirement accounts. And and all of these things are ridiculous. These are these are people with Ph.Ds who are acting as professionals and and they should be able to be treated like you know, the employees that they actually are, as opposed to some weird, crazy, you know, none of the above, which means they get none of the benefits and all of the work of being a postdoc sometimes for years on end, doing amazing work, making the university home. But then they’ve sacrificed finances, potentially health care, retirement accounts, the ability to have children, all of this, all of these are things that policies could actually help address.

Child Care: Kathryn Sawyer Vidrine, University of Notre Dame

08:57 Kathryn SV: So this is Kathryn Sawyer Vidrine from Notre Dame and if I were to change one policy to make life easier on graduate students and post-docs, it would be to provide childcare for children under two years old because there is almost none in our area. 

Postdoc Benefits: Peter Myers, Washington University in Saint Louis

09:16 Peter M: My name is Peter Myers. I’m at Washington University in Saint Louis. The one policy that I would change for postdocs would be to make them all employees of the university.

Wages/Stipends: Elizabeth Eikmann, Washington University in Saint Louis

09:30 Elizabeth E: My name is Elizabeth Eikmann. I am the program coordinator for Postdoctoral Community Engagement at Washington University in Saint Louis, and I was a graduate student at Saint Louis University. And if I could change one policy for my former university’s campus to improve the financial life of the grad students there, it would be immediate graduate assistantship raises. The wages currently are not even living wage wages. Graduate assistants there are paid only nine months out of the year instead of 12. So not only implementing a raise but also instituting a year round salary, which also includes year round access to health insurance, which is not currently a policy there on campus.

Retirement Benefits: Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann, Humanities Without Walls Consortium

10:24 Maggie NH: My name is Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann. I’m the associate director of Career diversity for the Humanities Without Walls Consortium. Which is a grant for a Mellon funded, grant funded project at space at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But I am located at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. So I think the policy advice that I would give and more systemically across, you know, higher education across the nation would be to recommend to universities that you consider one of the benefits for graduate students enrolled in your schools to give them access to starting their own 403b plans while they’re working on their master’s degrees or their PhDs, and making that a real benefit of, you know, if you’re at a public university that has you know, that regard, students are organized, making that a part of your union contract negotiations, aiming at private institutions, right? I mean, it’s not a heavy cost to the institution at all just to give them a framework or structure to start investing into those for all three plants. So that would be one of the policies that I would advocate as a shift in our higher ed, higher education ecosphere. Yeah.

Financial Education: Brady Krien, University of Iowa

11:32 Brady K: So my name is Brady Krien and I work at the University of Iowa, and the policy that I would change on our campus is to actually give us greater latitude to provide resources and information about finances for graduate students, and particularly related to the tax implications of fellowships that they win and how they need to prepare in advance to deal with those.

Financial Education: Yazzmynn Martinez, University of Colorado, Boulder

11:58 Yazzmynn M: Hi, everyone. My name is Yazzmynn Martinez. I am a events education and emergency response coordinator at the University of Colorado Boulder. I work at the Basic Needs center and one policy that I would change about the university campus to improve the financial life of our graduate and postdoc students is to provide a more formal education on basic needs in general so that can include how to get housing before they start college and also how to like budget with groceries and other expenses. And I would also advocate to increase the stipend just because oftentimes that’s not even enough for students to cover their living expenses.

Transparency: Katy Peplin, Thrive PhD

12:45 Katy P: Hi, I’m Katy Peplin from Thrive PHD. You can find me at thrive dash PhD dot com. I work with graduate students all around the world on being a scholar and a human. What policy would be useful. I think that the biggest policy that universities can put in place is transparency. I know so many students who have been caught in between different policies where they weren’t aware that certain things applied to them when they actually did or they lost out on money because things were well communicated. And I know that it’s extra work for universities to make some of those things transparent. But the more information that’s readily and easily accessible, the less grad students have to depend on their departments or their advisors who might not be well informed to let them. Know about opportunities. So transparency.

Commercial

13:31 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2023-2024 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/speaking/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Wages/Stipends: Sasha Goldman, Boston University

15:38 Sasha G: I am Sasha Goldman. I am the director of PCE resources at Boston University. And if I could change a policy on my current university campus to improve the financial life of the graduate students and postdocs, I would give everyone 12 months of funding and everyone more money.

Fellowship Payment: Joseph Gonzales, University of Miami

15:56 Joseph G: My name is Joseph Gonzales and I’m the senior director in the Office of Science and Assistance at the University of Miami. And the policy that I would change and this isn’t specifically related to my current campus. It’s based on my experience at different campuses. It’s how people pay like to pay fellowships, and especially when there’s a research component to it, they tend not to use the employment side of it where it would be there would be tax withholdings, because I believe sometimes faculty think that it’s a way to sidestep tax. The tax requirement when they don’t realize that it’s actually basically pushing it down the line for the student to deal with later and sometimes that often students don’t realize that there is a tax liability too, that comes with their financial aid. And by the time they’ve found out they haven’t saved money for that liability. So puts them in this financial crunch, sort of once their taxes are had been filed or they don’t claim it, and then it just gets pushed further down the line. So I would like faculty and universities in general to have said you’re trying to help other people. I don’t know if it’s more of a process that is that are aligned because it changes from one university to the other and how these are handled.

Wages/Stipends: Alex Embree, University of Missouri

17:39 Alex E: My name is Alex Embree. I’m the program manager at the Office for Financial Success for the University of Missouri. And the policy that I would want to have changed is that graduate student payment is in accordance with the value that they bring to the university when they are operating in a teaching capacity or grant. They need to be paid accordingly.

Time to Degree Transparency: Robbie Pearson, Southern Methodist University

18:03 Robbie P: My name is Robbie Pearson, and I’m the director of graduate and postdoctoral graduate career development and post-doc affairs at SMU in Dallas, Texas. And in terms of policies that I would be interested in revising around graduate education to improve the financial life of grad students and postdocs, I’m really interested in time to degree. I would like to see more transparency around how long it takes to earn a doctoral degree, and I’d like to see policies and initiatives around making sure that that’s a reasonable amount of time. Right. So in some fields it could take eight, nine, ten years to earn a doctoral degree or longer. And, you know, there’s some case that that’s important for the intellectual development of the scholar and for the research that they’re contributing to. But I also want to balance that against the reality that graduate students should be thinking of their time in grad student in grad school as an investment, not only into the intellectual development and into their field, but also into their financial futures. So getting them into the workforce in a reasonable amount of time is a really good thing. From my perspective.

Financial Education and Wages/Stipends: Stevie Eberle, Stanford University School of Medicine

19:03 Steve E: Stevie Eberle, executive director and assistant dean of biosecurity at Stanford University School of Medicine. So what policy would you change in your current or former university campus to improve the financial life of graduate students and postdocs? I would. We have an entry level class that all incoming graduate students have to take. And then there is a kind of an intro group that postdocs attend. And I really do wish we had financial training and planning built into the trainings, especially in the Bay Area because it’s so expensive and you you can’t quite understand it until you’re there. So I really would like somebody who can very directly explain the market and directly explain how to navigate it and have the resources to develop that. That being said, I think it is the administration’s responsibility to also help build better structures for that which we are working on, I will say. So we have subsidized housing in that type of thing, but subsidized housing is still very expensive. So I would like to have better pay, better caps, better minimum salaries and better coaching for faculty on how to treat something else. And often treat students and postdocs as more respectfully and more like adults and give them better tools for negotiation. Because I do think sometimes faculty just don’t know that. Sometimes they do, and that’s the problem, but sometimes they don’t. So I’d like to do better education on equitable offers and help better develop those kind of baseline expectations for parents and for this.

Cost Transparency: Derek Attig, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

20:57 Derek A: I’m Derek Attig. I work in the Graduate college at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. And I’d like to see it be consistent that tuition and fees and the total cost of graduate education is completely transparent to people before they apply and when they’re making the decision to attend so they can understand the costs and weigh that against outcomes they hope to achieve.

Wages/Stipends: Michael Dedmon, National Endowment for Financial Education

21:25 Michael D: My name is Michael Dedmon. I’m the research director at the National Endowment for Financial Education and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Syracuse University. I can definitely say for me that the single policy change that I would love for my graduate program, which is still sort of considering to adopt, is to raise wages and raise stipends for for graduate students. My department recently unionized, even though I’m an advanced graduate student and no longer in the bargaining unit. It’s something that’s very, very close to my heart that I think is very important. It’s beneficial for universities in terms of recruitment and retention. It reduces time to degree. It reduces attrition. We all know the benefits of it, in addition to the fact that the work that the students put in is what makes the universities work. They’re teaching students, they’re producing research, they’re publishing papers. It’s a beneficial situation for everybody. And the reproduction of knowledge requires financial security. And when you’re in a situation where you’re not getting paid a living wage, it’s very, very difficult to achieve that financial security. So for me, that’s definitely the major policy change that I would love graduate programs across the country to adopt.

Wages/Stipends: Byron Kerr, Texas State University

22:30 Byron K: Hi, I’m Dr. Byron Kerr with Financial aid and scholarships at Texas State University, and I received my Ph.D. from Florida State University in Tallahassee and what I would like to see changed on college campuses is back in the day. At any rate, my stipend check for my for my Ph.D. always came in a month after the payment deadline. So I always generated a $100 late fee every single semester. So I was always costing me money to be employed.

Housing: Anna Sheufelt, Duke University

22:58 Anna S: My name is Anna Sheufelt I work at Duke University, overseeing the educational programing and outreach for the Office of Student Loans and Personal Finance. A policy change that I would love to see come to. My campus is guaranteed housing for our international masters and graduate students. These are folks who have some of the largest complexities going on in their lives and also some of the greatest financial constraints with the international student status.

Wages/Stipends and Tuition: Annie Maxfield, University of Texas at Austin

23:28 Annie M: My name is Annie Maxfield. And I am at UT Austin in Texas. Career engagement and I would say the biggest financial policy problem is that tuition has continually become higher and higher over the years. Yet graduates students stipends are not increasing at that rate. And so we know the university is taking in more funds. However, the distribution of those funds is inequitable in terms of how graduate student labor is actually compensated.

Child Care: Phil Schuman, Indiana University

24:03 Phil S: So my name is Phil Schuman. I’m from Indiana University. One thing I do expect to see for a lot of grad students throughout higher ed is more access to child care and whether or not that’s temporary or permanent or whatever. But just the ability for grad students to be able to focus on their studies, their academics when they have child, if you have childcare issues come up, just because we’ve seen a lot of childcare and daycare cost issues and closing on campus. But I think it’s one thing, it’s a huge barrier that could potentially prevent grad students from getting over that hurdle. 

Fellowship Transparency and Experiential Learning for International Students: Sonali Majumdar, Princeton University

24:34 Sonali M:  Yeah. Hi, everyone. I am Sonali Majumdar and Assistant Dean for Professional Development in the Grad Futures program of the Graduate School of Princeton University. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about what kind of inclusive policies university campuses could have to support their international graduate students. And most of population on their financial wellness. And there are two things that come to mind. One is transparency on what kind of research fellowships are open to international graduate students and postdocs. And a lot of the universities do have research, Discovery Fellowship. Discovery databases like David Hopkins has a public dashboard that like lists all sorts of fellowships at the Graduate and closed off level by citizenship accessibility as well. And the other thing is experiential learning. What can we do to make experiential learning more accessible to international population? One pathway that does work is our internships and our fellowships that are funded by the institution that the students are working on, and that relates to work policies of how much academic hours on top of academic hours are. Students are available to work at university offices or other units on internships. And so there is definitely some interesting new programs that are helping out in this arena. And I hope more universities would eventually think about accessibility for their international population. On experiential learning. Thank you.

Financial Education: Matt Hertenstein, DePaul University

26:05 Matt H: Hi, my name is Matt Hertenstein, a college professor at DePaul University, received my Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley in 2000. It may have changed since I graduated, but the policy I would change was to actually teach some financial literacy advice and financial wellness to Ph.Ds and make that a priority during orientation and make sure that people actually knew that that was available to help them.

Health Insurance: Alex Yen, Boston University

26:33 Alex Y: Hi, my name is Alex Yen I am a postdoc at Boston University in the Professional Development and Postdoctoral Affairs office. The policy that I would change or wish could change is that I hope that more universities will allow graduate students who take time off to keep their student health insurance during that time off. So that way they can take care of their mental health while they are recovering or taking some time away.

Outtro

27:14 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Behind the Scenes at the Graduate Career Consortium 2023 Annual Meeting

July 17, 2023 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily opens up the audio diary she recorded while attending the 2023 annual meeting of the Graduate Career Consortium (GCC) as a sponsor. GCC is attended by university staff members who provide career and professional development services and programming to master’s students, PhD students, and postdocs. Emily shares the insights she gleaned from the keynote and member-generated sessions and the casual conversations around the meal tables and in the hallways. If you’ve ever wondered about the business side of Personal Finance for PhDs, this episode will give you some insight!

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Graduate Career Consortium
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Volunteer Form
  • Dr. Katy Peplin, Thrive PhD
  • Simone Stolzoff, The Good Enough Job, Reclaiming Life from Work
  • Dr. Sasha Goldman
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • Dr. Katie Kearns
  • Archer Career
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Behind the scenes at the Graduate Career Consortium 2023 Annual Meeting

Teaser

00:00 Emily: The basic like, sort of thesis of his book/talk is that white collar workers in America today are attempting to self-actualize through their careers and their jobs. And that’s not good for them personally, and it’s actually also not good for them in terms of their careers. He said a couple of times through the talk that putting all this, uh, pressure and expectation on our jobs is not something that they were designed to bear and they’re not bearing it. I actually found some pretty strong like personal finance themes, uh, peeking into this talk.

Introduction

00:45 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others.

01:14 Emily: This is Season 15, Episode 3, and today I’m opening up the audio diary I recorded while attending the 2023 annual meeting of the Graduate Career Consortium as a sponsor. GCC is attended by university staff members who provide career and professional development services and programming to master’s students, PhD students, and postdocs. I share the insights I gleaned from the keynotes and member-generated sessions and the casual conversations around the meal tables and in the hallways. If you’ve ever wondered about the business side of Personal Finance for PhDs, this episode will give you some insight!

01:52 Emily: I’m looking ahead to Season 16 of this podcast, in which we’ll return to our typical long-form interviews. This is your official invitation to please volunteer as a guest for one of the upcoming episodes! Please go to PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/ and fill out the quick form, and I’ll be in touch over email. I look forward to interviewing you soon! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s15e3/.

02:25 Emily: Without further ado, here’s my audio diary from the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Graduate Career Consortium. I want to give you a tiny bit of background information before jumping into the audio diary. The Graduate Career Consortium is a decades-old volunteer-run organization of about 450 members, and it’s for university staff members who work in career and professional development. It started with a narrow focus on PhD students and postdocs and has more recently opened up to people who serve master’s students as well. 2023 is my third year sponsoring the GCC Annual Meeting but only my second year attending the in-person annual meeting. I planned for about 200 people to be in attendance, but I think the actual numbers were somewhat lower, in part due to flight delays and cancellations in that particular week.

03:19 Emily: In my business, almost all of the revenue comes from my work with universities, and very little comes from the products I sell to individuals. I vastly prefer for graduate students and postdocs to access my content at no cost to them because the university is picking up the bill. Therefore, when you hear me refer to ‘clients’ in this audio diary, I’m referring to the staff members who contract with me to provide financial education programming.

03:44 Emily: One of my objectives in attending this meeting was actually to collect audio for two podcast episodes that I’m planning to publish in August 2023. I wrote two prompts and asked meeting attendees to respond to either or both in a short sound bit, approximately 30 seconds. In the audio diary, I call these microinterviews. Let’s jump in!

Travel Day: Monday, June 26, 2023

04:09 Emily: I am recording this about midday on Tuesday, July 27th, 2023. Yesterday, Monday was my long travel day from San Diego to Indianapolis. I decided to have a more relaxed morning in San Diego, so I booked a noon flight out of there. This is because it’s a Monday, which means that it’s the beginning of the week and my kids were both in summer camps for, uh, the first time this summer. We were on vacation prior to this point, so I wanted to help my husband get them out the door without also trying to get myself out the door simultaneously. So I left my house a little bit after 9:00 AM and got to the airport. In fact, got all the way through security and to my gate by 10:00 AM which was awesome. I set up at one of those little charging workstation kind of areas and I worked on a couple of final things for this conference.

05:03 Emily: Actually, I had one more final flyer that I wanted to print, uh, once I got to Indianapolis. So during that time I kind of tweaked and finished up the design of that flyer, and then I also started getting on the hova app and being active there and messaging people and welcoming people and posting things. I had two flights, one hop from San Diego to Denver, and then from Denver into Indianapolis. Sometimes I really am inspired and love to work on planes. Um, I never pay for wifi, so it’s kind of a good time to process my thoughts without getting distracted by anything on the internet, but Monday was not one of those days. I just took the time to like relax and rest and I did a lot of reading. The book I’m reading right now is Love Lettering by Kate Clayborne was a recommendation. I’m enjoying that.

05:50 Emily: So I basically just took some me time to relax and get my energy ready for the mad dash that is gonna happen, you know, between Tuesday evening and midday on Friday, we landed in Indianapolis at around 9:00 PM and I noticed, you know, in my Uber from the airport to the conference center, even at 9:30 PM in the summer, it is late in Indianapolis because we are in the bleeding edge of eastern time zone. So that was pretty interesting. All the travel on Monday went really smoothly. I got to my hotel around 10 and I tried to drop off the swag I brought with me. I brought pens and a little tiny flyer to go into the swag bags, but, um, the people who were doing that had left for the day. So I just went back to my room, said goodnight to my kids over FaceTime and read more on my book. Went to sleep around midnight with my alarm set for 7:00 AM for Tuesday.

GCC Pre-Conference Day: Tuesday, June 27, 2023

06:50 Emily: Tuesday morning. I woke up before my alarm at about 6:30 AM I guess I’m just so excited to be at GCC. Um, so I didn’t have to rush of a morning, just got ready and then at about 7:45 went off to find, uh, the person that I needed to deliver that swag to, which thankfully I was able to do immediately. They took it off my hands, they got it into the swag bags right away. Even the registration, um, for the early bird attendees was opening at eight. So I’m really grateful that they were able to do that so quickly. I also took that time to get my booth set up, so I brought with me like a brightly colored tablecloth and a table runner and a little sign that goes on my table. And so I set all that stuff up and while I was setting up, two really good things happened. The very first conference attendee that I saw, uh, we both did a, Hey, you look familiar, where have we met before thing? And it turns out we actually worked together, um, a couple of years ago, but it was all virtual. So of course it’s different seeing someone in person. So it was really great to see that person and I am excited to maybe renew my work, um, without office. And the second person I saw was not someone I had met before, but she works for an office that I have worked for virtually in the past. And when she, you know, figured out who I was, she said, we love you . And it was so great to hear that I thanked her so much. She was so sweet. And yeah, I hope to be working with that office in the coming year as well. Now that I know I have a couple different, uh, champions over there.

08:21 Emily: By the time I got my table set up, it was about 8:15 and I went to check in at the registration desk. They didn’t have my name badge ready yet, but the conference organizer just said I should grab some breakfast and go on in and eat, even though technically I wasn’t like registered for that session. This is again, sort of the early bird, um, first day attendees, they were having a breakfast together, but I took advantage. I crashed the breakfast, grabbed a plate of food, sat down at a table, you know, introduced myself all around, met some interesting people. One person was a wealth manager before starting graduate school. You’re gonna hear from that person on the sister podcast. This one that I’m recording as we go through. In fact, I was really regretting not bringing my recorder with me to breakfast. I wasn’t expecting necessarily right away to be interacting with trainees, so I didn’t have it on me, but I was telling people about the micro interviews for the podcast and several people on the table really interested in it.

09:12 Emily: Um, so yeah, met a wealth manager, um, met a couple other people. I had some things in common with, had a really interesting, although brief conversation with someone about postdoctoral training. And of course the differences between being an employee and being not an employee. They’re especially amplified in your postdoc. So I love talking about that kind of stuff here at gcc and I’m hoping for more conversations like that. After I finished up breakfast at about 8 45, I went back to my room and did a couple of errands. So I went and picked up the flyers that I had ordered for printing to have at my table. So walked over to the u p s store to get those. And then I walked in the other direction to go to CVS to get some supplies for my table. So I got a couple of bowls and some candy just to make people, you know, entice them over and make them feel welcome and maybe talk to me or check out my stuff.

10:00 Emily: Um, so I got that all set up. So all in all, I probably walked about a mile and a half and the air quality today is no good. I think there’s like smoke from a fire or something. Um, so the air quality’s pretty rough. I probably should not have been outside for that long, but yeah, needed to do those errands on foot. So I’m glad that was over. By the time I go back to my hotel, I was really like sweaty and feeling kind of grimy, not so great. So I decided it was a good time for a workout today, Tuesday is definitely my day with the most free time. So I knew if I didn’t take advantage of workout today, I was never gonna work out the rest of the time here. So I did a little workout in my hotel room, took a shower, feel really good and refreshed. And that brings you up to the present. I am recording this right before heading out to have lunch with Katy Peplin from Thrive PhD.

10:52 Emily: It’s 1:30 PM on Tuesday. I just got back to my hotel room after a great lunch with Katy Peplin of Thrive PhD. We have known each other for many, many, many years online only, but this is the first time that we’re meeting in person. I consider her sort of my colleague as like a fellow solopreneur who serves graduate students and postdocs, albeit in a very different way and on a very different subject. But anyway, it was great to meet her and catch up with her. And we had some great conversations about kind of the state of graduate education from our perspectives as sort of like, you know, people used to be in it and now we are outside, but we talked to a lot of people inside of it. And by the time you hear this, you either have already heard a couple of contributions Katy made to existing podcast episodes or maybe they’re coming up. But yeah, we did a couple of recordings. She was my first test case in terms of recording a micro interview at this conference. So really glad to have that done with. I am taking a break in my room right now. I’m gonna do a little bit of light emailing and get back to my booth a little later this afternoon.

11:58 Emily: All right, it is now 8:15 PM on Tuesday, and I’m back in my hotel room for the night. Uh, let’s see. So I was down in the kind of main conference area all through the registration period, which is three to 6:00 PM Um, it was a little slow, but there were, you know, a handful of people who stopped by my booth and introduced themselves. And I recorded a couple of micro podcast interviews during that time. So that was all good. And then things really picked up between six and 8:00 PM which was during the reception. And, um, I did a lot of mingling and networking. Basically my, uh, stance when I come to conferences like this, my attitude is that everybody here wants to meet me and I just need to give them the opportunity by walking up and introducing myself. So as a naturally shy person, this is not at all, uh, comfortable for me, but I push myself outta that comfort zone for the sake of my business.

12:59 Emily: And it’s actually, it can be really fun when it works out. So yeah, I met, um, a couple dozen people maybe this evening, you know, caught up with some old clients or maybe, you know, colleagues of people that I’ve worked with in the past. Certainly met a lot of new people, some of whom are interested in working with me, some of whom are not. And yeah, just got to talk about financial stuff with them. Some of them had really good, um, financial insights from their either time in graduate school or, you know, their current life. Some of ’em had questions, some of ’em had ideas about policy changes, which is the subject of one of the micro interviews. So yeah, recorded a bunch more micro interviews at that time. I think I’m up to 13 for the day. Pretty good for the first day. So yeah, today was a lot of unstructured time, but tomorrow we’re really getting into the meat of the conference and I’m looking forward to learning a lot and getting some new insights and sharing them here in this audio diary. I know I need a lot of rest and a good night’s sleep to be on my game for tomorrow. So yeah, I’m gonna stay in the rest of the night, uh, get ready for bed, do some reading, call my family and go to sleep early, I hope.

GCC Conference Day 1: Wednesday, June 28, 2023

14:14 Emily: Okay, wow, here I am on Wednesday evening at almost 9:30 PM and yeah, I recently finished my first long, long day at the conference, so I will try to do a recap for you now. It’s been a really great day. I woke up at six, managed to get in about 20 minutes of yoga before I needed to shower and get ready for the day. And, uh, breakfast opened at seven 30. It was from seven 30 to eight 30. And as a sponsor, my objective is to be at breakfast the whole time and sit at least a couple different tables and just meet and talk with as many people as I can. So I did manage that. Um, was at breakfast for an hour, I believe I sat at two different tables. Um, I made some like pretty decent connections at one of them in particular, some people I’m gonna follow up with.

15:10 Emily: And that was really exciting immediately after breakfast was the welcome to the conference. Um, and also the Wednesday keynote, the keynote speaker was Simone Stolzoff, I hope I’m pronouncing that close to correctly. And he recently published his first book called The Good Enough Job, Reclaiming Life from Work. And that was kind of the subject of his talk. I thought the keynote was really great. It’s always exciting for me to see, uh, other professional speakers engaging in their craft and try to take some, you know, tips away from what they’re doing. And yeah, I thought he had a good, really good mix of, um, speaking about personal stories from his life, drawing in stories from his book, um, relating to the audience, like the specific, um, subject of this conference was definitely tied in with like all of his themes and giving us some exercises and time to talk and reflect with one another.

16:09 Emily: So from what I could understand, the basic like, sort of thesis of his book/talk is that white collar workers in America today are a attempting to self-actualize through their careers and their jobs. And that’s not good for them personally, and it’s actually also not good for them in terms of their careers. He said a couple of times through the talk that putting all this, uh, pressure and expectation on our jobs is not something that they were designed to bear, and they’re not bearing it. I actually found some pretty strong like personal finance themes, uh, peeking into this talk. Probably not that surprising. Apparently the author has an undergraduate degree, dual degrees in economics and poetry, and then he has a graduate degree, I believe in journalism, and he also worked in tech and has lived in San Francisco. So yeah, not that surprised to see that theme coming through, like pretty strongly.

17:12 Emily: But his talk definitely reminded me of the aspect of the fire movement, the financial independence and retire early movement that is, uh, emphasizing that when you want to retire early or retire at all, um, you really have to prepare during your working career and separate your identity as a person from your job, your identity as a worker, um, in preparation for that retirement date. Because if you go into your retirement still with your identity really wrapped up in your career and your job, you’re gonna be very lost and probably very unsatisfied, um, until you can get that sorted out in your retirement. And so it’s much better to do that ahead of time, maybe even find more satisfaction in your job when you’re not putting all that pressure on it, um, before you actually retire early. And then you’re not, they say a lot in the fire community.

18:01 Emily: You’re not supposed to be retiring from something like a job you really hate. You’re supposed to be retiring to something, something you’re really looking forward to doing, uh, once you’re no longer working your job. But what Simone was talking about today was more a a little bit more about people who see their profession as their calling and maybe some people who hate their jobs and wanna get outta that, you know, previously saw their careers, their calling. But yeah, more of the danger of identifying too closely with your career and even potentially being exploited by your, um, employer or by your industry more at large, because you’re in one of those professions where it’s assumed that you’re, you know, getting all this satisfaction out of your work. So of course you don’t have to be paid that well. So nonprofit work education, of course, government work, these kinds of areas.

18:50 Emily: So Simone ended the keynote with like five really good takeaways that are both for, you know, all of us in the audience personally as well as, you know, those vast majority of people in the audience unlike me, who are career advising professionals, you know, to help advise their students in postdocs. And one of them that I really liked was actually the last one, and it was to diversify your identity. So diversify, like add to the number of areas of your life from which you can draw meaning. And I’m definitely going to reflect further on, you know, the messages from this book and this talk and how they apply to me personally as a self-employed person who has, um, you know, chosen my business and chosen my profession. And I definitely feel like it’s a calling and just how all of this, all of these concepts get wrapped up for me and how they’re maybe a little bit different or a little bit similar with me being my own employer.

19:49 Emily: So that’s my homework following this keynote, and it was really enjoyable. And yeah, I’m really glad to have been introduced to this author and, uh, his take on this topic after the keynote and a break in which, you know, I’m, again, always trying to be networking during these free times. Uh, we went into the first two concurrent sessions, so they’re called the member generated sessions. So basically you have a choice among, you know, four or five different, um, sessions that you might attend at a given block of time. So we got two in the morning. So the first session I attended was titled Strengthening Networks and Career Readiness Post Documenting Committees. And the second one was charting Our Path at the Crossroads of Career Readiness Support. And I won’t go into all my takeaways from the sessions that I went to, but in general, the things that I’m listening for during this conference are, you know, to try to gain some insights into the, the format of programming that, you know, they seem to, you know, think is successful in their, um, career services kinds of jobs, because I would like to take those best practices into my business and of course suggest them to my clients. So the three formats for financial education that I’m currently offering my clients are live in person, live remote. Those are both for like seminars and workshops and stuff. And then I also have a variety of workshops that have been pre-recorded, so it’s more of a flipped classroom model. And so I’m trying to glean, uh, what other people are doing, whether are they going back in person, you know, are they seeing engagement? Are people really using pre-recorded resources? And this past year has been a really hard one, it seems for everyone in terms of levels of engagement for, you know, this type of programming and also for my programming. So yeah, we’re all trying to sort through it together, but it seems like the time and everybody is tired and everybody is burned out after the pandemic and everybody’s, you know, sick of whatever. And so, uh, it’s difficult for everyone, certainly.

21:41 Emily: Something I’m also looking for in taking note of are resources that I can use, like I wrote down, uh, like a report from the National Postdoctoral Association that I should read, and one from the National Academies of Science, engineering and Medicine. So resources like that that I can go to utilize on my own afterwards that are gonna give me more insights into the communities that I serve and today’s trends. Next on the schedule was lunch. And it was thankfully a very long lunch period. It was like almost two hours long, so we had box lunches, so I grabbed a box lunch, sat down at a table, uh, they were really heavy into their career conversation, so I did not actually get a word in and a little bit awkward. But yeah, I didn’t contribute to that conversation at all. Just really enjoyed listening to it. And after I was done eating my lunch, I just excused myself and said I had enjoy listening to everyone. And yeah, I was a bit awkward, but I headed back up to my hotel room to charge my devices. And then once they had charged a bit, I took a, you know, a small break, went back down to the lunch area, and then the second table I sat at, I was really able to engage with the couple of people there. In fact, when I sat down, they were talking about home ownership and the rising cost of rent and how the faculty and staff at universities just do not, uh, get how difficult it is living on a grad student or a postdoc type income with these rising cost of living and, you know, housing crisis kinds of costs. And so that was a really interesting conversation to step into. And I ended up talking with both of those people for, um, quite a while about various topics. And I recorded some more micro interviews. So I felt like that was a really nice way to spend the end of my lunch. Oh, and at the end of that lunch, I found out after that whole conversation that one of the people at the table had already knew who I was because she had seen me speak at MSU like 7, 6, 7, something like that years ago, um, when she was a postdoc there.

23:35 Emily: In the third member generated session in the afternoon, I listened to, uh, three Lightning talks, so like three eight minute talks in a row. And the fourth session I attended that afternoon was titled PhD Progression Micro-Credentialing for Navigating the PhD and Beyond. And this was actually presented by Dr. Sasha Goldman from Boston University. And I had the pleasure of working with Sasha a couple of times. Her office hosted webinars with me during the pandemic. And so we had a little bit of a relationship and I was so excited to see what she was presenting that she’s been developing over the past. She and her office had been developing over the past several years, which is this micro-credentialing program. And she really took us behind the scenes and how she made it. And again, this is all in like the career development area. Um, and it just was so inspirational. Well, first of all, it’s very impressive , and if you are a graduate student at bu, I really hope you are gonna take advantage of this because it seems like an amazing resource, um, to yeah, to help you get ready for your future career. And Sasha also said that, you know, this is free and she wants it to be open to lots of other universities. So I don’t know how fast that rollout is going to be, but, uh, if you have the opportunity to take this, um, I’m gonna go ahead and highly recommend it. And actually, Sasha told me later that they have a badge on personal finance inside the program from which they link to some of my like free resources, like podcast episodes and stuff I believe that I’ve produced in the past that was nice and flattering that they had done that. And they also have a badge for financial literacy with like, sort of a, a business twist on that business, financial literacy. So again, if you’re at BU and you’re a grad student or you’re at one of the institutions that this is gonna come to in the near future, wow, I really hope you take advantage of this. And it was really inspiring to me as well, and thinking about, oh, would like a micro-credentialing program potentially be a good fit for me when I’m doing this financial education stuff, um, versus like an online course. And so it really got my brain percolating about like a different way to help people, uh, master, you know, the skills within, within personal finance. So anyway, I was really excited to have attended that session, um, and really proud that my resources, a couple of them are, you know, being included in this awesome, awesome program.

25:55 Emily: One other note about, again, how I approach, uh, networking is like, I’m just always introduce myself to people. Like if we have a minute or two before a session starts, like I’m introducing myself to the person next to me, if I’ve met them before, I’m saying hi to them, um, you know, checking in. Of course, sometimes these things turn into pitches. It’s pretty naturally, um, for, you know, for working with me. And, and sometimes they don’t, and either way is fine. Um, but yeah, I’m just, it’s just such a great place to meet people because just about everybody here is like a past client or a potential client of mine, and I just have such good connections with them.

26:31 Emily: Late in the afternoon about 4:15 PM they went into what they called their regional meetings and gatherings. Now these are for GCC members, and I am not a member , but they’re, they have the country divided into like seven, um, regions. And so I just decided to go into the southwest region, including Southern California, which is where I live, and just, uh, you know, check with the organizer, was it okay if I attended? And they said yes. And it was really just a social hour. And for the Southwest region, um, pretty much most of the time was taken up playing this game. And the game was that, uh, the organizers had come up with some, uh, questions, questions about what is your preference and, you know, is your preference A or B? And we would, um, move to different parts of the room depending on if our preference was A or B. And then, uh, within that group we would decide what was our best argument for A or for B, and then tell that argument to the other group. And nothing got resolved after, it was not like a debate, it was just, uh, here’s our argument, here’s our argument. But it started off pretty light. So the first question was, is your preference to eat ice cream or is your preference to eat cake and moved through some other areas? One really kind of funny one was, would you rather camp in a beautiful location or would you rather stay in a luxury hotel? And the one that got a little contentious was, would you rather drive everywhere or would you rather walk or bike everywhere? And some of these questions were like, the answers were really obvious to me, but there was always a debate around it. And anyway, it was kind of a fun way to, you know, meet and interact with some other people who live, you know, in California and Arizona and, uh, nearby states So that was cool.

28:20 Emily: Next we had a block of free time. I used it for more networking, again, some more recording of micro interviews. And then I took like a five minute break in my hotel room to change out of my dress shoes into sneakers, um, to go to the evening reception, which started at 6:00 PM And the evening reception, which included dinner and drinks, was in this place called the Punchbowl, which was really fun, I guess was kind of like a bar atmosphere, but there were all kinds of games there. There was a bowling alley as well as a karaoke room, ping pong tables, and a bunch of smaller games as well. And they put out a lovely dinner for us. It was, um, like, make your own tacos. So I mostly just got food and sat and ate and, you know, talked with people. Um, and I talked with a few different groups over the course of my time there. Met some really, uh, interesting people, had some good conversations, recorded a couple more micro interviews, uh, made some good connections. People I’m gonna follow up with, not just about like work, but about like future collaborations. And I met another person who has recently gone full-time into self-employment like I am, uh, but you know, was a, a longtime member of GCC and it was really exciting to meet her. Oh, and I met a legend in the field who I’d never met or spoken with before and who is retiring. So I guess this was my last opportunity. So that was really cool. Oh, and I was also really surprised and flattered. Um, one of the people I met at the Punchbowl, um, I’ve only maybe exchanged an email or or two with her, but she is very aware of my work apparently, and, um, congratulated me on the success I’ve had with my business in, you know, the last few years and asked how it was going and everything. And even said that she points people to my website as an example of, um, you know, a self-employed person’s website, which, ugh, I’m so like, kind of embarrassed by my website. Sorry, y’all. Uh, I was considering a revamp of the website for this summer, but I kind of decided in the late spring that I had spent enough money already this year on professional development and didn’t really want to make an additional financial investment, at least not yet. So anyway, uh, kind of embarrassed by that, but also just really pleased again, and, and flattered that, um, you know, she has been following what I’ve been doing and, and, and thinks highly of it. So yeah, that was really great to hear. Um, stayed there for about two hours and then walked back to the hotel with a group, um, around 8:00 PM back in my room, like eight 15. And my evening since then has been a little more yoga, uh, downloading these micro interviews to my computer so I can save them recording this audio diary. And pretty soon I’m gonna be saying goodnight to my kids and reading and turning in because I have another early day tomorrow.

Commercial

31:14 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2023-2024 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/speaking/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

GCC Conference Day 2: Thursday, June 29, 2023

32:32 Emily: All right, it is about 6:20 PM on Thursday. I’m back in my hotel room for a break after a pretty long day, but there’s still more day left as iI’ll tell you about in a few minutes. Today was another really successful day, and I’m so glad I decided to sponsor this conference again. So my alarm went off at 5 45 today, which is like no mean feat for someone who normally lives on Pacific time. Uh, and I actually went to the hotel gym for about a half an hour workout, saw some other people from the conference there and back to my room, got ready. And of course, like I told you yesterday, I was at breakfast by seven 30 when it opened and just, you know, talked to the people for the next hour. I sat at two different tables at breakfast today, and one of the tables in particular, we had such a great conversation. One person at the table asked me my origin story for how, you know, I I got into this area and started this business and everything, which I’m always happy to share. So then the conversation led into, well, what is the, you know, biggest issue or obstacle that graduate students have with their finances? And of course, I said, and other people around the table said, well, they’re just not paid enough. I mean, that’s the first thing, uh, which yes, agree. And, but then actually someone else brought up something that I very often talk about in my seminars for prospective graduate students, and she said this was her personal experience as an entering graduate student. Just the idea of being paid to get a PhD is so flattering that you don’t really consider to carefully whether it’s a living wage or enough money to be comfortable. Um, and this person’s PhD is in the humanities. And so, you know, we talked about that idea for a while as well, and that led into, you know, negotiating and advocating for your worth and all that good stuff.

34:40 Emily: After another, welcome to the conference. We had our Thursday morning keynote, which is by Dr. Katie Kearns, titled Not just Career Crossroads Social and Emotional Aspects of Grad and Postdoc Development. And Dr. Kearns was speaking from her, um, experiences more in like the teaching and learning area. I didn’t connect with this keynote as much to be honest, but she said one thing that kind of stuck with me, which she was saying this in relationship to, um, her experience teaching. It sounded like first year undergraduate students, uh, year after year after year. And, uh, having the experience of, you know, answering the same, uh, types of questions and, and having to do the same kinds of trainings over and over again. And, and personally having the realization that, oh, right, like, I’m getting older every year, but they’re always 18 years old. Uh, but anyway, what she said about that was maybe, you know, the, the problems that they’re having and the training that they need that they’re experiencing at that time in their lives, maybe that is developmentally appropriate. And so I, I’m gonna chew over that a little bit, like how I can apply that to like the financial realm and, um, not that I really like get frustrated or anything with like, repeat questions, but like, I want to think about what is developmentally appropriate for a graduate student to go through, especially one who’s entering right out of college and what kinds of, um, what kinds of skills they perhaps already have by then, and which of the skills that they should be working on.

35:56 Emily: After another slight break, we got into the next member generated session and the one I attended was called Pathways and Crossroads at the intersection of events, equity and engagement. And this group of presenters was out of Harvard Medical School, and they’re actually more former clients of mine, hopefully future clients as well. And they described, I might not be using the right words for this, but the way that they organize and advertise their programming and they put on a lot of events. Um, so the way they organize their events and also their resources so that it’s easily accessible by the people that they serve in the medical school. And it was really quite impressive to me to hear about the development of like the web-based tool that they’re using so that people can again, find these resources and events and then also how diligent they are in collecting evaluations and standardizing those across all the programs. Cuz that’s something I’m really thinking about right now is how do I, um, improve what I offer and understand whether people are getting out of it, what I hope that they’re getting out of it, um, and how I can kind of do better in that evaluation realm. And again, like I said yesterday, I’m listening for do people have best practices around attendance and engagement, um, in terms of the events that they’re putting on. And a again, still hearing, nobody has a magic formula to, um, get through to students and postdocs right now. And it’s difficult kind of, uh, across the board.

37:24 Emily: The next session I attended was, uh, revolutionizing career services in the digital age, engaging students for 21st century success, more on the same theme. And this, um, session was actually done by Archer Career, which is one of the other sponsors of this event. And, um, specifically their co-founder and CEO Pam Schilling was the one doing most of the presenting. And it was a nice session because it was a balance of, you know, hearing from Pam about her insights, especially in the ed tech space, and also doing some exercises, uh, personally and then also with, you know, my, my neighbor who I, I got to know through the exercises, which was really nice. Um, and so it, it allowed me to do some reflection even though I’m a little bit, you know, to the side of, of Pam’s intended audience. It allowed me to do some reflection on the formats that I’m offering. And I really meeting the needs of, um, you know, the people I’m working with and what, what could I do? This is called ideation. Like what could I do if there were no constraints? Like budget was no constraint, time cons was no constraint. Uh, what would I do? So I was specifically thinking about my, uh, tax education work when I was going through these exercises, and it’s definitely given me some food for thought that I’m going to continue to think about over the course of the next few months because I’m already reevaluating, uh, these programs actually. So really good timing for this session for me.

38:40 Emily: After that, we had a lovely buffet lunch, um, actually a very long lunch, and I took advantage of this because while people were waiting, um, in line to get their food at the buffet, I kind of went down the line and asked a few different people if they would go ahead and record their micro interview with me right then, which a few people took me up on and I had some good conversations. So that was actually a good strategy, although of course I ended up at the end of line and got my food last. But it was really delicious. And again, a long lunch. We had some time for conversation around the table, and then they did a recognition, um, session. So recognizing all the members of the graduate career consortium who have served in the past year, especially those who are, um, coming off of leadership roles and sometimes going on to other leadership roles, and also honoring two people who have contributed a lot to GCC over sounded like about the past 15 years. As a non-member of this organization, it was great for me to get some more insight into what exactly all is going on here. Like, what are all the things that GCC does because I’m not, uh, you know, I, I see a very narrow slice of it. So this was a really good time for me to just learn more about the organization.

39:47 Emily: And after lunch, I had a very lovely conversation with, um, someone about postdoc benefits and the lack thereof and how postdocs should be considered employees. This is a theme. Many people talk to me about this over the course of this conference. The last member generated session that I attended in the early afternoon was a really special one because it’s actually the one that I as a sponsor got to introduce. So the session was titled at the crossroads of parallel planning, integrating fellowship applications into graduate and postdoc career advising. And when I, as a sponsor, I was given a list of, uh, sessions that I could sponsor in advance, and this was my number one choice, and I’m so glad I got it because to me, the the connection is, is very clear. So what I basically said at the beginning of the session was, you know, we’re gonna learn, hopefully some best practices throughout the course of this session on how, um, you could help your graduate students and postdocs apply for fellowship funding. And hopefully as a result of you implementing this at your campuses, there will be much more fellowship money flowing to your institution, and specifically a lot more people being funded on fellowships for the first time. And, uh, when that happens, there are tax implications. And so then I got to kind of pitch my tax education stuff. I have a new seminar that I’ve developed and I also have, um, my ongoing, um, deep dive workshops that are in the flip classroom model. So I gotta say a little bit about that and then introduce the speakers. And the session was incredible. It was wonderful to learn what they’re doing over at Vanderbilt, um, to help, uh, prepare people for, for example, I think they’re doing, they’re doing a lot more than this, but for just one example, help prepare, uh, graduate students to apply for the NSF G R F P. And so they are doing boot camps and the whole process starts in like the May before, um, the application is due, you know, the following October-ish. And it’s a very long cycle of working with the applicants and also working with their letter writers, and they, they, they’re doing what they call bootcamps over the summer. So it’s like cohort groups where you have that like accountability, um, and peer mentoring and also expert mentoring to, uh, yeah, get these applications into tip chop shape. And, and based on the data they showed, these bootcamps seem to be very effective in getting the applications, you know, up higher percentage of them towards the funded stage. But another thing they emphasized, which I really liked was how really applying for fellowships is a professional development exercise. It’s not merely about winning the fellowship or not winning, winning the fellowship. It’s a huge accomplishment just to apply. Um, and you learn so much and it’s so applicable, transferable skills, et cetera. Um, just from doing the application process alone, and especially an intensive one, like the one that they’re describing and that they actually celebrate at an event at the end of the year, everybody who applied for fellowships, um, and they don’t frame it in terms of, you know, you got it, you didn’t, it’s just everybody who applied, you know, accomplished this amazing thing. And I, I actually participated in a little bit something like this when I first applied for the NSF G F P back when I was at the NIH for my Postback irta. Um, but I definitely did not utilize this kind of resource when I was a first year graduate student. And I certainly wish that I had, I don’t know if it was available to me, um, if it was, I, I didn’t access it, but it seems like an awesome idea that, uh, many universities should be following suit. I’m really glad that they presented this, um, information in the session and that I got to sponsor it.

43:17 Emily: The last event of the afternoon today was what they called a showcase session. So it was, um, posters from various people and also, um, posters from each GCC committee to show what they’ve been doing over the course of the year. And I basically use this as another kind of networking opportunity and also opportunity to record my micro interviews, kind of doing both. So it was really, um, it was a really good time for me and I got to talk with a lot more people during that period. And yeah, that was great. I even hung around for quite a while after that session, kind of officially ended to talk to the last like few stragglers and again, get a couple more interviews. I did have someone have a, not totally unexpected, but fairly strong and interesting, uh, reaction to one of my prompts. Um, it’s the one talking about what policy would you change? And so this person, and very kindly by the way that this person was warning, um, her colleague maybe don’t answer that question, like, go for the other prompts, like, maybe don’t answer this prompt because, you know, if anything is construed as like criticizing this colleague’s, uh, current employer, um, you know, that could be bad. She could ha face repercussions or even lose her job. I don’t know if that, that might be a little, little bit extreme. But, um, basically just, you know, you’re saying who you are and who you work for maybe don’t be critical of the university that you work for in terms of their policies. So they had a little kind of debate about that. Ultimately, the person, um, did not contribute to that particular question. Um, I definitely think it’s a legitimate concern, but it was just a little, you know, a little disappointing to me that people don’t think they can speak freely to criticize even legitimately, even, even gently, even nicely, um, criticize a policy of their employer, not even like a person, but a policy. And by the way, that the policy this person was, um, going to put on record but didn’t, was like very reasonable. totally, totally reasonable change that I’ve said this one many times myself. Of course, I’m my own employer and I’m not gonna fire myself for saying that sort of thing. But anyway, that was a pretty, um, interesting reaction and I certainly hope that no one participating in that episode gets any blow back. I don’t think they will. But anyway, I, I really hope it doesn’t happen and I’m really grateful to people who were willing to answer that question and kind of stand, uh, behind their opinion. Um, I’m glad that they either think their employer is reasonable or they, um, at least think their position is strong enough that they wouldn’t be kind of threatened by that. So that was an interesting interaction regarding these micro interviews. Okay, I’m gonna wrap up because I am heading out to dinner in a few minutes. I’m going to NADA here in Indianapolis, which was highly recommended. So I’m going with, um, nine other people from the conference and yeah, hope to do more of the same, of talking with people and maybe getting more of micro interviews and we’ll see just doing more of the same through this conference, which has been again, so, so enjoyable.

46:19 Emily: Oh man, it’s now 10:40 PM , uh, let’s see. I went out to dinner with a group of people from the conference. There were nine of us in total. I left at about 5 45, got back well to the hotel, maybe nine 15 or so. Stayed around chatting for a few minutes. Uh, probably got back to my hotel room about an hour ago. Uh, dinner was really, really lovely. Um, you know, talked with people walking over to the restaurant and walking back, uh, more networking and so forth. But, uh, we were at the restaurant for about two hours, so we really had a nice long dinner and I got to talk quite a bit with all the people, um, sitting around me. We talked about it, it was a little bit more, uh, relaxed and less sort of professionally oriented than the rest of the conference. So we definitely talked about some personal stuff like, uh, the vacations were going on this year and, uh, uh, parenting. And I talked with this one person about this, um, science fantasy trilogy I read recently by NK Jemison. Turns out he’s really into, uh, that other, and we chatted about it quite a bit and it was, that was pretty fun. And uh, I made him promise to bring his, uh, tabletop role playing game based on, uh, this certain trilogy series, which that’s, I asked him to bring it to GCC next year. Maybe we’ll play, it’s not my kind of game, but I’m willing to give it a shot cause I really did like this trilogy. Um, anyway, and, uh, some people sitting around me also definitely asked me about work and, and also just more about like my business, you know, not just what I could do sort of in partnership with them, but how I do what I do. And, um, yeah, that was really nice to have those kinds of conversations as well. Um, yeah, this is definitely a nice relaxed, um, atmosphere and element of, uh, this conference. And of course I recorded a few more, more micro interviews for my collection and, uh, yeah, it was a really, really good, although long and it’s certainly late now, good long, um, nice evening out and I’ve already said goodnight to my kids. So I am just going to read a bit, uh, actually finished Love Letters yesterday and today I’m starting the Southern Book Club Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. Kind of another random recommendation I found online somewhere, but, uh, we’ll see how it goes. I’m definitely into the, uh, lighter reads at the moment after reading that NK Jemison Trilogy. Um, yeah, so I’m gonna just read a tiny bit and go to sleep cuz I have to be up relatively early again tomorrow morning to pack and check out before the final half day of the conference.

GCC Conference Day 3/Travel Day: Friday June 30, 2023

49:09 Emily: Okay, , this is my final, um, live entry of the audio diary of my conference. It is about 11:00 PM Pacific on Friday, June 30th. So this was the last day of the conference and I was surprised that it has ended up being the longest day, I think. Um, so I’ll go through it pretty briefly cuz I’m awfully tired at this point. Uh, my day started at 7:00 AM Eastern and I let myself not work out and sleep in a little bit this last morning because I knew it was a travel day. And so got up at seven, got ready and got down to breakfast at eight. And similar to other days between eight and nine, it was basically a networking breakfast. I believe I only sat at one table this time. Um, but I had some really nice conversations with the people there, some people who I hadn’t yet met at the conference, which is great. I was of course trying to meet everyone, but, um, didn’t quite get there, but I certainly got to, I would say at least over 50% if not 75% of the people. Um, yeah, so I got some final conversations in over breakfast and then there was between nine and about 1130. Um, a few different activities went on, but I would say the one that was of most note, um, was the panel on. Um, I don’t have the title in front of me, but it was basically a keynote panel, uh, with four panelists on how to, uh, better support the international graduate students and postdocs, um, you know, in this career services area that the conference was themed around. Um, and so of course I didn’t get, you know, the, the some of the specifics and technicalities that were discussed and that are not totally relevant to what I do, but certainly it was a great reminder to me on the importance of inclusion of those international graduate students and postdocs and the importance of, um, calling out, um, specifically when there’s content that’s, um, just for them that’s been placed in there that is specific to their experience. So I thought of a few examples with my content, um, of when I talk about, um, how international students with postdocs can get started with investing, um, while they’re living in the US of course, regarding my tax programming, um, what is specific to non-residents is solely for non-residents. But I’m sure if I thought about a bit more, I could come up with a few other examples and I wanna incorporate those into my, um, into my talks to just make sure that international students and postdocs know that they are yeah, being taken into consideration that I am, uh, speaking to them as best as I can. So that to me was like the biggest kind of takeaway of the morning. Oh, and by the way, not just for international students and postdocs, but all kinds of different, um, you know, let’s say underrepresented groups or first generation, um, grad students and so forth.

52:00 Emily: Um, okay. And then the other kind of fun announcement from this last little segment of the conference was that next year’s conference is going to take place in Philadelphia. So you can’t probably hear it in my voice right now cause I’m awfully tired, but I’m very excited about going, uh, back again and sponsoring again next year in 2024. Okay, so the conference kind of officially wrapped up, um, around 1130 and between about 11:30 AM and 1:00 PM I was, um, just sort of having my last like, conversations with people. There were a few people who I wanted to catch, um, before we all went our separate raise. Some people that I’ve known from previous work and some, um, who I just met this time around. So, for instance, I had an old mentor at Duke, I wanted to say hi to, um, it turned, I, I learned during that, um, international student postdoc panel that one person at the conference was on the board of the National Postdoctoral Association. So I grabbed him and wanted to talk with him about some maybe ways that I could work with the npa, which had been brought up to me by multiple times throughout the conference by other people of that possibility. Um, and of course I wanted to thank Annie Maxfield once again for kind of orchestrating the sponsorship, uh, my sponsorship of this conference and telling her that once again, just like last year I was so happy with how things went and that I definitely wanna sponsor again next year. So, you know, keep me on list, keep me informed, um, and all of that.

53:23 Emily: And then between about one and 3:00 PM I got really lucky. I thought I was gonna be spending that time pretty much on my own, just, you know, packing up my booth and going to the airport and I did pack up my booth, but I went and sat down with someone who I saw sitting on her own, um, who I hadn’t met yet. And it turned out that she was another sponsor of the conference. Um, and that we had some things in common. So we were just having lovely time chatting and getting to show one another. She’s also a solopreneur like I am, although she’s been in business a lot longer than I have been. Um, and in a different area. Um, and then, uh, we were also joined by Katy Peplin Thrive PhD. So my conference kind of book ended by, uh, spending time with Katy, both at the beginning and the end. So it was lovely. We spent a couple hours together. We had lunch, we chatted about business. And yeah, that was a really, really nice, um, session as well. And it turns out that, um, myself and this one other person who I’d recently met, we were on the same flight from Indianapolis to Las Vegas. So we actually headed to the airport together, got to continue talking. That was all lovely, um, and just spent time together and actually ended up sitting next to each other, uh, on the flight. And so we had a wonderful conversation, but during the flight I was telling her that I was quite tired already and needed a rest, but I couldn’t quite fall asleep on the plane. So I ended up reading, um, the book that I picked up. Uh, I think I have the title to write the Southern Book Club’s Guide to Vampire Slang. Um, so I was really into that book, so I wanted to continue reading it, um, while on the plane. And then when we got off the plane in Las Vegas, it turns out that my next flight from Vegas to San Diego also had two other people from the conference on it. Um, both of whom were from U C S D. And so we, and our flight was delayed also, uh, by about an hour and a half or two hours. And so we had dinner together, got to talk so much, um, about what they do and what I do and just getting to know each other and continue that conversation at the gate. And again, lovely, lovely time and really nice to decompress in a more like social and informal way at the end of the conference. Um, and then during my last little hop from Vegas to San Diego, I continue to read my book. I think I’m like 75% of the way through it, and it’s only been two days. This is a very fast read, um, very enjoyable and uh, that brings me just about up to now. So yeah, except for that slight delay in my second flight, um, the travel has been pretty smooth, although again, it has been a long day. And this is definitely a note to myself. Um, I do often try to justify based on flight times, um, staying after conferences and events like these until the next day. Like, I don’t like to have my travel day be the same as the last day of the conference because I like to take time to decompress and rest and maybe even get started on the massive to-do list I have, uh, based on the events of the conference. But I just couldn’t justify it to myself for this particular one, given that it ended by noon on a Friday and it was on Eastern time and I was going back to Pacific, blah, blah, blah. So I decided to travel home this day, but really, really note to myself. Give myself that extra time, uh, just spend the extra money and stay the extra night in the hotel and, um, really be able to come back like kind of better rested and stronger, um, from the conference in this date I’m in currently. So thank you all for listening to this audio diary. I hope it gave you some insight into this really special time in my life and my business, which is when I get to attend these conferences. And, um, yeah, my experiences as a sponsor and what I learned and what I’m taking away from the conference and uh, yeah. Yeah. Thanks for listen. Bye.

Outtro

57:01 Emily: That is the end of my conference audio diary. I would say this conference was very successful for me. In the end, I noted about three dozen potential clients to follow up with. I recorded 54 microinterviews, well exceeding my goal of 40, and invited one person on the podcast for a full interview. I also gleaned many ideas for organizations to partner with, resources to access, and formats for my financial education. And I had a great time! So I will definitely be back again as a sponsor next year in Philadelphia. On the date that this podcast episode will publish, I’ll actually be at another conference as a sponsor, the Higher Education Financial Wellness Summit. That conference is more about my own professional development and keeping up with my field and less about networking in comparison with the GCC Annual Meeting, though I’m still planning to record microinterviews and follow up with potential clients. If you are interested in hearing more about what I learn from the conferences I attend, please let me know! I may share in a future podcast episode or email if it’s of interest.

58:13 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Why and How These Grad Students Purchased Homes

July 3, 2023 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily presents first-person stories from grad students who bought homes during grad school. The volunteers were simply asked to share their stories of home ownership, whatever they may be. You’ll hear from three volunteers throughout this episode, both on how they purchased their homes but also what’s happened since then, the benefits and the challenges. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to pursue home ownership yourself sooner rather than later. The final person included in this episode is a mortgage originator specializing in early-career PhDs, who summarizes why graduate students and anyone paid by fellowship have a difficult time securing a mortgage and his system for framing them as qualified borrowers.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • Don’t Accept Admission to a PhD Program without a Sufficient Stipend (Free Webinar on Friday, July 14, 2023 at 10:00 AM PT)
  • PF for PhDs S10E18: This Grad Student Purchased a House with a Friend
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • AMA on the PhD Home-Buying Process (Free Live Q&A)
    • Sam Hogan, Mortgage Originator/Emily’s Brother
      • Sam Hogan’s Cell #: (540) 478-5803
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • Podcast Show Notes Page
grad student home ownership

Teaser

00:00 Courtney B: Owning a house is all about the long game. We hope to see large returns on the remodeling and roofing work once we sell, but for now we have to be willing to put a decent amount of cash down for deductibles, emergencies and our new monthly loan payment.

Introduction

00:18 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others.

00:47 Emily: This is Season 15, Episode 2, and today we’re featuring first-person stories from grad students who bought homes during grad school. I simply asked the volunteers to share their stories of home ownership, whatever they may be. You’ll hear from three volunteers throughout this episode, both on how they purchased their homes but also what’s happened since then, the benefits and the challenges. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to pursue home ownership yourself sooner rather than later. The final person included in this episode is a mortgage originator specializing in early-career PhDs, who summarizes why graduate students and anyone paid by fellowship often have a difficult time securing a mortgage and his system for framing them as qualified borrowers.

01:32 Emily: By the way, there is still time to volunteer for one of the compilation episodes coming up later in the summer, specifically the episode on unions and unionization movements. If you have a story to share on that topic from the last few years, please email me at [email protected].

01:52 Emily: This next announcement is specifically for those of you who are applying to PhD programs in the US in the upcoming academic year. If you’re not in that group, please share this information with someone who is! On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 10:00 AM Pacific Time, I’m delivering a free webinar titled “Don’t Accept Admission to a PhD Program without a Sufficient Stipend.” Yes, this is something you need to understand and commit to even before you start applying to PhD programs! The three phases of this webinar are to go over why you need to be sufficiently financially supported in your PhD program and what that means to you; how you can ensure that you will be; and what actions you need to take in the fall during application season, in the spring during admissions season, and in the summer before you matriculate to make this come about. This webinar includes what I wish I had known as a prospective graduate student and the hidden financial curriculum of academia that it’s taken me over a decade to uncover. It’s so vitally important for prospective graduate students to have this information early, which is why I’m giving it away for free! Please help me spread the word! Anyone interested can register for the webinar at PFforPhDs.com/sufficientstipend/.

03:20 Emily: You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s15e2/. Without further ado, here’s our compilation episode on home ownership.

Hannah Stroud, PhD Student: College Station, TX

03:37 Hannah S: Hi, my name is Hannah Stroud. I am a final year PhD student at Texas a and m University, uh, which is located in College Station, Texas. College Station, Texas is a city with a extremely low cost of living compared to other areas of this country, uh, which is pretty much the only reason that I am here sharing my home ownership story with you today. , I guess I started my PhD in 2020 and purchased my house in March of 2021, and I had been a grad student before that and had been living in college station since 2014, so I’ve been here a while. Uh, and the low cost of living in this area in general allowed me to save a pretty substantial amount of my stipend just comparatively. So in my master’s, I think I was paying like six 50 in rent, uh, per month, uh, which meant that a decent portion of my stipend could go to fun activities or savings in general.

04:37 Hannah S: Um, how I grew my savings was through a robo-advisor managed, uh, money market account and also ETF investments. Um, and that was really helpful in kind of just turning what I had saved into enough to be able to afford a down payment. Uh, and so when I started the kind of mortgage lending process, um, in the first month of my PhD, so I am a fellowship student, which means my income is not w2 and I’m a NSF GFP fellow, which means that my intimate income is guaranteed for three years. So when I started my mortgage process, uh, that was important to my lender. What I didn’t realize is that when my mortgage rates were locked in, uh, they wanted my three years of employment to be verified from the time of closing. So when I closed six months later, I actually ran into some issues, uh, where my lender wanted some way to guarantee that I would be employed at the same salary that I’m currently making, uh, for three full years, not the two and a half that I could promise based on the time that had elapsed.

05: 43 Hannah S: Um, so I ended up needing to increase my down payment to the full 20% so that I didn’t have to qualify for private mortgage insurance anymore. But ultimately, the main aspect of my home ownership story is truly luck. Uh, I’m very fortunate to live in a very low cost of living city, and the timing of the pandemic honestly played a lot into the house prices being very low and mortgage rates being what they were. So given the current environment, I don’t know that a lot of this advice is incredibly applicable, uh, but advice that does stay the same is the, if you have non W2 income, it is important to learn from your desired lender. What aspects of your income are important to them, and if three years of proof of income will be required from the time of closing, it’s been a fun experience overall.

06:41 Hannah S: Ultimately, owning is significantly more expensive than renting because when things break, I am my own landlord and I get to fix them, and sometimes those expenses are more significant than I would like them to be. Uh, within the first kind of few months of owning my home, uh, both the washer and dryer that came out, the house broke, and so I needed to replace those. Um, and I found out that my non-mobile house had a mobile home shower installed in it, and all the plastic parts were degrading, so I needed to, uh, replace all that with copper piping and plumbers are expensive, and then any electrical issues become your problem, AC issues become your problem. So definitely get the home warranty. Uh, if you can include that in the conditions of closing and ha have it be something that the seller pays for, I would recommend that highly. And then I renewed it for a second year as well, cuz my air conditioning unit was pretty old. Um, and that ended up being the right choice for me just because the, the amount of maintenance that I required on, on that particular utility was, was significant in the second year as well. So yeah, hopefully you have as good of luck on your journey as I’ve had online and yeah, good luck going forward.

H, PhD Student: East Coast

08:00 Emily: This submission is from “H”, a PhD student who lives on the East Coast. Quote. I had a vague plan to buy my place in my second or third year of my program, but it ended up happening in a surprising and rushed way when a house came up right in my neighborhood, I had something like a month to close, which I did in August, 2020 at the beginning of the second year of my program. My income has increased since I got the house, so the monthly payment, including mortgage insurance and property tax, is now a little less than a third of my post-tax income. Initially it was closer to 40%. Having roommates in various configurations has offset between 25% and 65% of my payment at any one time. But there have also been months between roommates where I’ve been covering the whole amount. I’ve had kind of a revolving door of housemates, which has been a lovely part of having my house.

08:49 Emily: So far it’s been friends or friends of friends, almost all grad students because my roommates and I, I have so far always been gone for the summer, I rented out for more like 85% of the mortgage to people doing summer internships. Here it offsets the fact that my July and August stipend payment is lower than my 10 month academic year stipend payment. I charge less than market rent because I’m not a professional landlord and I don’t have a property manager. The house is old and not in perfect shape. When I’ve had water in the basement, a broken water heater or a broken window, people have been understanding and patience since I’m not charging a lot, I’m also able to undercharge because I have a financial safety net. My parents lent me almost all of the deposit and I won’t start paying them back until I finished my program.

09:33 Emily: Their justification was that they had paid the same amount for my siblings law school. We’ll pay them back interest free. I would’ve been able to get a place on my own, but it would’ve been smaller and I would’ve bought later. The fact that I have a financial safety net has made being a homeowner less stressful. I haven’t had to ask my parents for money for repairs so far, but I can sleep at night knowing I’d be able to borrow money from them if I urgently needed a new roof or something. I love having an old house, but because of the upkeep, I think it would be too stressful to own one without that kind of cushion. It was very much a pandemic home purchase. I remember reading all these articles in 2020 and 2021 about people who are desperate for more space when working from home and how they had overpaid for falling apart houses.

10:17 Emily: I was like, oh my God, is that me? Now with the interest rates up, the news is all about people who lucked out with 2% interest rates like me, and now their incentive is just to never sell. Sometimes I think about how my mortgage on the house is twice what I was paying for a one bedroom apartment and how I spent money on repairs and my bills are much higher than in the apartment. And I wonder what would’ve happened if I had plugged the difference into an index fund instead. But if the house has increased in value, as much as Zillow says the house wins out as an investment, obviously you have to take Zillow with a grain of salt. I think only time will tell whether this was a good financial decision or not, regardless of whether it turns out to have been a good investment.

10:55 Emily: I have so many great memories of this house. I love having space to host and being able to provide a gathering place, especially in the pandemic. When I hosted people from out of town who needed a break from being isolated alone in their apartments. I’ve loved becoming closer to my housemates. I’ve had friends stay in the house when their family were visiting from abroad and needed a place to stay. I feel happy that the house has helped people out with somewhere to stay when other solutions were expensive and logistically difficult. I’ve loved being able to host my family, especially at the holidays. A lot of this would just not be possible if I were renting. I know that buying a house is normally seen as tying you down, but for me, I think it’s given me the freedom to be mobile. Having the house has allowed me to be pretty flexible during the latter part of my program, which requires research abroad.

11:40 Emily: I offset the monthly payment by renting it out so I don’t feel like I’m obligated to stay there just because I’m paying for it. When I’ve worked abroad on a job that included housing or got grants that covered my housing while researching, I’ve been able to save a good amount of money, money by reducing my housing expenses, but I also didn’t need to formally move out and I know I can come back whenever because there’s still a spare room compared to having to deal with paying for storage and finding a place during awkward lease gaps. I’m able to be much more of a free agent than other people I know Doing dissertation research abroad, it’s just one of the many ways that being financially secure makes the experience of being a grad student dramatically less stressful. I think it’s important to recognize that my financial privilege and home ownership, along with my citizenship, have given me greater research capacities. I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing with a house after I leave the program. I might rent it out on a more formal basis or if I decide to buy elsewhere, I might sell. End quote.

Courtney Beringer, PhD Student: Corvallis, OR

12:37 Emily: This next submission is from Courtney Beringer, who was previously interviewed on this podcast in season 10, episode 18.

12:45 Courtney B: My name is Courtney and I’m a third year PhD student in civil engineering at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Uh, I recorded a podcast with Emily shortly after I bought a house in 21, so I’ll briefly talk about that and dive into what has happened since then. I bought a house with my friend in July, 2021 in Corvallis, Oregon for about $250,000. It’s a three bedroom, two bath with an additional room that we converted into a bedroom. My co borrower and I live in the house along with our two tenants. Our mortgage is about $1,500 a month, and our rental income is, uh, $1,300 a month. Um, we were patient and took months to find a house that met our needs of being within about five miles of campus. Um, had rooms we could rent out and was under our budget of about $320,000. Our loan process was made, uh, a little complicated by having co borrowers who were not related or married.

13:50 Courtney B: And because we were both grad students with changing sources of income throughout the year, we worked with our loan officer through these hurdles and everything actually turned out great. It has now been two years as homeowners and with tenants. Uh, it has been great to have a passive side income through renters. We have enjoyed the freedom that home ownership has provided, uh, but home ownership is always unpredictable. We had a water heater leak in January this year, which caused my co-owner one of our tenants and I to live in a hotel for two months while demo and construction occurred in my room and our shared bathroom insurance covered so much. But this took a lot of time out of our studies and lives to move, make remodeling decisions and coordinate with contractors, and we just got a roof place, which added a $13,000 loan to our joint finances. Owning a house is all about the long game. We hope to see large returns on the remodeling and roofing work once we sell, but for now, we have to be willing to put a decent amount of cash down for deductibles, emergencies, and our new monthly loan payment. Uh, I hope my story gives you a sense of the joys and realities of being a homeowner.

Commercial

15:07 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2023-2024 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/speaking/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Anonymous, PhD Student: Atlanta, GA

16:26 Emily: This submission is from an anonymous contributor. When they mentioned Sam in the course of this contribution, they’re referring to Sam Hogan, a mortgage originator specializing in early career PhDs. And we’re actually gonna hear from Sam next

16:39 Emily: Quote. I purchased a home during the spring semester of my first year as a PhD in Atlanta, Georgia. I closed in April, 2023. I have been debating home ownership since 2020. I would be entering graduate school in my early thirties, so I wanted to try and build wealth so that I wouldn’t be too far behind in retirement savings or net worth. When I finished in my late thirties, my parents were not convinced that buying was the right move. So when I moved back home to Atlanta to start school, I ended up renting a beautiful old studio. But in January of spring semester, when I was informed that rent would be going up $200, I realized that I was ready to buy and that I needed it to happen fast.

17:18 Emily: I tried several different mortgage lenders, but most were rather confused by the stipend structure. I would get pre-approved based upon my credit score and lack of debt, but then would always receive several follow-up emails asking for documents from my university, asking for verification and explanations. I turned to Sam fairly early on, just asked him questions and then ended up going back to work with him after the other lenders didn’t work out. I received my pre-approval from Movement Mortgage with no follow-up questions and began house hunting. In late January, maybe eight or nine bids later, I finally landed on a home, not a condo, which had been my original call, but HOAs kept blowing my budget in late March with a closed date in early April. For a moment, there was a bout of panic because the house has an unfinished primary suite and we, Sam, my realtor and myself, didn’t know if it would pass appraisal the suite, huge bedroom, bathroom closet was essentially a bonus room or a garage.

18:11 Emily: The outside structure was finished, but there was nothing else. No drywall, no electric, nothing. Ultimately, the house passed appraisal, the seller contributed to closing and Sam even managed to get me a few hundred dollars back at closing. Looking back, this story sounds really straightforward, but it was super stressful. I also switched realtors during this process and I wish that I had done so earlier. I was also saving between $800 and a thousand dollars a month between January and April to make the down payment, and also ended up basically emptying my investment account and my Roth ira, both of which had less than $2,000 in them. I put 3% down on a home that was less than $200,000 a total steal in Atlanta. All in all, I’m glad that none of the other bids worked out. This home is spacious, has a lovely yard, is in a great location, and the unfinished primary suite will multiply the value of the home.

19:01 Emily: Of course, the house will need a lot of work, but I have a roommate and we’re both excited to get our hands dirty. My biggest piece of advice is to remember that the people who help you purchase your home need to advocate for you. Sam is a phenomenal advocate and helped me get into my first home and stopped at nothing to make the sale work. The realtor who I ended up working with was also an amazing communicator, and I wish that I had been working with him the entire time. Of course, save money and do your research, but remember that the people on your team matter. End quote.

Sam Hogan, Mortgage Originator

19:36 Sam H: Greetings. This is Sam Hogan. I help graduate students, postdocs and PhDs achieve home ownership in all 50 states. We’ve closed hundreds of loans for PhD students and postdocs. They have a unique, uh, income set and require unique mortgage approval process. Um, having done this for over four years now, we are the nation’s only lender that focuses on your success while you’re getting your degrees in higher education. My team is a longstanding advertiser and sponsor of PF for PhDs, and I am delighted to also be Emily’s little brother. So Emily reached out to me in, um, spring 2019, um, having seen a pattern of difficulties for PhD students, um, closing on home loans.

20:29 Sam H: The issue with PhD income is that the loan officer in the pre-approval stage will either pre-approve them and not do enough work themselves or deny them out the gate. Now, when an underwriter sees the PhD income after loan offer, pre, pre-approved them, them, it might not have enough information about the stability and continuance in history, and you also can be issued a denial because the underwriter doesn’t have to give you a final approval based on those offer letters. Um, after some a few months of investigating, we developed a system to properly document the income, the continuance, and the stability. Um, regardless of how soon or how late you are in your PhD stipend continuance, where I come in is demonstrating that the borrower who’s a PhD student has always been a full-time student, has always maintained a good gpa, has a track record of staying in the same field of science or research.

21:34 Sam H: We do have to over document a file sometimes to demonstrate continuance, but even if we have less than three years, we are able to help the underwriters understand the quality of individual behind this stipend income, which has helped us become successful in closing loans in this space. I will rescue PhD deals every single month. This happens often with, uh, new construction builders and their lender is completely unfamiliar. Or some other companies like, um, loan Depot for example, will just outright never accept stipend income. So those clients will read my reviews or, uh, find Emily’s blog where we give a little bit more of in depth information on how it works. Um, I’ll connect with them and they will become homeowners and protect their deposit, have a more stress-free approval working with us versus a lender. Loan officers. Not, not familiar. When we originally started helping PhD students and post-docs become homeowner, homeowners, we were more comfortable with having three years of continuance.

22:42 Sam H: So at the early years or maybe before your first semester of becoming a PhD student, that was our, um, bread and butter easy approvals with confirming that income. As we’ve done more PhDs and expanding to more states, we’ve actually seen some success helping PhDs who are in their later stipend years, years four, five, sometimes six. Um, so really we just need to make sure that we can show history and continuance. Even if you’re stipend might be ending in a few months, we can still help you. We just like to show the career field that you’re going into and some other details about your career path and your future successes. A lot of home buyers in this market are not excited about taking higher than a 5% rate, and I wanted to just encourage people that it is much more difficult to find the home than to get a mortgage on it. So we say in our industry, marry the house date the rate. Once you’ve found your home and rates improve, you’ll be able to refinance and lower your payments and lower your total interest paid. What you don’t want to do is wait for rates to get a little bit lower and then the market is flooded with buyers and you have more competition searching for that same home.

24:03 Sam H: Having to read originated loans for seven years working with the PhD community just makes my life such a breeze. Everyone is very responsive, calm, cool, and collective. They understand what I’m talking about and they’re willing to listen to me explain a little bit extra about the home buy-in process so they can have a better understanding of it. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of standard education on how to buy a home or how to get a mortgage, but that’s okay because you have people like myself who are willing to take the time to help you understand and find success in this space. But working with the PhD community has been, um, so wonderful over the last four years. I I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Having to having clients who, um, are attentive to your requests. I, I will say well qualified, a good, good credit scores and goal oriented. If you’re committing, uh, five or six years to a new area and you don’t wanna waste five or six years worth of rent, you know, please reach out to myself. The best number to reach me is 540-478-5803. Um, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Happy hunting.

25:14 Emily: I host monthly. Ask me anything with Sam. So if you’d like to meet him and ask a question about mortgages or the home buying process, please register for our next one pfforphds.com/mortgage.

Outtro

25:32 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Why and How These Graduate Students Side Hustle

June 19, 2023 by Jill Hoffman 3 Comments

In this episode, Emily presents first-person stories from grad students who side hustle. The volunteers were asked this set of questions: What is your motivation for having a side hustle? What is your side hustle? What are its benefits and detriments? How much do you earn through your side hustle? If someone listening wants to pursue this side hustle, how would you recommend they get started? You’ll hear from eight volunteers in total throughout this episode, and perhaps be inspired to start or expand your own side hustle.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • PF for PhDs S10E18: This Grad Student Purchased a House with a Friend
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
Grad student side hustles

Teaser

00:00 Anonymous #1: Some places might give you entirely free housing. Some places might be like mine where you get like a 50% off for your housing rate. I find it to be beneficial because that’s money that I get to keep for myself that I can invest in my Roth IRA that can be used for my own spending, that can use for a traveling for leisure, because we know we get started as graduate students. So it’s really important that I take breaks and have that extra money so that I can invest for my future and take those much needed breaks

Introduction

00:33 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 15, Episode 1, and today we’re featuring first-person stories from grad students who side hustle. The volunteers were asked this set of questions: What is your motivation for having a side hustle? What is your side hustle? What are its benefits and detriments? How much do you earn through your side hustle? If someone listening wants to pursue this side hustle, how would you recommend they get started? You’ll hear from eight volunteers in total throughout this episode, and perhaps be inspired to start or expand your own side hustle.

01:34 Emily: By the way, there is still time to volunteer for one of the compilation episodes coming up later in the summer, specifically the episode on negotiating your individual grad student stipend and the episode on unions and unionization movements. If you have a story to share on either of those topics from the last few years, please email me at [email protected].

01:59 Emily: I’m beyond excited to announce that I’m offering a brand-new live one-hour seminar titled “How to Not Hate Your Fellowship During Tax Season.” It’s all about how to understand and properly handle your fellowship stipend that will not be reported on a Form W-2, which is what I call awarded income. Awarded income typically doesn’t have income tax withheld from it, which can become an unwelcome surprise and even financial hardship if the recipient is not taught what to do starting with their first paycheck of this type. In addition to teaching about estimated tax and self-withholding, I give pointers for preparing for and navigating tax season with awarded income. This seminar is intended to be taken during orientation or shortly after by people who are switching onto awarded income for the first time, so it will be exclusively available between August and October of this year. If you are starting on awarded income in the fall and your university doesn’t withhold income tax—or you’ve dealt with that scenario in the past—would you please recommend this seminar to your fellowship coordinator, program head, or graduate school? Please cc me [email protected] so I can pick up the conversation. My goal is for every grad student receiving awarded income to be forewarned about this issue before it rears its ugly head during tax season!

03:29 Emily: You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s15e1/. Without further ado, here’s our compilation episode on side hustling.

Shan Kutagulla: Technology Incubator

03:46 Shan K: My name is Shan Kutagulla at the University of Texas at Austin. I’m getting my doctorate here. I have a masters and did my bachelor’s at USC in Southern California. I do materials research for semiconductor and energy. Energy topics.

What is your motivation for having a side hustle?

04:08 Shan K: Yeah, my motivation for side hustling, I think like everyone else is to make a little extra cash. But in addition to that, it’s trying to get some skills that I wouldn’t necessarily get in the lab. I think for me as an engineer, I think soft skills are always going to be one of those things that engineers tend to either stereotypically or realistically lack.

What is your side hustle?

04:29 Shan K: So I work for my campus’s technology incubator, so that involves a lot of interviewing people, talking to founders of companies. So that really helps develop a lot of soft skills and then also gives me exposure to the business side of things. So it’s a little kind of rounding out the skill set in addition to making making some cash, which is always, always needed in grad school.

04:54 Shan K: So it’s through the school UT is I think one of a couple of universities has like technology incubator associated with it. So if any, any graduate student or any or founder really has a good idea that they kind of want to commercialize those, take research and spin it out into into the real world. So that the issue with that is a lot of people start applying to those positions or applying to the incubator to have their company incubated and they need someone to kind of bridge that gap between the technical side of things, which is just is this technology legitimate versus the business side of things, which is will this technology survived the competitive landscape.

05:35 Shan K: So this is something through UT that I applied for because I have an interest in going into like technical due diligence in the venture capital industry upon graduation. So it kind of helped you build that skill set. But I got this through just a relentlessly applying. I actually got rejected four times in a row and I got it on my fifth try.

05:53 Shan K: So it’s just an exercise in persistence or knowing someone I don’t really know, but I but either way, it worked out and it’s a really fulfilling position, I would say. And it’s just like a one of a couple of things that I do on the side to get some extra cash.

What are its benefits and detriments?

06:11 Shan K: Yeah, I mean, drawbacks are always going to be like the time, right? Any time, especially in grad school, any time you do a side hustle, it’s time taken away from research, especially if you ask some professors, thankfully not mine.

06:23 Shan K: And then, I mean, benefits always just be like the people you meet. Networking is a huge part of grad school, I would say opens a lot of doors as I would definitely say one of the things people warned me about grad school is that it closes a lot of doors and they can’t do anything else. I don’t necessarily think that’s true. It’s open a lot more doors and I had before and it’s a lot of people I just would not have met without applying to these these side hustle positions like I get to talk to The leader, the technical director of the incubator directly on a weekly basis. I talked to the president at university every now and then a lot of people in industry, academia, I get to help define mission roadmaps. I was invited to do an article on semi analysis. None of that would have been possible without without a side hustle. And so it’s been very, very fulfilling.

07:14 Shan K: But yeah, the cons would just be the time commitment really. So if you can make your own schedule with a side hustle, that’s probably a huge benefit that I didn’t necessarily have. But those are the pros cons that that you’ve got to weigh. So maybe that’s that’s some other advice that I have. Just do something that you really enjoy. Don’t don’t take positions that would just be incredibly bored in. And don’t find any fulfillment in.

How much do you earn through your side hustle?

07:39 Shan: This one actually only pays 15 an hour. I work for a startup too, one of the start-ups that we have right now on pay is much better. It’s like 40 an hour. So yeah, but again, one of those doors that’s open that allowed me to go work at a startup, right.

If someone listening wants to pursue this side hustle, how would you recommend they get started?

07:54 Shan K: Every major city has a technology incubator Los Angeles where where I went to undergrad has Los Angeles and Los Angeles Clean Tech incubator, Austin Technology Incubator in Austin Obviously Boston has a bunch. So like if you’re in one of these major cities where they exist, just go Google who the director is of your respective verticals if you’re interested in energy, semiconductor, whatever. Google them, find their email surprisingly easy to stalk online.

08:24 Shan K: Just email them and be like, Hey, I’m a grad student, especially if you’re trying to do technical due diligence, email them and be like, Hey, I’m a grad student. This university interested in technical due diligence because a lot of times those incubators are staffed with like business people who have a lot of business experience, but they don’t really necessarily do technical due diligence, which is a very specific role that only PhDs can really fill. And then that’s why you see it a lot of like hard tech investing firms like Kleiner Perkins, it’s always staffed by PhDs on due diligence. It’s just to avoid if they’re in a situation and there’s there’s not that many people who can do that. So they’d probably be very willing to take your help and don’t be afraid to work for free for like a couple of months, but then you can kind of push on them.

Anonymous #1: Graduate Housing Community Assistant

What is your motivation for having a side hustle?

09:10 Anonymous #1: So I am a pre doctoral student at University of Rochester. I’m a second year and my motivation is really based on seeing how much my parents were able to save or their parents are immigrants. And so I’ve seen them working very hard on my life and not getting the most pay. But I also want to make sure that I’m setting myself up for financial freedom in the future so that I can, you know, as lofty as it is nowadays on a home one day as well as save my retirement. And so those are my biggest goals. I want to set myself up for a positive future financially.

What is your side hustle?

10:17 Anonymous #1: So my side hustle is working with my university’s graduate housing department. Through them, I work as community assistant, so I get to not only socialize with people that are also going to my graduate school, but I also get a very good deal on my rent. I get about half off for my rent and it really does help considering how much rent has skyrocketed in the past couple of years.

10:44 Anonymous #1: Like all across the country, especially in New York State, it’s just gone up. It used to be that you could get a studio for under 800 across the board in this area and now that is no longer the norm. You have to be outside of the city. And because I want to live as close campus as possible, I decided to go for this position with graduate housing because I knew for me and my schedule didn’t make my commute easy as possible was in my best interest.

11:17 Anonymous #1: Coming from a major city, I knew commute can be 45 minutes plus on public transit. I was not willing to do that for my Ph.D. because I need to focus on my studies. So what if I to do this? It’s and it’s very relatively easy. I’m doing an A one event per month and a meeting here and there, introducing people to the right to resources that the university has. So for the money I’m getting off of my rent, it is it’s a very sweet gig.

What are its benefits and detriments?

11:43 Anonymous #1: So the main benefit is the financial discount that I get on a rent, I get half off for my rent charges. So that’s the biggest benefit. I also get to socialize more and meet other people in my community. Moving to a new city. I did not know anyone here, so I was able to use this as a way to socialize with other people at my graduate school. I would say that if you do have the opportunity to be a graduate housing assistant, I would highly recommend it. If you’re someone that likes planning events then and interact with people, I’d highly recommend it. It’s not something that I that I find to be very tedious.

12:21 Anonymous #1: Some places might give you entirely free housing. Some places might be like mine where you get like a 50% off for your housing rate. I find to be beneficial because that’s money that I get to keep for myself that I can invest in my Roth IRA that can be used for my own spending, that can use for a traveling for leisure, because we know we get started as graduate students. So it’s really important that I take breaks and have that extra money so that I can invest for my future and take those much needed breaks. Because I’m on a training grant so I can’t like have a job or an hourly wage. So this is like, ah, this is my way of going around that. So I have to abide by the PhD rules, but also I need to live my life.

13:06 Anonymous #1: Some of the drawbacks are just the logistics of hosting an event, having people turn out thinking and brainstorming new ideas that are both interesting to busy PGD and master’s students, but also attainable for me as a as another busy Ph.D. student to test, to schedule and plan for. So those are like the biggest cons that I could think of.

13:35 Anonymous #1: I really do enjoy like event planning, and if I wasn’t interested in STEM, I might have gone down this route because making sure that I check off all my boxes and doing things in a very organized manner is something I really enjoy doing. And yeah, those are the only those are the only drawbacks. I really enjoy this position and it’s not very difficult for me. I am a social person, so meeting people, introducing them to the to the grad housing area is not something I think of as a hardship.

How much do you earn through your side hustle?

14:04 Anonymous #1: For this year, for 2022, 23, I’m getting a rent reduction of $555 every month. I have a one bedroom apartment and the rent reduction is a flat rate for all graduate housing assistance. And so I think they calculated based off of a to a two bedroom apartment. But I have a one bedroom and I get charged $944. So I’m paying less than $400 for my rent every month, which without roommates, no one that I know has that that charge at all. And I only work about 10 hours per month in total, I’d say in terms of planning, brainstorming and hosting events, the events only last 1 to 2 hours, depending on how many people are there. And so I guess the hourly rate that I calculated based off of that is $55 per hour.

If someone listening wants to pursue this side hustle, how would you recommend they get started?

15:00 Anonymous #1: So the first thing I would look into is if your university does offer graduate housing, not every university does offer on campus graduate housing. So looking into that first and then once you do find out that your university does offer it next thing I would do is look to see if they have any job openings. Usually those job openings will be posted sometimes throughout the semester, but primarily during the move in and move out periods around the summer and winter time, depending on how university work. If you’re on the quarter system or on like a semester system that could also be dependent on when they post those job openings. But because grad students will graduate in December is often going to be opportunities for people to get these positions. And then once you do find out when they tend to post positions, email the contact person so that one they know you’re aware and two that you’re actually very interested in the position and gives a bit more of a of a of an idea. I think when they’re looking at your application, they’ll recognize that, oh, this person emailed me several, several weeks ago saying that they were interested and they scheduled an informational interview with me to go over the, the requirement for the position that’ll sort of put you in their mind, which is something that I did to me to sort of better ensure that I got the position because I very much wanted it.

16:20 Anonymous #1: And then going through the regular interview process. And if you do have any skills in terms of event planning or a previous housing related occupation or internship or or what have you. That will also better you for being chosen for the position.

Ariana: Pet Sitting

16:20 Ariana: My name is Ariana. I’m a fifth year Ph.D. candidate, the University of Virginia, and I live in Charlottesville, Virginia.

What is your motivation for having a side hustle?

16:58 Ariana: So my motivation for side hustling is the obvious one. Money. I’m I was really in need of some supplemental income especially as I my program fifth year the time a lot of applications of preparing for a big move coming up so it was that and also trying to think about what I could be doing as a side hustle for the longer term.

What is your side hustle?

17:21 Ariana: My side hustle is pet sitting. Primarily dogs and cats, but I am open to a range of other animals.

What are its benefits and detriments?

17:28 Ariana: So there are so many benefits, but also some considerations of pet sitting. First is that I love animals and as a person who has a cat not a dog, it’s nice to be around dog energy and just get to meet very sweet animals around my community and honestly see places I haven’t seen before. So I’m walking them around and all that. It’s also a pretty flexible gig. I mean, usually things settle around weekends and on breaks, but as a graduate student, especially in my later years, it’s been nice to be like, okay, I’ll go do a midday walk or something like that. It’s also a job that again, it’s flexible in the nature that if I don’t want to do it for a month, I could not do it and that would be okay. I’m my own boss in that sense, and there are apps that help you to find people and vet them and give you all the support you need.

18:20 Ariana: Drawbacks are definitely that like I’ve been dissertating and even with the flexibility of like it’s been hard sometimes and it can definitely become an unintentional or intentional avoidance strategy to be with pets. It’s also time away from my apartment, my home so a lot of the chores and things that need to get done often have to be delayed because I’m spending weekends with other people’s pets and I kind of like that too. So those are some of the consider.

How much do you earn through your side hustle?

18:54 Ariana: My earnings can really range depending on how committed I am to getting things done. I think it would be possible to get about 25, like if I would just walk, for example, 25 to $50 weekly, it’s only really do 200 a month, but house sitting or pet sitting where I’m staying with them, that can look more like 500 or so dollars a month if I’m doing every single weekend. And that’s another consideration. It’s not the most I’m not flowing in money rather like it is a lot of time. But those like additional benefits, getting to walk outside, having to play with the pets kind of adds to the compensation for me.

If someone listening wants to pursue this side hustle, how would you recommend they get started?

19:41 Ariana: If you want to be a pet sitter, it’s actually easier than I knew. So I was recommended by my cousin who is a lab technician. But there are apps like Wag and Rover which have a really streamlined system for getting you involved. I mean, I’d recommend, of course, having some comfort with pets, but you can get reviews or sort of testimonials from family members and friends and other folks who you may be pet for on the regular. I would say that’s where I started. I was doing more just ad hoc pet sitting for other grad school friends and then really expanded into this, I would say to just be thoughtful about what you’re comfortable with. You don’t have to sit at people’s houses, but I feel pretty comfortable doing that because of all these safety measures are in place and people are really folks who want someone to care for their dog, kind of wants you to feel comfortable as well. So I would say those are the quickest ways. So I’m sure they’re, you know, you can advertise your services on a neighborhood group or something like that and get some direct referrals.

20:48 Ariana: I was going to say that’s another drawback of the piece. So doing the apps I would say is a great starting step because you get screened, you build up your reputation, but they can take about, you know, if I charge $17 for a walk, I’ll probably get 13 of those dollars. So I can’t do the percentages really quickly. I’m not a math PhD, but it’s notable. And so when you do that over time, something like that and it’s not nothing. So but what I found, which I appreciated is after like one successful stay, a lot of folks are okay with going off the app, and just paying me directly. And likewise, like I trust them and I’m comfortable just reaching out. I have all the information that I need. So while I think it’s an upfront cost, it doesn’t have to be a continuous cost. Just you’re trying to get a lot of clients.

21:43 Ariana: I wish I’d started earlier, with the side hustle, I mean, it’s really hard when your schedule’s more packed with things, but I think it’s the type of side hustle that is really relationship and community based and can be a good way to get integrated into a place that as a grad student I know I was like in my room or studying in the building. So that was really nice. And I would say that it’s not it’s actually kind of a nice little mini retreat, You know, I can be in someone else’s home or space with WiFi working on things, and that’s been kind of nice too.

H: College Consulting

22:29 Emily: This submission is from H a fifth year humanities PhD candidate on the east coast whose stipend is $40,000 per year.

What is your motivation for having a side hustle?

22:37 Emily: Quote, my motivation for side hustling is two-pronged. Part of it is to have the extra income. This allows me to save more. I’ve maxed out my Roth IRA every year since I got the job and I get a 7% match into a 401k with a 3% safe harbor. So I effectively save 17% of my pre-tax side hustle income. This is great because my stipend income isn’t eligible for a 401k and wasn’t eligible for Roth IRA contributions for the first couple of years of my degree before they changed the rules to make stipend income eligible. The savings are reassuring for me because I hate the idea of graduating from my program in my early thirties. Seriously behind on retirement savings, especially as job prospects for humanities, PhDs are pretty precarious and usually poorly paid.

23:23 Emily: I find it psychologically reassuring to have savings for when I finish my program, but it’s not just the savings. The extra income also allows me to have a nicer lifestyle than I would if I were living entirely off of the stipend. I don’t feel like I’m missing out because of my income. I’m admittedly a person who likes certain luxuries, like getting my nails done or having a wine subscription or going on vacation a few times a year that are out of step with a typical PhD lifestyle and need some more cash to fund. I like that I don’t have to bow out to plans with my friends who have higher paid jobs just because I’m in grad school, I can go on trips, go to weddings, go to a nice dinner, et cetera. I know plenty of grad students who enjoy living simply and don’t want missing out on those things, but they’re important to me.

24:08 Emily: The second reason is job security. I’m very conscious of how few decent academic jobs are out there. I have witnessed very talented scholars totally flounder on the job market and then panic when they have to rapidly pivot into a new plan with little or no work experience and a lack of obviously marketable skills. Understandably, this leads to a lot of anxiety and depression. I find it petrifying. I don’t want to be in that situation. I hang onto my job so that if I finish my PhD without anything else lined up, at least I have this. I like the job and would be fine to keep doing it while I figured out some other move post-degree. I think having the jobs gives me some security, both materially and existentially along with my main side job. I also have done other fixed term gigs to develop a more diverse skillset.

24:57 Emily: My goal is to make sure that I have recent work experience on my CV after I graduate and talking points for informational interviews. Besides just my research, I don’t wanna be in the position. I see many people in where it’s like they are graduating off a cliff and they have no idea what comes next or how to prepare.

What is your side hustle?

25:15 Emily: For my main side hustle I work in private college consulting. My company provides advice to students applying to university programs, working with clients around the world with a special focus on US colleges. My role involves mentoring students in their final year of high school as they work on their college essays. It’s almost all remote though. We do team retreats once or twice a year.

What are its benefits and detriments?

25:36 Emily: There are a lot of benefits. It involves two of the main areas. I enjoy working in education and writing. I love the colleagues I work with and I love almost all of my students. It’s a pleasure to get to know them and I learn new things about the world from them. I feel like they grow as people throughout the process of us working together, even when they don’t end up at their dream school. That makes it rewarding to me. It’s a great counterpoint to my independent research work because it’s people focused and the impact feels immediate. Unlike an abstract and long-term dissertation project, when I’m deep down a research rabbit hole on my own in the library, getting on a zoom to talk to a colleague or student is a breath of fresh air. Sometimes I feel that having a second job makes grad students more efficient. Anecdotally, I find that up to a point, the ones who have less time seem to manage it better. The drawback is that it’s highly seasonal work and I’m often having to be on email for several hours a day September through December.

26:34 Emily: It’s tough when it overlaps with the holidays and the fall semester crunch time. This was especially true in my second and third years when I was grading finals and writing my own papers and attending conferences simultaneously alongside my job. The nature of the work means that I just have to respond if students are down to the wire on their deadlines and my academic work has suffered in those moments, but not badly enough that my advisors said anything. I’m still on track to complete the degree in time and have been successful in my program. It’s a bit easier now that I’m ABD and more in charge of my own schedule. I have the freedom to organize my time around the busy season. The benefits to me are money and setting myself up for future careers Outside academia, the drawback is the stress and risk of burnout that can come with being over committed and the risk that spreading yourself too thin means not doing as good a job as you could have on your main gig. Personally, I’m okay with that. My approach works for me and my priorities, but plenty of grad students I know would hate it.

How much do you earn through your side hustle?

27:34 Emily: I earn $45,000 annually on salary for the college consultant gig for which I am technically part-time. This is after several raise negotiations. I’ve been at the company six years now and started on 30 k. I get a Christmas bonus of $1,000, also paid for my laptop in the busiest season. September to December. I work 20 hours a week, and in low season it can be four to 10 hours a week to get started in college consulting.

If someone listening wants to pursue this side hustle, how would you recommend they get started?

28:00 Emily: To get started in college consulting I cold emailed a bunch of companies and ended up going with this one, but had offers from others. I’ve heard of someone getting into the same type of role after being reached out to on LinkedIn. My university list serves, sometimes sends out listings for similar roles. I would recommend trying to connect personally with people rather than applying into a black hole, but then applying to a few places. I imagine that experience working with students as a TA or in a writing center would be really helpful, but if you have no relevant experience, try doing it on a volunteer basis first. I know if people getting these jobs after doing pro bono work, finally, it’s a fundamentally credentialist industry. So if you have a degree or two or three from a very competitive school, that will help, end quote

Commercial

28:44 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2023-2024 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/speaking/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Courtney: Landlord

30:04 Courtney: My name is Courtney and I am a third year Ph.D. student in civil engineering at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon.

What is your side hustle?

30:12 Courtney: My side hustle is renting out rooms in my house.

What is your motivation for having a side hustle?

30:16 Courtney: I do this to supplement my research assistant income and pay my mortgage.

What are its benefits and detriments?

03:21 Courtney: It’s a study dependable form of income and helps reducing my house, my housing costs dramatically. Besides occasional banking and paper work is a very passive source of income taking care of a house. It’s hard work, but when you have tenants, things have to be done in a timely and high quality manner with their living conditions in mind. For example, we recently replaced the roof and had to include them in the discussions of what the condition of the house would be during the construction.

How much do you earn through your side hustle?

30:52 Courtney: Since I co-own the house, I also split the rental income. So I make $650 a month and I already pay quarterly estimated taxes for my fellowship anyway, so I calculate this income into that as well. But I also use tax deductions for housing costs by following form 1040 schedule E, which actually lays it out really nicely.

If someone listening wants to pursue this side hustle, how would you recommend they get started?

31:17 Courtney: This side hustle requires the purchase of a property which is quite an undertaking. It requires some dedication to understanding rental laws in your state and city. But after that initial setup, having yearly tenants who stick around makes the side hustle low energy input for high rewards. I started this two years ago and I plan to continue the side hustle until I graduate in a few years. At this point I probably spend about 3 hours a month on managing tenants and their needs.

31:48 Courtney: If it feels impossible to buy a house look into co-borrowing or a first time homebuyer financial help in your state or county, and check out Emily’s other podcast on grad students buying houses.

Anonymous #2: Research Assistant

32:07 Emily: This next submission is from an anonymous grad student who is about to start intern year and lives in Texas.

What is your motivation for having a side hustle?

32:14 Anonymous #2: What is my motivation? Having a side hustle. I would say as a graduate student, I just needed money. And while I was grateful for the system that I received from grad school, it just wasn’t enough to be able to travel, to visit family, just to have a little extra cushion. And then now that I’m moving out of state for internship without my side hustle, I would not have been able to afford it at all.

What is your side hustle?

32:40 Anonymous #2: I am a research assistant at a hospital.

What are its benefits and detriments?

32:43 Anonymous #2: Some of the drawbacks of position, I would say, is for the spring semester balancing my schedule. There was a lot to do when it came to doing my internship interviews, wrapping up my final semester, in the state that I live in and just trying to balance my schedule, I would say is one of the drawbacks. Benefits of that are just having money, having a cushion. As I mentioned before, I am moving. I’m single. I’m moving from the states I live in to another state and I feel very fortunate that I’m not worried about affording my move. I am not worried about like the cost of a U-Haul or having to borrow money from relatives or like take out a personal loan. I am solely financing my move from the income I receive from my side job.

33:38 Anonymous #2: I would say in terms of how this will like this position will impact or like play a role in my future career. I’m the type of hospital that I work at is type of setting I would like to work in in the future and this population as well. Also, I can probably request letters of recommendation and from my bosses, and I think it gives me a lot of insight into the type of field that I’ll be working in the near term care.

How much do you earn through your side hustle?

34:12 Anonymous #2: So I’ve been at this job since, I guess like orientation was in December and I make about 25. I make $25.83 an hour and 20 hours a week. And so I would say after tax, before taxes, I take home about 2000 a month.

If someone listening wants to pursue this side hustle, how would you recommend they get started?

34:34 Anonymous #2: If someone’s looking to pursue this type of position or just a side hustle, indeed this a great source when it comes to looking for research assistant jobs that are flexible that are part time. I also recommend especially if you’re interested in research or just want to get some clinical, reaching out to PIs at different hospitals that might. They don’t always broadcast like that they’re hiring. And so reaching out to them and inquire like, Hey, you know, I’m so-and-so, I’m looking for a job, or I’m interested in any position you might have available. And that’s even better. That’s kind of how it worked out for me, where someone put an email out there for, like you said, Assistant Do you know of anyone? I responded back and I know me and I’m looking for a job.

35:28 Anonymous #2: I would say finding that balance in your schedule is really important. I and also having some flexibility. So during the semester I was working like in the middle of the week and now the semester has ended I requested a shift in the schedule so I could work the first Monday through Wednesday, which is helpful for me so that I can get other things done before the end of the week. But also I think just there was some delay. I work for the government and so there’s some delay when it came to my application process and not on my end, but just governments and and I, I very much communicated with my prospective supervisor and let them know like, hey, I filled all the paperwork. I’m just waiting to hear back. It took six months to actually get hired to start the orientation, to start the onboarding process, even though I was hired back in the summer of 2022. But I think for me, patience was a virtue and really just showing up and being present at work. And I’m confident that in the near future when I’m applying for postdoc positions, if I request a letter of recommendation from any of my supervisors here, they will happily write it.

36:43 Anonymous #2: Now that I am no longer contracted at my university as a grad student. The month of June is my last month. I’ll be working here. I’m just working here and I am so fortunate. Like I know I’m not like another. You know, I have peers that are either married or they’re receiving like, Oh, they have a partner or they’re receiving support from their family and like, I don’t know. So financially like, I take care of myself. So and I know for a fact that I would not be able to move 1500 miles from where I am now. Had it not been for this job, because the money I received, the the grad student through my stipend was great. It covered all of my bills and like maybe an extra $100 or two. But over the course of six months it would not have been enough to pay for UHaul to pay for moving boxes and also to and in my case, you know, oftentimes we apply for housing. They want someone who on paper earns three times the rent. And so if I did not have this job, I would have likely had to reach out to a relative to cosign my lease, which is fine. But, you know, it’s a hassle having to ask someone to do that again and again, especially if they’ve been like, So supposedly they’ve done it. You know, for me throughout grad school, it’s nice to kind of feel a little more independent.

DreVon Dobson: Professional Musician

38:08 Emily: This submission is from DreVon Dobson. Quote. I’ve recently graduated with a PhD in pathology from UNC Chapel Hill, studying the genetic regulation of blood coagulation factors. I’m about to start a postdoc position soon in environmental toxicology, studying the effects of ozone exposure on health and disease outcomes.

What is your motivation for having a side hustle?

38:29 Emily: Having a side hustle has been a great way to give my mind a break from my lab work, as well as supplement my income as a graduate student, which was livable but not great.

What is your side hustle?

38:39 Emily: My side hustle is performing as a professional musician. I minored in jazz studies on the saxophone and undergrad and I’ve kept my passion for music alive as a side hustle. I play at churches, country clubs, weddings, et cetera, with a few different bands usually on the weekends.

What are its benefits and detriments?

38:56 Emily: The benefits of this are that it provides a constructive and profitable outlet for my passion and it’s fun. The detriments are that there’s a considerable amount of preparation involved in order to play the gigs well, practicing learning, music, purchasing and maintaining equipment, et cetera. Also, the gigs can consume a good amount of my weekend depending on how far and how long they are detracting from my ability to rest for the upcoming work week. But you can also say yes or no to opportunities to fill your needs and schedule.

How much do you earn through your side hustle?

39:26 Emily: I have worked my way up to earning about $20,000 a year from my side hustle. This is definitely on the higher end for a part-time musician and I had to work my way up to that over the years. This is generated by about two to three gigs a weekend averaging out at around $200 a gig.

If someone listening wants to pursue this side hustle, how would you recommend they get started?

39:46 Emily: Pursuing this side hustle is totally obtainable. If you are musically inclined, you can start by visiting local jam sessions in your area to figure out who might be in need of your musical talents. There are also online avenues to pursue in local Facebook groups and ads and websites like Reverb Nation Beyond Music. If you have a passion for the arts, there’s most likely a way to monetize it. You can sell art, join a dance troop, audition for a theater production, et cetera. I have found artistic passions and scientific studies to be a great combination of financial gain and life balance. I would encourage anyone who is interested to give it a shot. You never know.

Dan Gorman: Chaperone, Podcast Recording, Writing Lesson Plans

40:31 Dan G: My name is Dan Gorman. I am finishing my PhD in US History this summer at the University of Rochester, and I also live in Rochester, New York.

What is your motivation for having a side hustle?

40:41 Dan G: My motivation for side hustling is solvency. Uh, while we had pretty good PhD stipends at my university, it’s still, you’re living in sort of comfortable poverty as a PhD student, I find, and for some people it’s less comfortable. I stay comfortable in my case because I don’t have any dependents. Um, it’s just me in my household, but there’s always wanting to have more than just a little bit of extra money in the bank account, wanting to have something of a cushion. Um, especially as we got towards covid, I was glad to, I had done some side hustling and saved up some extra money. Sometimes the, when I say solvency, I mean, yes, paying the bills also, it’s good once in a while to actually do something fun with your assets, but also I, I think mainly my main reason for wanting to save up money was in case of an emergency. You know, if somebody got sick and I needed to go visit them or, um, you know, during covid when we just didn’t know what else was gonna happen next.

What is your side hustle? How much do you earn through your side hustle?

41:33 Dan G: My side hustle isn’t really one thing. What I recommend to other people is sign up for as many internal newsletters at your university as possible and re and actually read them. Um, I found a number of paying side opportunities within the university just by being on the newsletter feeds for different offices. Um, for example, okay, so the Office of Undergraduate Research a couple years ago they were sending a delegation of students to the National Conference on undergraduate research. And an opportunity came up that they would wanna send a couple staff or grad students as chaperones. Um, it was a pretty easy job. I had to go to Oklahoma City for four days, but they covered all my expenses and there was a small honorarium. It wasn’t a ton of extra money, but it was there and it was an experience that I could say, Hey, this counts as teaching and advising and mentorship.

42:22 Dan G: Another example is that I had joined a professional group for graduate students through our music conservatory, but they’d opened it up to graduate students in other divisions. It was called working PhDs. So they were doing professional readings and interviewing people about how they transitioned into alternative academic jobs. And as part of that, they launched a podcast called Working PhDs. And so by recording interviews for that, I was paid I think $75 per episode and I did three episodes. So then that was, it was over $200 extra. Um, so we’re, I’m not talking about huge amounts of money here, but finding bite-sized projects like these internally, um, if you do enough of them, they do start to add up to some extra cash.

43:04 Dan G: And again, $200 may not sound like a lot, but that could cover, you know, depending where you live, that could be internet, your insurance bill and something else for the month. So it’s not, it’s not nothing. Um, looking beyond the university, I think sometimes it comes down to professional networks and signing up. So again, it’s, I don’t have a very original method, but it’s signing up for the listservs for your professional organizations. Um, an opportunity came up a couple of years ago actually during the pandemic that, during that first pandemic year where some friends of mine were working on a digital library project, um, at Northern Illinois University, which is, you know, 800 miles away from me. But they said there they needed people to write sort of lesson plans for their, for their website. It was pairing archival old books that were scanned with how you could teach it in the classroom. And then you, we would present it digitally and that came with a $600 honorarium.

What are its benefits and detriments? If someone listening wants to pursue this side hustle, how would you recommend they get started?

44:01 Dan G: Um, and again, I don’t have a magic method for finding more of these except, you know, in my case, in my field, in the humanities, get on h net, humanities net, um, sign up for the main feeds which post every day, 10 to 20 calls for papers, podcasters. Sometimes you’ll see independent editing projects and, you know, it can be a little tedious cuz then, you know, you’re, you’re deliberately spamming your inbox both from internal sources and then from external professional organizations. But there are opportunities out there. It’s not a lot of money. Again, these are small, usually project based. The $600 for the, uh, the lesson plan was that’s at the high end of what I’ve gotten, but smaller bite-sized projects that you can fit in without massively impeding your own studies. Or if you have a more prominent work study job that you know you’re doing 10 to 20 hours a week. Um, I think writing that lesson plan and presenting it, I think it took maybe six hours total over the course of a couple weeks. Um, because the book was a dime novel. It was quite thin. Um, so your mileage may vary.

45:07 Dan G: Other challenges, I think also, again, that oftentimes these bite-sized academic projects, whether they’re at your school or somewhere else, they tend not to pay a lot. Um, you know, we’re talking one to $200 US users really. But the flip side is that if it’s a bite-sized project like that, you can do it quickly and it doesn’t really impede on your main work responsibilities at your university. And that was, that was the big thing for me. So wanting to find ways I could use my skillset, um, make some extra money, but also where it wouldn’t become such a massive time sink that people at the university, my supervisors would be saying, Hey, you’re not focused on your main work. Ultimately, I would say that the kinds of projects I’ve described are not ways to make a lot of money, although there are exceptions. Like if you become a writing tutor, you will make a good hourly rate doing that. However, they can give you unique experiences and give you some more in business parlance transferable skills and deliverable outcomes that you can say you have produced when you’re going on the job market.

Outtro

46:14 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

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