side hustle

This Grad Student Experiences Financial Ease Thanks to Her Side Hustles

January 26, 2026 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Nashae Prout, a 5th-year PhD candidate in toxicology at the University of Rochester. Nashae’s first year of graduate school on a $28,000 stipend was financially challenging, so she now maintains two side hustles. She serves as a graduate community assistant for graduate housing, an up to 10 hour per week position that gives her a 55% reduction in rent. She also adjuncts for a nearby university with the support of her PI. Between these two side hustles and her disposition toward frugality, Nashae can comfortably max out her Roth IRA and spend in areas that matter to her, experiencing financial ease. She concludes the interview with excellent advice on time management and prioritization.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This Grad Student Experiences Financial Ease Thanks to Her Side Hustles

Teaser

Nashae (00:00): I know how hard it is. My first year, I definitely had to have a very strict budget in what I spent my money on and how much of it I did spend. And so it like just takes some of that stress off your shoulders and I have to think about, okay, I can’t do this ’cause I have to pay rent and I can’t do that ’cause I have to pay off this card bill.

Introduction

Emily (00:32): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:02): This is Season 23, Episode 2, and today my guest is Nashae Prout, a 5th-year PhD candidate in toxicology at the University of Rochester. Nashae’s first year of graduate school on a $28,000 stipend was financially challenging, so she now maintains two side hustles. She serves as a graduate community assistant for graduate housing, an up to 10 hour per week position that gives her a 55% reduction in rent. She also adjuncts for a nearby university with the support of her PI. Between these two side hustles and her disposition toward frugality, Nashae can comfortably max out her Roth IRA and spend in areas that matter to her, experiencing financial ease. She concludes the interview with excellent advice on time management and prioritization.

Emily (01:56): The tax year 2025 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs can access them for free. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they sponsor this workshop for you and your peers? You can find more information about licensing these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Thank you so, so much for doing so! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s23e2/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Nashae Prout.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:32): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Nashae Prout, who is a fifth year PhD candidate at the University of Rochester. And we’re gonna be talking about increasing income and making your budget work on a grad student stipend. So Nashae, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast and will you please introduce yourself a little bit further?

Nashae (03:51): Yeah, um, happy to be here. My name’s Nashae Prout. I am from Washington DC and I am a fifth year PhD candidate at University of Rochester’s Toxicology Training program.

Emily (04:01): Excellent. Now, uh, let’s take it back a little bit ’cause I wanna set up what your fin- your finances and your financial life were like coming into graduate school. So I understand you graduated from college debt free. Can you tell us like how that happened?

Nashae (04:16): Yes. So I have a three-pronged approach in how I, uh, got through undergrad debt free. So one, um, I started off at community college. Uh, a lot of people don’t always do that, but it’s a really viable option, especially if you don’t have that much money to, you know, go right into a four year institution. So that was number one. Number two, I did have a lot of financial aid. Um, I qualified for the Pell Grant. Um, we also have a tuition assistance grant in DC because there’s no public colleges in DC um, where, sort of this in between we’re out of state everywhere else, but where we’re in state, it’s only private institutions that cost a lot more money. And so because of that, the DC government provides students with a $10,000 grant for each year of college. I think up until five years they cover you for the, for five years, um, for any four year institution that you join.

Nashae (05:11): And so I got that every year. I made sure to put in my application each year to renew it because I needed that money once I started at Morgan State University, which is where I did my undergrad. And then on top of that I also was an NIH BUILD scholar. Um, NIH BUILD is, it’s an acronym Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity. We were one of 10 sites in the United States. Um, and so it was a two year, um, traineeship where I got partial tuition coverage as well as money each month, um, after working a certain amount of hours. Um, and I will say, um, at that point I was breaking even if not give or take about a hundred dollars. So by the end of it I did pay for my college myself, so maybe a couple hundred. But in those first two years when I was at community college, my parents did, um, help me out tremendously and thankful to them every single day for paying for my uh, community college.

Emily (06:05): Yeah, well even with parental support to, you know, for a certain period of time, that’s still a huge accomplishment to get through college without debt. Did you go directly to graduate school or did you take any time in between?

Nashae (06:18): No, I went directly into graduate school. I, that summer I didn’t do any work. I was working since I was 14 years old every summer and it was the first summer I did nothing and I quickly realized there’s a reason why I always had a summer job because I got really bored of watching daytime TV really fast.

PhD Offer Letters and Funding Sources

Emily (06:35): Um, okay. So tell us more about like maybe your offer letter and like how, how you were funded throughout, you know, up to this, you know, fifth year of your PhD program.

Nashae (06:47): Yeah, so, um, I actually had two offers for a PhD program, one at Rochester and the other one at a school in Texas. And I, and while Texas does not have um, income taxes, that that was a good selling point, however, I decided to go for the Rochester offer just ’cause it was a bit closer to home and I loved the culture of the program as well. And so that offer letter, I think, um, I wanna say it was maybe like 28 K, but they also gave me a relocation assistance, um, fund, I think it was like a thousand to $2,000, which I, um, was really grateful for in terms of, you know, having to move, uh, six, seven hours away from my family. Um, so that did sweeten the pot. Um, the first year we’re all funded underneath the, uh, dean scholarship. So all first years, um, at my school are funded by that scholarship. Um, after that I was on a T32 grant with my program. And then currently, um, yes, so that was second and third year I was on the T32 and then fourth year and onwards I am covered by a grant with my PI.

Emily (07:52): Okay, so you’ve switched kind of from fellowship to training grant to assistantship, um, but has that 28K pretty much stayed stable or like gone up a little bit?

Nashae (08:01): Yeah, it goes up, um, what is it, I think 3% every year. So it’s gone up a little bit every year to like match inflation.

Side Income: Graduate Community Assistant

Emily (08:08): Okay. And I know where we’re going with this is that we’re gonna talk about your side income. So that 28k plus, you know, 3% growth each year. Has that not really been sufficient to pay for at least what you want your living expenses to be?

Nashae (08:21): I am never, I’d just say this, I’m never just satisfied with what I’m getting. I’m always gonna wanna challenge myself and get more, um, my parents are immigrants to the United States. They’re both from Jamaica and so they’ve always instilled in me to work hard. Um, my dad, he’s a construction worker, but he’d also always do side jobs. So I always saw him, he’d be, you know, done doing this, but he’d go into this person’s house to do the side project to get extra money. And so when I saw the opportunity, um, to start a side job, I took it. And that first one was with, um, graduate housing. Um, they had a GCA position, which is a graduate community assistant position open. I actually applied for it twice the first time I didn’t get it and the second time I ended up getting the position. Um, and it’s, it didn’t seem like it was out of the realm of what I’d be comfortable doing. It’s a lot of, you know, putting on events, um, greeting residents. I’m a yapper so I like talking with people anyways, so it’s not, um, it wasn’t too much of a deviation from like what I’d be comfortable doing on the side for a couple hours every week.

Emily (09:25): Okay. So let me ask, do you, did you have to live in the housing to have this job or were you able to live elsewhere?

Nashae (09:33): No, so you have to live within graduate housing for at least four months before being eligible to become a graduate community assistant. You also have to live in that graduate area that you’re going to be working in. So I live in my complex and because of that I am over, um, I’m responsible for um, I think the 700s and 800s like apartment blocks in this complex. If I was a GCA at one of the other complexes, I’d have to be a resident there for four months. I think I could transfer, but there’s a transfer fee and I didn’t wanna pay that ’cause there was another position open, but I would’ve had to move there to be eligible for it and I did not wanna move. I like my apartment.

Emily (10:14): I see. So you had already chosen your housing anyways, just like what you personally wanted for your time in graduate school and then, then you saw these open positions and were like, oh, I can add that into my life right now. That seems manageable, is that right?

Nashae (10:27): Yeah, because you’re only eligible to live here if you’re a trainee or a medical student or anything like that. And so everyone else that’s also GCA is also either an MBA student, a PhD student, or they’re a med student.

Emily (10:40): Okay. And you told us a little bit about the nature of the job and about the time commitment. Um, but what are you getting? Are you getting paid? Are you getting like a, a reduction in your housing costs or like how does the compensation work?

Nashae (10:51): Yeah, so because a lot of the programs don’t allow for us to be, um, paid or at least to a certain extent, we can’t get paid depending on what grant you’re on. What, um, graduate housing does is that they don’t pay us. What they do is they give us a rent reduction every month on our rent. So I get 55% off of my rent costs.

Emily (11:09): Nice. Yeah, that, I mean you said it was maybe like two hours per week. That seems like a great trade off. What, what dollar amount does that equate to?

Nashae (11:17): I’d say it depends on the week. So some weeks are a lot more intensive, especially in the summertime. We do have a lot more residents coming in, so we have to make sure that we greet them all. We have to make three attempts to greet them. Um, so that’s just knocking on their door, seeing if they’re home, if they’re not, okay, if, if they are then we have to chat with them for a little bit. Um, so it, I think it’s technically 10 hours per week, but it ebbs and flows throughout the semester. So middle of fall semester, I am doing less hours technically, but in the summertime I am doing more, but this is mostly stuff on the weekends and I, I, um, am responsible for hosting one event per month. Um, which I think the hardest part is just advertising the event. So you know, sending out those flyers, printing it off and posting it in like the laundry room and stuff like that. So it depends on for like the hours, like some are just, some seasons are more busy than other seasons are, like winter time. We don’t technically have much to do from the end of the semester to the start of, um, the spring semester in Ja- in like the end of January. So that’s like a pretty lax time where we’re not doing anything. So it ebbs and flows I’d say. So more than two hours, but some weeks it is more so like two hours. Like especially in the wintertime there’s zero hours technically.

Emily (12:33): Awesome. And you said it’s a 55% rent reduction, so I’m imagining this is a benefit worth at least several hundred dollars, is that right?

Nashae (12:40): By this year it’s at least a reduction by like five to 600.

Emily (12:44): Very nice. Very nice. Helps a lot.

Nashae (12:46): Yes, it makes like very affordable

Emily (12:49): Yeah. And so it sounds like you, you’ve, you still continue to hold this position, is that right? You started in maybe like your second year-ish and then you still have it?

Nashae (12:57): Yeah, I started in my second year. I was eligible in my first year, but again, I interviewed for it and I didn’t get it that first round. Um, still in my second year and it’s been smooth sailing ever since. I’m, uh, one of the OG GCAS in the position, so everyone else in my complex is currently newer than I am, so I sort of help them sometimes with like, oh, who do I contact for this or who do I chat with for that?

Emily (13:20): Nice. Um, well it sounds, I, I don’t know the, it sounds like a great position. I I am always a little bit like regretful when I look back at grad school and like I never even thought about like, or you know, considered doing this type of position yet. It seems like yeah, pretty good amount of financial benefit for like the work you need to put in, especially if you find the work like pretty pleasant, you know, overall.

Nashae (13:42): I have a shopping problem so I love shopping with the school’s money to host the events anyways. Like it’s, it’s a win-win situation in my opinion.

Emily (13:50): Yeah, I would say for, certainly for current graduate students, if you would like <laugh> a rent reduction, you know, look, look into this.

Nashae (13:58): Free rent is, yeah, yeah. Free rent is worth it if you wanna do that side, but 50% off is also very reasonable.

Emily (14:04): Yeah, it’s, it’s more compensation but it’s more work, right, for, for that type of position. But I would also say for like maybe even prospective graduate students who are concerned about the cost of housing in like the city that they’re considering moving to look for this kind of opportunity sooner rather than later. It could even be part of your like decision of where you go, like whether, if it is a position that you’re willing to take on whether those positions are available because it can be a massive help, 50%, a hundred percent kind of rent reduction in a high cost of living area would matter a lot for a graduate student. Um, so I really appreciate you telling us about the position. Seems like a good fit for you.

Nashae (14:40): Yeah, I personally love it. I am hoping that other people that you know need it can also get a position similar to this, especially if you’re in a high cost of living. I wouldn’t consider Rochester very high cost of living. Like the original rent is about maybe a bit over a thousand dollars for a rent one bedroom. So it’s not, it’s very reasonable. So it’s just helps me even more in terms of like this like moderate cost of living area.

Side Income: Adjunct Faculty Member

Emily (15:04): Yeah. And I understand you have another side job, um, maybe not surprising given your description of like who you are and like just you wanna be busy and wanna be working a lot. So like what’s your other side position?

Nashae (15:16): Yeah, so my other side position is being an adjunct faculty member at Nazareth University. Um, it’s a local liberal arts college here in Rochester.

Emily (15:24): So how did you first come, well I guess tell us what you teach and like is it all the time year round or in certain semesters?

Nashae (15:33): Yeah, so I teach um, biology lab, so it’s um, a one credit course and then I also last spring semester taught science communications or sorry, intro to science communications and that was a three credit course. Um, it’s, they’re both, um, in person on campus, um, classes that I teach, I do the lab courses in the fall and then I do in the spring I did science communications. Um, it’s pretty reasonable in terms of time commitment. I do one evening class and one afternoon class for my lab sections and I only do, I only did one science communications class since that one did take a lot more time grading wise. Grading wise, since it is a, uh, writing class. So you know, you’re doing papers and continual uh, edits on people’s like work

Emily (16:23): And were you like the instructor of record for either one of those?

Nashae (16:28): Yeah, so I am the listed instructor for all the courses that I teach at Nazareth.

Emily (16:32): Nice. And did you have to prepare a curriculum as well?

Nashae (16:36): No, so, um, I do have leeway with the science communications class, however, for the science laboratory class, because it is standard across all lab sections, that one is predetermined. So I have leeway in terms of how I get the material across, but the experiments that are laid out are laid out in a scheduled fashion and it’s the same for all faculty teaching the course.

Emily (16:58): And did you pursue this position purely for more money or was it for teaching experience or like what were your motivations?

Nashae (17:06): Yeah, so, um, I got the position actually because a lab member of mine was already an adjunct there and through word of mouth I was able to apply for some of their extra adjunct positions. Um, I I would say it was 50% wanting more money and 50% wanting to pad my CV with an experience. Um, I’ve done volunteer work with teaching, um, but I want to have the experience of actually being the actual instructor for a class, you know, having to take high level science stuff and break it down into something digestible for a freshman under undergraduate.

Emily (17:41): How do you feel it’s been working for you in, in terms of, let’s take the, the career development, the CV padding as the first point, like you think it’s been worthwhile, has it been rewarding for you? Has it, you know, opened up any other opportunities?

Nashae (17:53): I definitely feel like it’s been rewarding. I really do like teaching. The worst part about teaching is just the grades. Honestly. I hate, um, having to grade <laugh> but other than that I like going in, I like interacting with the students. Um, honestly they’re all really great. I would also say that it’s good for my CV because I’m getting experience and it helped me determine whether or not I did wanna pursue education at the moment. You know, with funding crazy as it is. Um, I’m not putting all my eggs in the academia basket, but I do have the experience and it is something that if the right opportunity, you know, occurs, then I would pursue it further. Especially if it was for either liberal arts college or a health professions college, like a pharmacy school because um, I like when students are really engaged. My favorite ones are the, the, the super nerdy ones because they ask the most questions and they’re the most engaged with the course material.

Emily (18:48): Did you not have an opportunity through your regular graduate program? I mean I guess you described your funding path didn’t involve TAing at all and so it sounds like you, you sort of had to go outside your university to find these kinds of opportunities, is that right?

Nashae (19:02): Um, so yeah, my program does not require any type of TAship. We’re only, um, required to do research. So I did become a TA for one semester for one of our courses, but they don’t pay you for the, for being a ta, it’s purely a volunteer type of of um, thing. I did put it on my CV of course and there is good experience there but for me, if I was going to take my time three days out of the week to go sit down in a class and be there for the entire duration, I wanna be paid for my time. And so to me it’s worth it to, you know, go off campus twice a week or once a week to teach and get paid for it versus staying on campus which eats your commute just to walk down the hallway to the um, classroom. But I’d much rather be paid for my time than not be paid for my time. And it looks better on the CV to have like you are actually the instructor your name is on the syllabus versus just being the TA for a course at your own institution.

Emily (19:58): Yeah, for sure. Um, and do you mind sharing your pay rate for those two classes?

Nashae (20:04): Yeah, so it’s around $3,000 per class per semester. So the more classes you teach the more you can get. However, as an adjunct I am limited to a maximum of three classes per semester.

Emily (20:17): Oh three per semester. Well that, yeah, that’s quite a bit more than you’re doing at the moment.

Commercial

Emily (20:23): 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.

Impact of Side Income on Finances During Grad School

Emily (21:15): From these two different side jobs, which you’re holding them both now, right? So this is probably like the most money slash the least rent, you know you’ve had to pay uh, during your course of time in graduate school. What would you say has been the overall effect on your finances? Like more high level?

Nashae (21:29): I would say for me it’s one being able to comfortably max out my Roth IRA every year. Um, I didn’t open it until I was like a second or third year in my PhD, but I was able to max it out for the past couple years, which I think is great because I don’t think I would’ve been able to afford to do that otherwise without maybe surviving on ramen noodles and air for <laugh>, the, all my meals and my PhD. So that is I think the biggest one. Secondarily, I’m able to comfortably like travel to see my family every year. Um, I don’t ask them for any money. I’ve been financially independent from them since I’ve moved out. I don’t wanna put that burden on them. My dad just retired, um, so I’m able to go fly to them or drive whenever I feel the need to.

Nashae (22:15): I also, um, treat myself, I do one musical festival each year. Um, I did uh, I’m doing Camp Flog Gnaw this year, so, uh, very excited for that. Um, I am splitting the hotel costs with my um, friends because I am, I like treating myself but I’m not crazy. I will not stay in LA for my own self for a hotel room. Um, we are splitting it. All four of us are spliting the hotel room. So I also do that and I also uh, like taking care of myself uh, and not having to think too much about what I’m buying. Like I definitely do, I’m very much a budget oriented person, however I’m able to like go thrifting and it was within like my allotted 30 to $50 budget for a outing. I’m able to comfortably do it. Sometimes I have gone overboard, but for the most part I’m able to save quite a bit of money every year. Just just less strain.

Emily (23:08): Yes, exactly. So like not only are you like building for your financial future through the Roth IRA, but just in your day-to-day decisions around money, you just have more ease and less stress and like you said, you’re not going like overboard as a graduate student. It’s kind of hard to go overboard in in any area, but just the additional income that you’re bringing in and the rent reduction allows you that. Um, yeah, just not to be stressed about these like more like low level purchases which absolutely characterizes, you know, the the grad student experience.

Nashae (23:37): And I don’t do like a lot of those like small purchases but like for example, I make my coffee at home. I don’t go out to get my coffee. I, I pack my lunches most days. I rarely go out to eat. Um, I will go out to drink on the weekends or something with friends or like go have a dinner here and there. But like for the most part I live like pretty frugally like my entire outfit right now it is all thrifted clothing. The outfit is under $10. Um, I love saving money where I can but because I get extra income I’m allowed to like splurge where I want to.

Emily (24:07): Yeah, and it sounds like you have a very high level of awareness of your budget too. Like you know that your spending is under control in these certain areas so that you have the more ease in the other areas that seems like they provide more like value to you.

Nashae (24:21): Absolutely. I love being able to like I think about all my purchases of course, but I’m able to comfortably pay off my credit card bill every month. I always use my credit card ’cause it’s a cashback credit card and so I never spend more than what I have anyways. Um, but even if I spend over a thousand dollars on a month on my credit card, I’m always able to comfortably cover that without going into the red.

Emily (24:44): Do you see any differences between you and your peers at Rochester in this regard or are most of your peers also working side jobs so that they can have you know, similar financial freedom?

Nashae (24:54): I would say most of my peers aren’t working side jobs. I’d say maybe 30 to 40% perhaps. Um, I have some friends that were also GCAs. I’ve had some friends that work in the graduate um, affairs office. I’ve had some friends, um, teach on the side. I know at least one other person from my school that teaches at Nazareth. Um, I definitely would say I wish more people would take more opportunities because I know how hard it is. For my first year, I definitely had to have a very strict budget in what I spent my money on and how much of it I did spend. And so it like just takes some of that stress off your shoulders to not have to think about, okay, I can’t do this ’cause I have to pay rent and I can’t do that because I have to pay off this card bill or that um, car insurance note. Or whatever it is. Um, I definitely feel like I wish more people like took more opportunities like this ’cause there are opportunities to get teaching and not have it, um, be for free. I will say the other side of our campus, like the, like the arts engineering school, they do get paid for, um, being a TA. However, for my campus we don’t. And so that is something that I know a lot of graduate students do. It’s part of their, um, funding package. But at least for my school and my program, we do not get paid for a TA ships, which is why I stopped doing it after that first semester.

Academia Approved Side Hustles

Emily (26:16): Yeah, and I, I neglected to ask this earlier, but um, does your advisor know about your adjuncting position or like is it all like sort of out in the open or is it something that you do kind of quietly?

Nashae (26:27): No, he definitely knows. Um, I actually talked with him about like how many courses I should or should not teach. I’ve never gone above two courses because we both agree that that was the maximum ’cause it’s like one evening I, it’s a 6:00 PM course so it doesn’t interfere with my studies and my work. Um, ’cause I’m able to do nine to five and then the earliest course I’ve ever taught was, uh, 1:00 PM which I, we always have our meeting directly after the course anyways, so it doesn’t impact my work negatively, I’m still meeting my milestones as I should.

Emily (26:56): I I’ve started using the term academia approved, like academia approved side hustles and like adjuncting is usually an academia approved side hustle because obviously it’s in the wheelhouse. Everybody knows even if it’s at a different institution, like everybody gets, you know, uh, why you would wanna do it and what the requirements are and the time commitment and all that sort of thing. So like as long as it’s sort of like legally permitted by everybody’s visa and like the terms of your funding and all that, um, it’s pretty likely like with your advisor that they would be encouraging of this kind of thing as long as of course you have scheduled it so that it’s not gonna interfere with your primary work.

Nashae (27:31): Absolutely, yeah, I know when I was on the T 32 I wasn’t allowed to, I think it was either 10 or 15 hours of external work per week. But even with both of my jobs, um, I teach like a one, I teach one to three credits every semester at Nazareth, so that’s not impacting it there. And then for my GCA position I, it oscillates between maybe like five to 10 hours per week. So I’m still well within or below that 15, um, that 15 hour minimum maximum, um, that’s allotted with um, T 32 grants.

Emily (28:06): Yeah, and it’s really just good to know as a student, like that sort of rule on the backend. Like especially if you got pushback from your advisor, like, oh no, I’d actually don’t think you should take that other position. You say, well, you know, my funding technically allows for this amount and this is how I’m going to balance it. You have to still convince them, but like you have a little bit of support by just it being the policy. Okay. Don’t go above 15 hours per week.

Nashae (28:28): Yeah. And I’m very happy that, love my PI, he is great and he supports me doing this because he wants me to have that breadth of experience because my, again, my uh, program does not require any type of, um, TAship or adjuncting or what have you. So this is extra opportunity for me to gain experience in something that isn’t traditionally offered in my program of study.

Emily (28:50): Excellent. I can definitely see why your advisor would be encouraging of that. Is there anything else you wanna add on that point before we move to our final question?

Nashae (28:58): I would say, uh, just my one thing about, uh, teaching philosophy. I think a lot of people, this is like the soap, this is the soapbox me. I think we should strive to be, um, servant leaders, hearing what the people that we’re serving need from us and then working to provide them with what they need instead, instead of, you know, internally thinking, oh, okay, this is what I’m going to give instead of asking what do you need? That’s my one, um, thing that I I would just like want people to, to um, have and just spread as information. Like if you’re in a leadership position, make sure that you’re serving the people that you’re leading.

Emily (29:34): I can see how that applies both to your teaching position and your position with graduate housing. Definitely.

Nashae (29:39): Exactly. Yeah, I always wanna listen to feedback and listen to requests, um, and then work to achieve that.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (29:45): Awesome. Well let’s wrap up with the final question that I ask of all my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it can be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already or it could be something completely new.

Nashae (29:57): Yeah, I would say my advice for any early career PhD is to time manage very well. And if you can time manage very well, then you can do a side hustle. I would never want someone to prioritize their side hustle over their PhD. Um, I’m here to get my PhD, that’s what I moved here for, so I’m always gonna put that on top. But if you have the time management skills to do a side hustle or do two like I’m doing, um, then do it. I think it’s one of the best financial decisions I’ve made as an adult, um, is having these side jobs that, um, one are not very hard. Really the only thing I dislike is the act of grading because it’s very tedious to grade each student, but my class is never more than 16 students, so it’s not that much in the grand scheme of things. I’m not doing a 100 plus person lecture where I’m grading it’s maximum 30 students that I’m grading for an assignment at a time. So if you can time management, if you have the time management skills, then do it. If you can’t, then focus more so on your, on your studies and look for opportunities within your university so that it’s a bit easier for you to potentially add something else onto your plate.

Emily (31:06): I totally agree. You have to like get your, you have to have your time management house in order, as you were saying before you can pursue these other financial opportunities because like you said, you have to keep the main goal in mind. The main goal is to finish that PhD and get a great job afterwards. And if you get distracted by side hustles, especially side hustles that like, you know, your job as an adjunct, like that’s still career building, um, most likely. And so especially if you get distracted by a side job that has nothing to do with your career, it can really add a lot of time, which is ultimately detrimental financially to you. So these two are like very, very intertwined. So I’m really glad you brought that up. Thank you.

Nashae (31:44): Absolutely. Yeah.

Emily (31:45): And thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast. It was great talking with you.

Nashae (31:49): Absolutely. I am happy to be here and I’m happy if at least one person takes my advice or falls in my footsteps and is able to save more money than they would have and be a little bit set up, you know, better for the future considering like the crazy economy we have going on right now.

Emily (32:05): Absolutely.

Outro

Emily (32:15): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

This PhD Minimized Student Loan Debt While on an Unstable Career Path

November 3, 2025 by Jill Hoffman 1 Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Hannah Percival, an instructor at Houston City College who holds a PhD in music theory. Hannah shares how she financially made it through graduate school on a small stipend, including how she minimized student loan debt, side hustled, and kept her expenses low. She also tells the stories of landing her first and—more importantly—second post-PhD jobs and gives great advice for job seekers.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This PhD Minimized Student Loan Debt While on an Unstable Career Path

Teaser

Hannah (00:00): In general, I have found that if a department will be supportive of you, um, emotionally, they will also support you financially. And if they are going to just treat you as a cog in the machine, that will also show up in the money. So it’s okay to advocate for yourself to receive that.

Introduction

Emily (00:28): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:57): This is Season 22, Episode 6, and today my guest is Dr. Hannah Percival, an instructor at Houston City College who holds a PhD in music theory. Hannah shares how she financially made it through graduate school on a small stipend, including how she minimized student loan debt, side hustled, and kept her expenses low. She also tells the stories of landing her first and—more importantly—second post-PhD jobs and gives great advice for job seekers.

Emily (01:28): If you want to bring one of my live tax workshops to your university next tax season, get in touch with me ASAP! Between now and the end of the year, I’m populating my calendar, especially early February, with in person and remote speaking engagements. My workshops are typically hosted by graduate schools, postdoc offices, and graduate student associations, and sometimes individual departments. Whether you are in a position to make those arrangements or simply want to recommend me, you can get the ball rolling by emailing me at [email protected]. My tax workshops, both live and pre-recorded, are my most popular offering each year because taxes are such a widespread pain point for graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e6/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Hannah Percival.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:40): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Hannah Percival, who is a full-time music professor and the program director for music at Houston City College. And we are gonna be talking all about making grad school work on a tiny budget <laugh>. So Hannah, I know we’re gonna get a lot of insight outta this interview. Thank you so much for volunteering to come on, and will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for our audience?

Hannah (03:02): Yes. Hi everyone. I am Hannah Percival and I have received my doctorate in fine arts in music theory and I also have a graduate, uh, certificate in piano pedagogy from Texas Tech University.

Emily (03:15): And what have you done since then? Give us a preview.

Hannah (03:19): So now I am the, uh, program coordinator at Houston City College and I’m a full-time instructor at Houston Community College. And currently this is my dream job. I love the students that I get to work with and I feel like a lot of the choices I made in grad school have prepared me super well for this position.

Minimizing Student Debt During Undergrad and Grad School

Emily (03:38): Hmm. Okay. Let’s see if we can circle back to that a little bit later. When, um, you approached me about giving this interview, you said that it was really important to you that you minimize the amount of student debt you need to take out during your PhD. So can you tell us more about what’s like normal in your program and why that approach was important to you?

Hannah (03:55): Yeah, definitely. Um, so I had a lot of emotional support and, um, encouragement from my family, but I didn’t have any financial support. Um, and so through my undergraduate degrees, minimizing debt was also important. Um, I commuted an hour and a half each way. Well, I went to community college first, um, which is one reason I have such a big passion for working at community colleges. Um, but then I commuted an hour and a half each way. Um, in order to keep working at my piano studio, I had at my parents’ house, um, for my bachelor’s degree. So I came out of the bachelor’s degree, I think that was debt free. There may have been a small, I think I took a small temporary loan for, I went on a study abroad to France for a summer and then paid that off. And so then I had a similar mindset with my master’s degree where my master’s degree is in a different field, it’s in counseling. Um, and I did the research track because I felt like it would really inform my teaching. And so that was also scholarship based because, um, as my salary as a worship leader was paid as a scholarship for this school. So minimizing debt was already really important to me. And then when I was reading up about what grad school is like, um, I saw how I was very aware of how few jobs there were <laugh>. And so even though I knew I really wanted to go to get a PhD and have that experience, I wanted to make sure that I did it in a way that wasn’t going to overly burden me in the future if I didn’t get an academic job. Um, and I think, although I probably couldn’t have articulated that at this, that this at that time, I think stability is really important to me. Even though I chose a career that’s in fine arts and in education in higher ed, um, stability is really important to me. And I think a large reason that became even more true for me during my PhD was because I had a lot of mental health and physical health issues and I realized that those can be expensive in America. And so I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t, that I was setting myself up for success even with those extenuating circumstances.

Emily (06:19): Hmm, that makes a lot of sense to me and I’m so glad that you, I mean you’re obviously very intentional throughout your entire, you know, academic journey there. I’m wondering if, um, in your field, is it typical for people to take out student loan debt and even in the program that you attended, was it typical for your classmates to be taking out debt?

Hannah (06:38): I would say it ranges a little bit. I know that when I was looking at my career options and loans in general, my parents suggested that I sort of think about what my, i-, what would be a range of salary for what I, the career I would do and to take out no less, uh, take to not take out more than a year’s salary just as a benchmark. And I think a lot of music musicians know that the fields are not very well paying. They used to always tell us don’t go into music for the money. But I also think that musicians tend to feel very, um, dedicated and driven towards having a successful career. And so sometimes we tend to get tied up in the like prestige of needing to go to a very big university or study with a specific professor or have a specific level of instrument. And so that can also influence what you’re paying for as a musician. And I think music is an interesting cross section, especially in America where it can be a tool for people like me that felt like music was the best way to improve their life career goals. And also it’s often a very privileged, um, subset of people that are able to have those private lessons. Um, so I always hear the horror stories of people that, you know, went like a hundred thousand dollars in debt for a bassoon career and then didn’t get it into the symphony. Um, and of course those are the horror stories, but those are still real people that made difficult choices and didn’t receive the, uh, payment out that they had invested into it. So I would say there’s definitely a sub. There’s both definitely people who were more conservative about it. Um, and those were the people I gravitated towards in grad school. But there’s also definitely the pressure to don’t worry about money. You need to worry about making the best art that you can.

Emily (08:38): It’s so interesting that we’re having this conversation right now ’cause like, okay, we’re recording this in September, 2025 and you know, the, the advice that your parents give you, you know, don’t let your student loan debt exceed more than one year of your expected salary. Pretty standard. It makes a lot of sense. It’s been given for a long time. Now we’re looking at, um, you know, with the passage of the one big beautiful bill act, these overall lifetime federal student loan limits of a hundred thousand dollars for most people, and then $200,000 for certain high paid, you know, career track graduate degrees. And so I I’m imagining your track is more on that a hundred k side of things. Um, and even your example just now was that would be a, that would be a lot to take out for like this a type of career where you didn’t make it to the upper echelon of, you know, what the possibilities were. So I think this is a, a subject that’s on a lot of people’s minds at the moment and how this new, um, you know, the new rules from the federal government are going to impact borrowing for graduate degrees. Is it going to bring down the cost of programs or is it going to push more people to the private loan market or a combination of, of the two? Um, so anyway, no answers there just yet, but it makes total sense to me like why your approach to this was the way it was. And so, uh, I guess I’ll ask, did you end your PhD with no student loan debt or, you know, one year’s expected salary or like how, how did you actually finish up with respect to the student loans?

Hannah (09:59): I was looking it up right before this podcast and I couldn’t find the exact number, but I know it was no more than 13,000. Um, and I paid that off as I went. Um, I didn’t accrue that until the very end of my degree. Um, so that was right when the pandemic hit <laugh> and I had health issues at the same time, so I took out the loans for that. Um, and also something that um, I think is important is that when you receive a TA ship, you really need to look at all of the details of it and you need to know it super well and not rely on the institution or the professors to remind you of those things. And so I was aware of some of the things like I wouldn’t get paid until October so that like moving costs would be expensive, um, or not paid out until later. And I was aware of a lot of those things, but there was also in the fine print of if, you know, if your degree goes more than four years, the TA ship does not last more than four years. But nobody mentioned anything to me about that. So I was already proactive about that and had been asking around and my um, advisor realized, oh yeah, that’s a problem. And was able to find funds to keep me on as a, um, lab assistant for our research lab. But that was tricky and could have been a lot worse if I hadn’t been more proactive about that.

Emily (11:30): Wonderful advice makes, oh my gosh, I, I know there are people in the audience who really need to hear that just now. And even what you said about, um, oh, I ended up accruing, you know, most of that debt it sounds like in one year because there was a confluence effect. Okay. Pandemic, nobody expected that. And then also personal stuff coming up at the same time. And that’s actually just like on the point that I was just making about these federal loan limits, like it makes a lot of sense to have your, your plan, your like plan a for how you’re gonna fund graduate school, not to be, to be maxing out all of the loans and for everything to be going perfectly with your TAship or whatever it is to last the entire time. Because like in the course of a PhD is a long period of time and some curve balls are gonna be thrown your way. And so you need to have a little bit of room to pivot. So like you had given yourself that room by like not taking out student lending or taking it out and repaying it, you know, gradually earlier in your degree so that by the time you finished, even though you had this final curve ball <laugh>, um, you know, the overall total was really quite minimal.

Hannah (12:28): Yes. And I received a generous, um, fellowship where I, I mean it was a TA ship as well as a scholarship, so it paid all of my tuition and then fees and then I had some for living expenses. Um, so I was able to use that for the first four years and, but already I think by year three or four I had started taking on some extra side gigs and then, um, that was really helpful to utilize those when my funding, um, became less steady. And I think that one reason, I mean I, I think it took me seven years to six or seven years to finish, but um, part of that was because I was working and aut- also I chose to get an extra graduate certificate because I felt like that would really help my job chances both in academia and um, just in the professional music world. And it really did. So even though I ended up taking out some at the end, I had that flexibility because I hadn’t been using them that whole time. And it was one of the direct unsubsidized loans. And so that was very helpful because during the pandemic all of the interest was paused. So I was able to pay that off within six months, I think a year or six months. So that was very nice.

Strategically Choosing a PhD Program

Emily (13:47): Well you just brought up increasing your income and so I wanna hear more about how you did that because you described like the funding package that you received, um, but then also you were doing other kinds of side work. So let’s talk about that. But as we’re doing it, I would love for you to share also, um, because you just said it took six or seven years to finish post masters and I’m wondering if any of that, you know, extended timeline on the PhD was because you were working and what really the interplay is there between like, okay, I need more money to live, but I also need to get to graduation. So like, let’s talk about both of those things.

Hannah (14:20): Yes, definitely. Um, I think, so first of all, I think one of the best things I did was I was very strategic in choosing my graduate degree program. I saw that the funding packages for PhDs were much larger than those for master’s degrees, which makes sense. And my bachelor’s degree was in music theory and it had prepared me exceptionally well to be, to go straight into a PhD in music theory. But on paper I had a master’s degree in a very different field. So a lot of schools were not open to that, but some were very open to that. And so I had four schools that I was extremely interested in that were fine with, um, PhD students who’d had a bachelor’s degree in music but not a master’s. And they were specifically also focusing on music cognition, which was a way for me to use them, use the psychology counseling alongside with my music, um, theory. And actually I think it was my eventual advisor who helped me phrase it this way in an email of like, I think I was phrasing as a liability. And he was like, no, this is great because you have a different perspective and that can make you really unique and valuable. So, um, I had two offers. I really appreciate the fact that I invested in myself and in my future enough to pay out of pocket to go and visit both campuses. It led to some really candid conversations with students, um, and faculty at both of the institutions. And one of them, the, the institution I didn’t go to did not end up offering me that much money, but also they told me that they would try to get me in front of a classroom once before I graduated, whereas Texas Tech said that I would be an instructor on record for one or two classes every semester and I felt like that would make such a huge difference in my resume and it did actually on the job market quite a bit. And so that was really important to me. So the first thing I would do is if you have a unique situation like I do or did where you’re wanting to go into a PhD in a field that’s not directly after a master’s in your field, I would encourage you to still look at doing a PhD because any courses that you need to make up are usually going to be part of that PhD program anyway. Depends on each institution of course. But at mine it was very similar, just that the dissertation took longer at the PhD level, I would say that my degree progress was, uh, faster than a lot of my contemporaries. Um, now that I’m thinking about it, it was, let’s see, I started in 2015 and then graduated in 2021. So yeah, six years. But a, a lot of that last year and a half was because of the pandemic. My research is researching how people bond together socially over music and that hit right as COVID hit <laugh>. So my research got really changed.

Emily (17:22): I love taking it back to that selection process, um, for graduate school and that yes, you included the financial components in in the decision, but also your career progression based on your career goals. It wasn’t, you mentioned earlier about like program prestige for example, that’s important, that’s a factor, but there are other very important things as well. And so I’m really glad that you brought up those other points about like, well, is this, is this program actually gonna get me what I want in terms of the job that I wanna have after this? Like, um, it’s easy to forget that when you have all these other things that are maybe more like in your face about who do I wanna work with or like these kinds of things. So I’m really glad you brought us back there.

Increasing Your Income During Grad School With Side Jobs

Emily (17:58): So you were funded for, you know, to some degree throughout it sounds like, but then when did you bring in like outside work and how much of an impact I guess did that make on your, um, your ability to live comfortably as a graduate student?

Hannah (18:11): Yeah, so um, I think it was about year two. Yeah, I think it was about year two I started doing some extra gigs. Um, and I’ve always had multiple jobs my whole life. I think that’s just part of being a musician. So that was always sort of my plan. Um, the, the two that really were the biggest income generators and also the best for my resume were that I worked at the graduate writing center. So I got to help students, um, at any graduate program at our college, work on job documents and work on their uh, projects. And it was very interesting because get to talk to all these people from different fields and uh, I also got the opportunity to practice teaching writing, which I feel like is a really important skill within music research that’s not often taught. And then I was a, um, teaching artist for the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra. So I would go into classrooms in public schools and teach, um, music for second graders about their science curriculum or about their um, political science curriculum. So that was very fun. Both of those were very fluid as far as I could schedule them when I needed to around my classes and my TAship. That was very helpful and would have been very difficult to do a different, um, a different type of work that wasn’t more flexible. Um, I also did two like tutoring accompanying piano lessons. Those were sort of like the black market or like kind of just did it without on my own gig work. Um, and then during the off times, um, sort of an inverse where Lubbock is very isolated and so at Christmas time if I stayed in Lubbock I could make a lot of money as a pet sitter and doing gigs by playing music at Christmas. But for the first two years in the summer it the, all of the college students tend to leave. And so my little bubble really, really would collapse economically. And so I actually went back home to live with my parents for two summers so I could work at a local bookstore and then actually pay for my rent during those months. After a few years then I was able to do some more of the writing at uh, working at the writing center during the summer and working with um, Lubbock Symphony during the summer. But my first two years I actually went back home first.

Emily (20:36): I love all these ideas, all these creative ideas and some of them of course are unique to you and the skills that you were developing, you know, during graduate school and some of them are things that probably other people could do as well. Well, um, I like that you had that like observation about the town emptying out at certain times of year and how that affected you. And certainly if you live in a college town then uh, you have to take into account those cycles. Um, so interesting. Okay. Is there anything else you wanna add about increasing income or side? Actually I do have one more follow up question. Um, you mentioned the writing center job and that it was, um, you could schedule it around your, you know, the volume of work that you had going on elsewhere. That’s really cool. ’cause I would’ve thought that a writing center job would be sort of like an assistantship, like a regular certain number of hours per week. So can you explain to me how that job was different than like your TA type position?

Hannah (21:28): It was a certain number of hours per week, but because we were working with um, graduate students, a lot of graduate students preferred evening hours and so I was able to schedule most of my writing sessions or you know, client sessions in the evenings. And I think for a while we may have even done Saturdays online, I can’t remember, but I remember that they weren’t just during the nine to five, so that was very helpful.

Emily (21:55): I see. And I love jobs like, well I’m using the word job a little bit loosely, but work that graduate students can pursue that they can schedule around what works for them because your primary focus is getting through that dissertation and doing the research that you need to do. And so yeah, there are certain times when your source of income is gonna have to take, you know, a back seat and you still want it to be there for you and you’re ready to, you know, have a different schedule, put more hours into it. So that’s very, very helpful when you can find that kind of work.

Hannah (22:25): And I found it actually very, um, motivating for finishing my degree because everyone was working with graduate students who were trying to work through their own dissertations and a lot of the, about 50% of the staff were grad current graduate students. And so it was also encouraging to be in a group of people who were currently writing and going through that process. Um, while there were a lot of people doing things like music musicology, um, or music performance, there weren’t that many people who were doing a music PhD when I was. And so I sort of had to build my own little cohort and doing the writing center really helped. And it was also nice to do it in a group that’s not your own field. Sometimes it’s, it’s nice to connect with graduate students that are not just with your same professor and same classes but still have similar experiences that they’re going through.

Emily (23:19): Absolutely. This is an important part of like side work that often goes overlooked, which is the networking. Like it can, in your case it helped you find people who can motivate you to get to your finish line in terms of your PhD or you know, there’s other purposes in other settings of course. Anything else you wanted to add about the income side of the equation?

Applying for Small Scholarships and Career Planning

Hannah (23:36): I encourage people to apply for small scholarships that seem really relevant to what they need for the same reasons you just mentioned. Um, you know, it’s free money <laugh>, which is awesome. Um, and you also build those networks that are super helpful for in that moment, getting to know people that are interested in your field and also it adds to your resume. It’s another thing you can put on it, uh, that helps you gain more scholarships. So I know some people, um, in the past used, like I had an advisor in undergrad encourage me not to apply for small scholarships because it wasn’t worth the time. But I have found them very helpful.

Emily (24:15): I’m so glad that you added that. Yeah, I mean applying for scholarships too is one of, I’m, I’m really surprised that your undergrad advisor said that because I feel like the attitude generally is like you’re gonna be preparing a lot of materials for a lot of different purposes anyway. And so like yes of course you have to tailor and you have to be selective, but I don’t know that the time burden is that much and winning it really can help you, not only monetarily but also in all these other factors that we were just talking about. So like, yeah, I’m glad you kind of <laugh> moved on past that advice and said, okay, I’m gonna go in a different direction.

Hannah (24:48): I think that it’s also really important when you’re in the bubble of grad school to be thinking about multiple different careers you could use, um, postgraduate school and part of that is looking to see what are the most, where will my skills be most used? So also what you love and also what you’re good at. But I think sometimes in music we often prioritize what we love or what we want to do, but I think there’s a lot of benefit in also seeing what will be the most required of me in a field. So I realized that all music, all bachelor’s degrees in the US um, tend to require four semesters of music theory, four semesters of sight singing and ear training, and four semesters of class piano. And so I felt like focusing on those were really great, um, job security and so I pursued some extra the, the extra certificate and I have found that to be extremely helpful. ’cause those are sort of the like bread and butter of the degree plans and then if you have extras that you can add on, that’s great, but being able to fill in where it’s most, um, there’s a significant need for those courses can be really helpful.

Emily (26:09): Yeah, I mean kind of what we were talking about earlier about like, oh plan a, like plan A might not work out and it’s helpful to have some skills that are going to apply. So you have a plan B and a plan C and so forth. Um, very, very smart.

Commercial

Emily (26:22): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2025. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2025 tax season starting in January 2026, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about hosting these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Housing and Transportation Choices That Kept Expenses Low

Emily (27:40): Let’s talk about the expenses side of the equation. The other half of like making it work financially as a graduate student. So were there any like, um, either really valuable or like really creative, um, things that you did to um, keep a lid on your expenses during graduate school?

Hannah (27:56): Yes, I was also lucky in that Lubbock is a very low cost of living area. Um, and I know that that’s not always true. That’s definitely something I also took into account before moving. Um, but one thing I did, I took a lot of searching but I found a really cute, um, duplex or more like a quadruplex but little apartment that was within walking distance. It was a long walking distance but walking distance. So I didn’t, ’cause I didn’t have a car for the first three years, which is another reason why I didn’t really have any jobs until side jobs until year two or three. So I couldn’t really leave anywhere that wasn’t campus. Um, so that really kind of limited things and I thought it would limit my social life, but I’m also kind of introverted anyway and I found people that were willing to like pick me up to go to a board game night and things. So I, I didn’t find it to be a huge sacrifice unless it was a, a windstorm then that was rough.

Emily (28:57): Okay. So is the sort of frugal tactic there the place where you lived or is it the living in such a place that you didn’t need to own a car?

Hannah (29:05): I think a combination. So if I had lived in a town that had really good public transportation, then that would also save me a lot of money. Um, Lubbock is not known for being a walking town, so I was lucky in that I was able to find a place close to campus that was reasonably priced. So I think it was a combination of realizing that Lubbock did not have good public transportation and I wasn’t going to have a car. So making sure that some of like the money that I would’ve paid for a car went more towards the um, rent. So I think that my rent was 750 a month, which was really nice.

Emily (29:50): Hmm. And you said something like it was a difficult search process. Like can you give us any tips what you think might be applicable for other graduate students? Because I, I’ve heard this kind of over and over on the podcast is like I really had to put in legwork, but I found a deal.

Hannah (30:06): Yes. My mom and I drove down to Lubbock and we talked with a, uh, realtor, well actually we talked with two or three realtors and we went and looked at several different properties, um, that were all within walking distance of the college and two of the like realtors we talked with, it just wasn’t a good fit. And the, the location one place we looked at the ceiling like I would not have been able to stand up in the apartment for my entire, you know, college degree <laugh>. Um, and so we were supposed to go back to uh, back home but we still hadn’t found a place to live so we ended up staying an extra day and continuing to look at other um, properties and we finally found one that was nice and um, but it took a lot of searching. So I think knowing what your like, um, most important things are, which mine was walking distance to school, I was good and I ended up spending a little more than I wanted but it was, oh and I wanted it to be safe. So, but then that also meant I had to compromise on other things. Like the laundromat was in the, um, the laundry was in the garage and um, I don’t think there was no central heating and things like that. So.

Emily (31:27): I see. Well can I ask then about, it sounds like at some point you acquired a car and what the sort of trade off was there because you also mentioned well that enabled me to do different kinds of work.

Hannah (31:39): Yeah, so again, lucky, I was lucky in that um, through an inheritance my parents were able to buy me a used car and so the car um, helped me go and do more gigs. And so that was really nice because it was able, you know, I didn’t have to pay for the car payment. So that was a big blessing and it helped me to be able to go do more gigs throughout Lubbock.

Emily (32:03): But you have to pay for insurance, you have to pay for gas. You have to pay for registration. So like there are, aside from just definitely the cost of the car itself, there’s other like expenses. But it sounds like it was worthwhile, right?

Hannah (32:14): Yes, yes. Yeah, it was for me.

Emily (32:16): Alright. What other frugal tactics did you use?

Using Free or Low-Cost Campus Resources

Hannah (32:19): I tried to use as many of the campus resources as possible. Um, so we had a food bank and um, I was able to use counseling services there and um, at one point I used medical services on campus and then I realized that our student health insurance, I mean the insurance that I got through being a TA was good enough that I could go outside of campus and receive a little bit cheaper and better care. Um, but always looked for all of the free food options and go to all of the different like talks that had free food.

Emily (32:53): Can I ask about the food bank usage? Because I know some students have certain feelings about accessing basic needs like that, but like how did you think about that?

Hannah (33:03): I ended up not using it as much as I could have because I, I don’t know why, honestly, I think I had this idea of like, well I’m good enough, somebody else can use it.

Emily (33:14): So you had certain feelings about it too.

Hannah (33:15): Yeah. But if everybody feels that way, um, but I know it was just really helpful for my mental health to know that it was there if I needed it.

Emily (33:23): This is actually something that came up, um, in an interview that I’ve not published yet, but that will be coming out before, before this current interview is coming out. And that’s about actually looking, we were talking earlier about the selection of graduate school, um, taking into account the student services that are provided at the different options that you have in particular basic needs. And we were talking earlier about plan A for, you know, your funding during graduate school. Hey, it’s really great to know if there are basic needs services available on campus, even if you don’t plan on using them. Like you said, just knowing it’s there as a backup option can be really, really helpful and comforting. And so, you know, if you hit some, some skids that like, okay, like that’s there for me, I’m not going to be food insecure.

Hannah (34:04): Yes, yes, definitely. I um, I think my biggest expense with the medical bills, um, so that was a frustrating thing, but it was really nice that we did have good health insurance, um, through being a ta. Um, yeah, I really wanted a kitty, but I waited because I was like, what if the kitty has health problems and I can’t take them to the vet? And then that ended up being um, a good thing. I adopted a kitty, um, during the pandemic. I couldn’t wait any longer. Um, but then um, he ended up having some pretty severe diabetes complications, but by then I had already had a stable job and things. But I’m proud of younger Hannah for not getting a cat then even though I wanted it because I think it was, it did end up being much more expensive than I expected.

Emily (34:58): Yeah, you were prescient in that way actually. And yeah, I mean if you’re struggling just to provide for yourself, then yeah, you definitely have to think twice about adding anyone to your household in that sense. Was there anything for other people who really want to be pet owners <laugh> while they’re in graduate school, uh, but maybe think the same as you, it’s, it’s not the right time financially. Like were there ways that you could get some of the same benefits of having a pet that um, that you know, before you actually could adopt one

Hannah (35:26): Highly recommend being a pet sitter <laugh> because yes, you get all of those cuddles and you get paid for it.

Emily (35:33): Yes. Um, I just put this in the sample chapter for my book that I’m writing, which is like, uh, about increasing income and saying how like baby pet and house sitting, hey, like if you get some personal joy out of those like scenarios and you get paid for it, like double benefit.

Hannah (35:49): Yes.

Transitioning From Grad School to Full-Time Employment

Emily (35:51): Let’s talk then about when you transition out of graduate school and we’re applying for full-time positions. Um, do you have any other advice for people who are in like a similar stage or leading up to that stage?

Hannah (36:03): Yes. One is more generic that I think people hear a lot, but I think is still important. At the graduate writing center I learned a lot about helping to really tailor your documents to the job ad and to um, also for funding if you’re applying for a specific type of grant or funding. And I found that extremely useful not only for um, you know, getting an interview but also for understanding is this a job that I want? Is this the type of opportunity that would be good for me? Am I good match for this? Um, but I will also say that even when you tailor everything and you work really hard on your applications, it’s still very confusing. And having now been on some job searches, it’s also very confusing. Like the whole process is confusing for the applicants I think because you don’t get a lot of feedback on what you did wrong or right. Um, and there’s a lot of luck involved of like, are you the specific candidate that that person needs at that specific time and they may have needs that they haven’t been able to like, um, advertise exactly. So I think being kind to yourself during the job hunt is very important because there’s a lot of luck involved unfortunately. Um, and I applied to hundreds, um, over many years. I got about 10 initial interviews, um, and I only got, well, I guess I only got one on campus interview, so there weren’t very many on campus interviews. Um, but I really felt like it was still important for me to do that process and to continue trying for that. During that time I was continuing to work at the graduate writing center and I taught piano lessons, um, but I started rewarding myself with, um, every rejection letter I would get, whether it’s for a, a funding opportunity or a job, I would buy myself office supplies. So I had so many fancy pens for a while.

Emily (38:14): Yeah, I mean at least when you were receiving that bad news, you can say, oh but I get to buy something really pretty from my desk. That’s nice. Um, so it sounds to me like that you finished graduate school, you were doing this sort of part-time work, um, while you were continuing to apply for full-time positions. Is that right? Okay. And I think your advice is very good, very spot on. But like, is there anything more that you can say about that perseverance, because that’s a lot of applications that you had to submit.

Hannah (38:44): Yes, it was, I, I wanna acknowledge that I did get married during that time and it was to someone that had savings and had a steady job and that was really wonderful. It was also really important to me that I have the career that I had worked so long for. So I, um, could have certainly built up my piano studio and done taken on more writing clients, but I really wanted to try to be the co- a college professor since I had worked for that for so long. So I got an opportunity to teach at a school and it was teaching all the things I wanted to during the interview, it seemed like it was going to be a great fit where I could really help students and it was in a small environment. So we moved and thankfully my husband’s job is remote so he was able to move with me. Um, but I got there and I had already had some health issues and I let them know before I came that I was going to need a sub for the first two weeks. So before I accepted the job, I let them know and they were okay with that. Um, but then when I got there, they hadn’t gotten any subs for me and then they were upset that I hadn’t been more dedicated to my students even though I was on bed rest for my surgery. And so it quickly became very toxic and it got to the point where after about eight weeks in that job, I found myself very jealous of people in the grocery store, like workers in the grocery store because I was like, they’re able to do their job and go home and be done and they don’t have to worry about am I harming this student’s future? Am I helping the student take on so much college debt knowing that they’re not going to be successful in this program? So I reached out to my PhD advisor and he was very encouraging saying that, you know, I was more important than the job title and that if I ended up leaving and doing my plan B or C or D that was more important than letting the job and the toxicity of that job wreck my mental health to irreparable spot. So while I was teaching full-time at that institution, it was $24,000 a year for full-time, which is not enough to survive on. So I was also adjuncting for Houston Community College at the time, um, online. And everyone I knew who was at that level working had to do two jobs at once. Um, whether it was teaching at more than one institution or some other kind of job. And that actually gave me, um, the job that I have now. So it was a really good learning experience to realize that I can be good at this job and I can love it and I can still be at the wrong spot. So to realize that sometimes you can have your dream job and it’s not the right environment and to be willing to walk away from that is hard, but sometimes it can lead you into more healthy positions. Um, and the position I’m in now, I feel very supported. My colleagues are wonderful. I still get to help support students and I feel like I am being supported for the long haul. So I just want to encourage people that if your your dream job turns out not to be your dream job, that’s okay.

Emily (42:24): I’m taking two things from that story and I’m so glad that it took the turn <laugh> that it did. Um, the, the first is that the long protracted search for the first job did not have to be repeated, right? It was much more ready that you got the second job, um, even though the first one took so long to land.

Hannah (42:42): Although, although I did do, um, I was applying to even more jobs with the full-time in order to get out of that position.

Emily (42:49): Yeah, that makes sense. But it didn’t take the length of time that.

Hannah (42:51): Correct.

Emily (42:52): You know, the first one took, um, and the second one was that opportunities came from working. So.

Hannah (42:57): Yes, absolutely

Emily (42:58): Just, just doing anything that’s, you know, related. I mean as related as it can be of course to the career that you ultimately want, but like just doing any kind of work in that field is going to be helpful to you in some manner. And it, I hear this story over and over again of like the part-time work I did or, you know, it led to that full-time job. It happens over and over, it makes sense. People wanna hire known quantities of course. So I just wanna point that out as well as like keep working <laugh>, uh, even side work, uh, in addition to the full-time job. If, if you’re not, if the full-time job is not everything that you know it cracked up to be, then keep creating opportunities for yourself through working and of course continuing to apply as you did. So I find that very encouraging. Um, anything else you wanna share with our audience? You know, advice for getting that first job or the second job post PhD?

Hannah (43:51): It’s okay to want stable income and I think that that’s not always talked about in music. I, it’s we’re told to follow our passion and I’m lucky in that I did find the job that I wanted all along and um, you know, it’s got a really nice bow on the story, but I also know a lot of people that have happier lives outside of academia that are, have the space now to do things that they’ve wanted to do in their artistic field. Um, but in general I have found that if a department will be supportive of you, um, emotionally, they will also support you financially. And if they are going to just treat you as a cog in the machine, that will also show up in the money. So it’s okay to advocate for yourself, um, to receive that. And so when I went over to this full-time position, um, I ended up making three times the amount of money for like half the work. And so I also encourage people, um, to consider highly consider, um, working at a community college. Um, especially if you have a passion for teaching. It doesn’t have the prestige as some other places. Um, and some places have a little bit of a stigma because you often are not paid to research, you’re not, your research is not the important part, but there’s a lot of funding available. And so a lot of the professors that have the most lucrative jobs I know tend to work full-time at community colleges.

Emily (45:26): I actually have, um, a neighbor where I live who has a PhD and teaches at a local community college. And I, I believe it has the same kind of tenure system. Obviously it’s not based on the same things that it would be at an R one institution, but there’s still a great deal of job security that can be attained through this route. Which as you said earlier, is one of your high like values. Hannah, thank you so much for this interview. It’s been, it’s been very encouraging and yes, I’m so glad that you volunteered to give it.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (45:55): Would you please share with us your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already or it could be something completely new.

Hannah (46:03): Yes. I was brainstorming how to phrase this with my husband ’cause it was this big complicated thing and he said, um, don’t get academia tunnel vision. And I loved that phrasing because in academia we tend to have these ideas. If you do this and then you do this, and if that doesn’t work, you just keep trying. And that if, if you have to move your family to a place they don’t want to be, you do it or you take the place that has the best prestige. And I have found that it is good and healthy to prioritize your own mental personal stability. And sorry, I messed that up, <laugh>, that it’s good to prioritize your own mental health and physical health and stability. You get to choose how you work for academia and you get to choose if academia is placing you into a position that is untenable, it’s okay to do plan B or plan C.

Emily (47:06): I love the phrasing that your husband came up with. I love your phrasing that you had just there. You choose how you work for academia. Like this is a two-way street ultimately. And we’ve seen so much with, um, I, I mean this is going on for decades now but the quit lit like people make, you know, they think that academia is the be all end all and then realize that it’s not and they end up leaving for, you know, greener pastures and so forth. And just great advice. I want people to go back, listen to that little segment over again because it’s so, so true and we all need to hear it more. So thank you very much. Um, and thank you again for volunteering to give this interview.

Hannah (47:40): Thank you so much and I appreciate all of your work Emily, your, um, work on, um, the tax preparation was so helpful, especially because understanding how taxes work for things that are both stipend but then also a paycheck are very like very confusing. So I really, really appreciate you and so does my tax returns.

Emily (48:00): Okay. Thank you so much for saying that.

Outro

Emily (48:12): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Financial Hacks Unique to Graduate Students

February 10, 2025 by Jill Hoffman 2 Comments

In this episode, Emily interviews Kyle Smith, a sixth-year graduate student at Penn State, about the financial strategies and hacks he’s used during grad school to increase his income and optimize how he spends and manages his money. In addition to side hustles and credit card and banking bonuses, they discuss how graduate students can benefit from using 529s and 457(b)s in a unique way. Kyle’s message is that finding ways to spend a few percentage points less on much or all of your expenses really adds up over time to confer financial security in the present and increase wealth in the long term.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Financial Hacks Unique to Graduate Students

Teaser

Kyle (00:00): By saving a few percent off your living expenses, having your emergency fund earn a few extra percent, saving a few percent on your taxes for money, that’s gonna grow a few percent every year until you retire. Um, these things, when combined, uh, really start to add up and let you, uh, get to a place where you have enough money, that you have more financial stability and more flexibility, uh, to do the things you want. Um, and really a lot of it comes from having enough of an emergency fund saved up that you can do these sorts of strategies.

Introduction

Emily (00:39): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:08): This is Season 20, Episode 3, and today my guest is Kyle Smith, a sixth-year graduate student at Penn State. Kyle and I go deep on the financial strategies and hacks he’s used during grad school to increase his income and optimize how he spends and manages his money. In addition to side hustles and credit card and banking bonuses, we discuss how graduate students can benefit from using 529s and 457(b)s in a unique way. Kyle’s message is that finding ways to spend a few percentage points less on much or all of your expenses really adds up over time to confer financial security in the present and increase wealth in the long term.

Emily (01:49): The tax year 2024 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs can access them for free. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they sponsor this workshop for you and your peers? You can find more information about licensing these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Thank you so, so much for doing so! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s20e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Kyle Smith.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:24): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Kyle Smith. He’s a sixth year graduate student at Penn State, and we are going to talk about, well, I’m gonna reference the title of another podcast, I listen to All the Hacks. We’re gonna talk about several different, numerous different kind of financial hacks that Kyle has used throughout graduate school to increase his income, decrease some expenses, optimize finances in a few different ways, and Kyle’s been at it for several years, so he has a lot to share with us, some very unique strategies that we hardly ever touch on in the course of the podcast. So you’re definitely gonna hear some new stuff today. Um, Kyle, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast. And will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?

Kyle (04:03): Yeah, my name’s Kyle Smith. I’m a, uh, sixth year graduate student at Penn State. Like you said, uh, I got first introduced to your podcast right before I was starting, uh, graduate school, so I’ve been able to learn from some of your tips over the years. Um, my research, I’m in the anthropology department, uh, looking at dog human interaction. So for my research I’ve gotten to go to the dog park and watch people’s dogs and, uh, study how they think and interact with people, um, which has been a lot of fun.

Motivation Behind Pursuing Financial Hacks

Emily (04:31): Yeah, that does sound like fun. Um, okay. We are going to, as I said, talk about some different financial hacks that graduate students may be able to apply in their own lives. But before we get into your list that you sent me, um, I wanted to know why have you pursued all of these and kept going with, you know, some of them that worked out? Like why not just take your stipend and work with it as is and not put in the effort to find these extra, you know, extra workarounds? So tell us about that motivation.

Kyle (05:02): Yeah, I suppose really kind of my whole life, I’ve just been more of the saver sort of mentality. Um, you know, just whatever money I got, I would usually just save it up. Um, I think I tend to have less expenses that I wanna spend money on compared to a lot of people. Um, but then, so I’ve just tried to, you know, just kind of accumulate enough excess that I have the flexibility that when there is something then that I wanna spend the money on, um, that I have enough of a buffer to do. So. Um, so really been just kind of, uh, trying to optimize things to just accumulate a little bit more, uh, focusing a lot on retirement and especially saving for retirement in a way that gives them flexibility with what to do with that money, which we’ll get into it a little bit later. Um, and just realizing that, you know, any money that you’re saving up now and investing, uh, for the future will be worth a lot more later. Um, so, you know, if you’re fine to do a few things to save on some of your expenses, that that really adds up over time.

Emily (05:59): Absolutely. And I do wanna point out that, um, in the list that you sent me, there really isn’t too much about what I would call like true frugality. We’re actually not talking about decreasing expenses in terms of like giving up, uh, quality or downsizing or anything like that. We’re really gonna be talking about earning more or like financial type ways to spend less without getting less. Is that a fair way to characterize the list?

Kyle (06:24): Yeah, I would say so. With the things I’d mentioned. I mean, I definitely do, you know, try to, you know, spend less money on, you know, don’t eat out super often. Uh, split living expenses with people, um, never lived solo. So, you know, there’s strategies like that that have saved some money. Uh, but um, yeah, a lot of the things I just try to figure out ways where if I have a recurring expense I can save a few percent on it. Um, you know, if I have some money sitting there, I can get a few extra percent on it. Uh, and finding that those really add up over time.

Emily (06:57): Yeah, and I especially wanna point this out for like the listeners who <laugh> have, have felt like they’ve maxed out on spending less. Like I’m doing everything already that I can to spend less and I’m not interested in cutting any further. How can I earn more or optimize more to, you know, free up more money for my goals? Right. So that’s really what we’re talking about today. Okay. So let’s jump into your list. The first thing you told me is that you volunteer for research studies. Tell me about that and how much you’re earning from it.

Grad Student Financial Hack #1: Participating in Research Studies

Kyle (07:27): Yeah, there’s, it’s been a while since I’ve done any of those. Um, but you know, when you’re on campus in a university you can walk around the hallways and see there’s, you know, signs sometimes where they have looking for research participants. Um, you know, so a lot of times I’ll just pay attention to that and um, follow up with that if it seems like something that’s worth pursuing. Um, you know, plenty of studies are kind of short and you can make a quick 20 bucks or some are a little more involved, but you can make hundreds over time. Um, you know, so there was one in particular, uh, that I got quite a bit from because they were doing a longitudinal study of graduate students that started my first year of graduate school. Um, so there were kind of recurring surveys that they would have you do, they’d have you come in sometimes, uh, for some invis- in-person, uh, sampling, such as like cutting your hair to look at your cortisol and stuff like that. Um, you know, so I saved up few hundreds of dollars, uh, through studies like that. There was one I did where they were did an MRI scan of my brain that they also pay you a little bit higher for, uh, ’cause you’re in a cramped box. So yeah, just looking out for opportunities like that allow you to sometimes save just a little bit extra money here or there. Uh, and then if you have a strategy where you’re trying to save anything extra for retirement, uh, or for the long term instead of uh, you know, getting an extra $20 and immediately spending it, then that really adds up over time.

Emily (08:46): Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Either way, whatever you wanna do with it, it’s your extra $20 here or there. I mean, like you said, in any sort of large research university, there’s gonna be studies like that. I think one of the other bonuses is that sometimes they’re actually pretty interesting to participate in. Um, like you actually learn something about yourself or about the study or, or what have you. Have you found that to be the case?

Kyle (09:05): Oh, definitely. Um, you know, it’s been interesting just getting to see a different side to research from the research that I’m doing and the research that I read about. But actually being a participant in it, um, can be pretty interesting sometimes, especially when you see connections with like what you’re doing. Like I had look at the hair, cortisol, the dogs, and I was giving my hair for the hair cortisol. Um, there was actually a study I did when I was an undergrad. I volunteered and they as part of it, uh, took my DNA and I got my 23andme results back in addition to getting paid for doing it. So that was an interesting thing,

Emily (09:37): Definitely. Wow. Gotcha. Okay. Next item on your list was a side hustle, a true side hustle. Tell us more about that.

Grad Student Financial Hack #2: Editing as a Side Hustle

Kyle (09:46): Uh, yeah, this was kind of funny ’cause it was just came out of nowhere. I got an email in my inbox one day, um, saying that the person was a Chinese academic who was looking for American students to help edit manuscripts by Chinese academics. Uh, and asking if I was interested. And I immediately thought that it looked like some sort of scam phishing email. There was a strange address. Um, you know, people offering you money that you’ve never heard of before is usually something to be a little wary of. Um, but it seemed, you know, I thought about it and I was like, well, it might be legit. So I tried to look up the person and looked up his papers. Um, I found that, um, people in the acknowledgements had been thanked for helping translate, so I actually reached out to those people before him and was just is that guy legit, and they, they told me they’d work with them and had good experiences. Um, yeah, so that was just kind of an occasional thing. Sometimes I would do a few of these in a month, sometimes they didn’t offer me any for a while. Um, but yeah, just, uh, he seemed to have some connections to other researchers and try just to reach out to Americans, uh, to help just edit the English. I’ve done a handful of those over the past few years. They usually paid around 150 to $200 per manuscript depending on how long it was.

Emily (10:55): That’s an amazing pay rate. Yeah,

Kyle (10:57): No, it’s been, that’s been a good way to, it’s not a reliable enough thing that I can count on that as predictable income, but just occasionally they reach out and they’re like, Hey, can you do this paper?

Emily (11:07): I really like this type of side hustle that just opportunities come your way and depending on your schedule and your availability, you can just say yes or no and that’s great. It’s nice to not be committed to something when you go through busy or periods as a graduate student.

Kyle (11:21): Yeah. Whenever they’ve reached out about editing these, they’ve asked first if I’m available before sending it and you know, there were a couple times where I’m like, no, sorry, I’m too busy this week.

Grad Student Financial Hack #3: Credit Card/Banking Bonuses

Emily (11:31): Absolutely. Okay, next item on your list is kind of a bigger one. Um, credit card and banking bonuses. Tell us about your strategies here. Yeah,

Kyle (11:40): There, there’s a few websites out there that accumulate these sorts of things. Um, doctor of credit is one where they have bank bonuses and credit card bonuses that are, uh, being offered at that time. Sometimes you get some in the mail so you know it’s worth checking your junk mail about these. Uh, and a lot of times different banks will, or credit cards will offer you like a couple hundred dollars if you sign up for a bank account or open a credit card with them and spend x amount of money in the first certain amount of time. Uh, and in many cases these can be, uh, fairly profitable ways with not that much effort. Um, usually there’s some sort of requirements attached to it, so you have to pay attention to those and carefully note down, uh, what the requirements are and if you can meet those and that you’re not gonna be incurring more expenses than you’re getting back. But for instance, a lot of banks, they’ll say like $200 if you direct deposit at least a thousand dollars. So I just update my direct deposit for that month, you know, have my next paycheck go into there and then, you know, change it back after that. And there’s, if there’s not ongoing fees for maintaining it, um, then that’s sometimes just an easy way to get some money.

Emily (12:47): Okay. Yeah. Let’s pause a little bit on the banking bonuses. Um, so you just gave one example of like, oh, I just had to update my direct deposit to go to a different place. Um, sometimes you might have to keep that up for a few months. I think for some offers like this or other ones I’ve heard of, you have to keep like a certain balance in the account for a certain amount of time. So I’m wondering if you have done anything like that. Have you had to move like a chunk of money somewhere and kept it there to get a bonus?

Kyle (13:13): Yeah, there’s sometimes little requirements like that. Sometimes there’s a minimum bonus for a certain amount of time. Um, some of these, when you run the math, it doesn’t really make sense to do, but others, you know, I can keep a thousand there for three months and then get a few hundred dollars out of it. Uh, assuming you’ve got enough money saved up that you have some flexibility there. It’s a strategy that makes more sense. If you’ve got enough of an emergency fund that um, you have a few extra thousand dollars to spare, uh, some of them require a certain amount of transactions. Um, you know, there’s oftentimes easy ways around this. You can like set up your main account to just transfer $10 in and take it out automatically if you need to have a certain transaction each month, um, in order to not have a fee. Um, some of them are tied to like use your debit card, you know, 20 times in the first month and I just go to the gas station and buy a dollar of gas, buy a dollar gas, buy a dollar of gas just in a row. Um, so there’s ways to trigger it. And if you look on sites like Doctor of Credit, they usually detail, uh, what these are.

Emily (14:11): Hmm, that’s so interesting. I hadn’t heard about those little strategies just to fulfill that requirement like very quickly. That’s very helpful to not have to like think about it over a long period of time and remember, oh, I’m supposed to be using this card versus like this one to do this.

Kyle (14:24): Yeah. I think the way they get you with these things is they’re hoping that, um, it’ll be too much for you to do all that. So they either won’t have to pay the bonus because you trip up or that you just, um, you know, you’re not paying enough attention and then you start accumulating some monthly fee because you weren’t doing their one transaction a month or whatever.

Emily (14:43): So you just have to be really organized. Yeah,

Kyle (14:45): Yeah. You just have to be really organized, pay attention to what exactly the rules are and just make sure you’re following those to a T.

Emily (14:50): Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So let’s take like a credit card example then, since we just talked about bank accounts now. When I was in graduate school, it was quite a while ago, so credit card offers were different than they are now. I know. I was always concerned about being able to reach those signup bonuses like spend 1, 2, 3, 6, whatever it is, thousand dollars over two to four months. These kinds of things are common. Um, and I also, I don’t think in graduate school I ever paid an annual fee for a credit card. I do now <laugh>, but that was something I was just sort of like the whole category. I was just like against it at the time. Right. So like, tell us about that. Like how do you balance knowing that you’re gonna be able to meet these signup bonuses? You know, do you have any tricks about, you know, spending or timing the spending or whatever? Um, and also, yeah, how, how do you weigh the pros and cons if you, if there are some costs associated with it?

Kyle (15:38): Yeah. Um, I just try to pay attention to what my actual level of spending is and what the requirements are. And if there’s something where I don’t think I can meet the requirements won’t do it. I don’t have as many credit cards as some people who really pursue the strategy. Um, but there’s some that are quite easy to meet, like, um, some of the ones from Chase tend to be some of the most sought after ones and you can only get a certain number of credit cards per often before your credit score starts to go down and you start getting rejected. Um, but you know, some of the chase ones you have to spend $500 in the first three months and you get $200 or something like that. And that’s easy enough for most people do if they put all their groceries on it for a few months. Um, there’s some that have had bigger amounts, so some of the chase ones are more lucrative where you can get a thousand dollars signup bonus or so the amount fluctuates. So you have to look at the time, but you have to spend $4,000 in three months. And I don’t spend that much in that amount of time, especially ’cause uh, you know, you’re not paying the rent on the credit card typically. Um, but there are strategies that you can do and I think you’d only wanna do this if you’re the kind of person who knows that you’re gonna specifically be doing the math to spend the right amount to make it worth it for you instead of just spending a bunch of money and thinking, oh, I’m saving money because I get it, uh, a bonus. So what I’ve done when I, you have to spend like the, you know, a larger amount of money, you know, getting a thousand back on 4,000 spending is still worth it if you can make it work. So what I’ve done is just put everything that I can on it during that time. And then when it gets closer to the deadline, um, there’s various grocery stores and pharmacies sell these $500, um, prepaid debit cards with about a $5 fee, um, which normally doesn’t make any financial sense, but if you’re getting essentially 25% back, then you can put the last couple thousand dollars of that on these prepaid cards and then just use those for your expenses for the next few months. Um, so you can kind of preload your spending of that amount and let it stretch over your expenses for for many more months. Um, I’ve also, you know, paired this for if I know I’m gonna be booking some flights for the holidays or some other expenses. So when the timing of when you get these cards can matter a bit too.

Emily (17:47): Yeah. So not only for either one of these strategies, you have to stay very organized. You also have to really know your budget. You have to know what your spending is going to be over the next, you know, three or six months or whatever so that you can understand, yes, I’m gonna have enough spending or I’m not quite going to have enough. So as you said at the end, I’m gonna be able to use this strategy. But prepaying, you know, by buying gift cards or whatever, um, debit cards that requires you to have that money up front. So another area where we talked about like getting that first, you know, thousand two, three, $4,000 in like an emergency fund or just a general savings fund is so, so helpful to actually help you generate even more side hustle money. Like you’re really putting your money to work for you. Now we’re all of course hoping that an emergency wouldn’t come your way in that time when you have some money tied up in a de- in a debit card or whatever. Um, but anyway, it gives you more flexibility. So it’s just something that like builds on itself. Um, so if you get that first thousand, like then maybe the next, you know, few hundred is easier to come by ’cause you can use some of these like tricks and hacks

Kyle (18:45): For sure.

Emily (18:46): Um, and you also were just telling me that you paired this strategy with paying estimated tax on your fellowship. Can you tell us what that strategy was, uh, when, when you were using it?

Kyle (18:57): Yeah, so if you’ve not been listening to this podcast as much and you’re not aware of the estimated taxes, uh, sometimes if you’re on a fellowship, um, they’re not withholding your income tax and you’re responsible for paying that several times a year. Uh, I was on a fellowship like this my first year of graduate school. Some people are on it, if they have the GRFP for three years, depends on your situation. Um, and they let you, um, pay these payments either straight from your bank account or you can pay it with a debit card for like a $2 or so fee I think it is. Um, so again, if you’re able to buy these prepaid debit cards in such a way that you’re earning a decent percent back and then you can use that to pay your prepaid taxes for a small fee, you know, you do the math and see if the, if it works out in your favor, but especially if you’re getting a big bonus or if you have a big percent back on that credit card, then uh, it can end up saving you quite a bit more money than you’re spending in a fee. Um, there’s some credit cards too have like different rotating benefits. Like I have one that has a category that changes, uh, four times a year and sometimes they are giving you a bunch of money back for PayPal and they also normally give you money back for a pharmacy and those stack on top of each other. So if I can get 7% back at a pharmacy by buying a pre-K card and then use that for my taxes that they immediately refund to me, uh, that saves you a decent bit of money. Uh, the last time I tried that, they didn’t let me buy the prepaid card with the credit card at the pharmacy, uh, or with PayPal anyway. Um, so you have to, you know, your mileage may vary as they say, and the, the kind of rules for these things are changing all the time. But if you look at, uh, sites related to, you know, people who are doing these sorts of strategies, you can kind of find out to some extent what works and doesn’t at that time.

Emily (20:42): Yeah, all the like buying of gift cards, buying of prepaid debit cards, those kind of, um, ways to get up to those minimum spends. It’s a common suggestion, but the routes to doing it oftentimes get shut down. <laugh>, it, it makes sense that these things don’t always work in perpetuity, but as you said, there are resources available where you can learn how to pivot.

Kyle (21:01): Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Emily (21:02): Yeah. Is there anything else you wanna add about the credit card or the banking bonuses?

Kyle (21:07): One thing with regards to the banking is, you know, another strategy is not just the signup bonuses, but banks that are gonna give you a certain amount of, uh, interest on what you have in that account. Uh, most banks tend to give you very low percentages these days, uh, but you can sometimes find some that give you a few percent back. I have most of my money, uh, in an account offered through Vanguard called Cash Plus, uh, that gives I think three or 4%, uh, per year of what you have in there as interest. It’s kind of a clunky account. It seems like it’s not as made to interface very well with other banks. So there’s been some frustrations with using that. But if you have thousands of dollars saved up as an emergency fund and you can get 4% of that back every year, you might as well park that money in a, in an account where it’s gonna be, uh, giving you a decent percentage back. And that just goes back to the whole theme of trying to optimize, uh, your finances by a few percent here or there, especially in the long term.

Commercial

Emily (22:07): 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.

Grad Student Financial Hack #4: 529 Contributions

Emily (22:58): Okay, now we’re gonna get into the strategies that I’m really excited about. So the first one is a 529 strategy. So Kyle, tell us, what is a 529 <laugh>? Why would a graduate student be using one? You know, how are you using it in a way that’s very different from how it’s like advertised?

Kyle (23:14): So a 529 plan is something that was created to help incentivize parents to save money for their kids’ college. Uh, if you’re familiar with retirement accounts, it’s kind of similar to that where you’re getting some tax benefits to be investing money for a long-term goal. Uh, but in this case it’s higher education. Um, the, like I said, the intention seems to be more about saving for your kids’ college, but they have some flexibility about this. It doesn’t have to be your child, it can be your grandkid or your spouse or even for yourself. Uh, and while the intention is that you’re, uh, going to for expenses farther down the road, usually, uh, the minimum amount of time it has to be in there, it seems to be about a week. And it’s not just college that this works for, they let you, you use these funds for K through 12 education that has tuition and also for graduate school. So a lot of states have tax deductions for people who contribute to these plans because they’re trying to incentivize people to invest in higher education. Um, the idea is if you’re a parent, you contribute, you know, a few thousand dollars each year, uh, invest it, and then when you’re taking time that money out for your kids’ education, uh, you don’t owe taxes on that after all the growth and you’ve been saving some money on your state taxes along the way. What I’ve been doing is a tip I learned from, uh, your site years ago where you create an account where you’re both the account owner and the beneficiary, you contribute money to it, withdraw it a week later after the hold lifts, and then you can, if you’re using those money for qualified educational expenses, you’re allowed to deduct that from your state taxes. So the qualified educational expenses, you know, you need to look up and make sure it works, but basically it’s room and board for a graduate student, it’s tuition’s allowed too. But since most graduate students aren’t paying tuition, that’s not as helpful. Uh, I believe you can also do a certain amount of, uh, student loan payments as well. So, you know, I’ll just every few months, uh, contribute some of my money into this account, withdraw it a week later, uh, and then just keep track of how much I’m spending on food and rent and then just kind of do this so that the amount that I’ve contributed and withdrawn, uh, is, you know, as close as I can get it to the amount that I’m spending on room and board without going over it. Uh, and then when it comes time to pay my taxes in Pennsylvania, I can deduct in theory up to $19,000, uh, of contributions from my taxes, assuming that that doesn’t, you know, go that I’m not using these for things that are other than the qualified educational expenses. And since the Pennsylvania income tax is 3.07%, uh, you know, that adds up over time. I think in total I’ve saved about $2,000 on my estate taxes over the years by doing this.

Emily (26:07): Wow. Okay. I can see now why you’re being careful to keep track of how much you’ve actually spent in qualified education expenses. So I didn’t know about Pennsylvania specifically, but some other states I’ve looked at, the benefit might be limited to like $5,000 or like a few hundred dollars even. So with having such a high limit then yeah, it really makes sense that you are trying to, as you said, get as close as you can to matching your actual qualified education expenses so you can try to deduct as much as possible for that year. Um, that may not be as much of a challenge in other states is what I’m saying. ’cause maybe your rent alone for a few months would already max out like that benefit. Uh, we’re using the term qualified education expenses, which very, very astute listeners will know that when we talk about qualified education expenses, we always have to say what the benefit is that is defining that particular instance of qualified education expense. So qualified education expenses from a five for 529 accounts, as you mentioned, include things like living expenses, uh, you know, room and board. Um, it’s defined, but qualified education expenses for other benefits are like only tuition and required fees and so forth. So just be sure that you’re looking at the right definition, the right list when you’re trying to figure out what your qualified education expenses are for 529s. Um, so anyway, your particular benefit in Pennsylvania sounds incredible because that limit is so high. Other states the limits will be different. Sometimes it’s a credit, not a deduction. Um, some states don’t have any benefit and we are talking about a state level benefit, not a federal benefit. So the state that I, that I live in, California doesn’t offer any tax incentives for contributions to 529s. So, you know, you may be stuck with a state that doesn’t participate in this in any way, and then this isn’t gonna work for you. But if you live in a state with income tax <laugh>, then you should certainly look up whether there is any 529 contribution benefit. And I’m just, you know, struck by the fact this is another example where because you have freed up, you know, a thousand, 2000 whatever amount of money that you’re able to move around and do these different things that like these 529 contributions, you’re able to then spend less so, so much more money, like how that little bit of financial flexibility is buying you even more and more and more financial flexibility. So for those listening, I would just say if you haven’t saved that first 1, 2, 3, $4,000, like work on that hard because then you can, these other ideas are then open to you after that point. That’s so awesome. Now I have been wondering about that residence time of like the money being in the account, um, because you know, in your case, like you don’t wanna contribute $19,000 and let it sit there for the whole year, right? You wanna do small bits like frequently throughout the year. Um, so how did you come to find out what the minimum time it had to spend in, in the account to, to, you know, qualify for this deduction?

Kyle (28:49): I don’t remember how I first found out if it was somewhere in the, you know, the documentation about opening it or if I’d seen other people mentioning it. Um, the one thing to note, like you said, the state laws vary quite a bit, so you just have to look up how it applies to you if it does. But the, um, some states require it to be a specific plan from their state and others let you do any 529 plan. Pennsylvania doesn’t care what state it is. So I just did it through I think the Kansas plan because I already had a Schwab bank account and Schwab runs the, uh, Kansas plan, but you know, there’s others through Vanguard or whatever the case may be. So you need to make sure about that. But at least the one that I’ve done through Schwab, the, it just needs to be there for one week minimum. And like you said, I’m not gonna put my entire living expenses for the year all in at the same time. Um, but every month or two, um, if you just have enough money saved up for, you know, the next month’s living expenses, you can put it in, in the middle of the month, take it out, and by the time you’re paying your bills at the start of the next month, um, it’s still back there. Um, so you wanna have, you know, some extra money saved up, but it doesn’t need to be a ton.

Emily (30:03): Yes. Wow. What a powerful strategy. And so you’ve been, have you been doing this the whole time you’ve been in graduate school?

Kyle (30:08): Yeah, I, I first heard of it I think either in the beginning of graduate school or slightly before. Um, so I’ve just been doing that the whole time. Uh, it saved me quite a bit of money on my state taxes.

Emily (30:18): Yeah, you said about $2,000, that’s something like 400 per year approximately, right?

Kyle (30:23): Yeah, something like that. I, uh, I got married last year. Um, my, my spouse is also, she was a graduate student. Um, so once I was married I started contributing for her expenses as well, which saved us a little bit extra. Um, but yeah, if you’re doing this, uh, in graduate school in Pennsylvania, you know, saving 3% on all your rent and food expenses each year really adds up.

Emily (30:47): Yeah, it definitely does. Oh my gosh, I’m so grateful for this example. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

Kyle (30:52): One important thing to note with the 529 plans, uh, is because they’re not really set up for people to be using it in the way that I’ve been using it is you gotta pay attention to certain details. Like in my account I’m listed as both the account owner and the beneficiary. Uh, so you have to make sure that you are contributing as the account owner and removing money as the beneficiary, uh, because it gives you the option to also remove it as the account owner, uh, I guess for people who contribute it and then decide that they didn’t wanna contribute it. Um, but if you’re removing it as the account owner, uh, then they’ll say that you’re not actually contributing it. Uh, so then you won’t get that tax benefit. So you just need to pay attention to that detail.

Grad Student Financial Hack #5: 457(B) Retirement Accounts

Emily (31:31): Yes. Another example of where being organized and detail oriented is very necessary for making this strategy work. Okay, awesome. And then the last strategy you mentioned to me was about using a 457 retirement account, which is not one that gets a lot of airtime. So tell us what’s different about this account? Why do you choose to use this, um, either uh, first or in, you know, to supplement your other tax advantage retirement accounts?

Kyle (31:58): Yeah, so I was working for a few years before I started graduate school. So I already had a Roth IRA and an account from my employer. Um, they thought I was contributing money and saving up that way. Um, and then when I started graduate school, I was still contributing to the Roth IRA at first. Um, but then I saw, I just think I got some letter in the mail just mentioning employee benefits that I had access to and one of them was a supplemental retirement account and I was like, what is that? Um, so I looked it up and something that a lot of graduate students encounter is that they’re not eligible for most employer sponsored retirement accounts, so they can’t sign up for, you know, a 401k and get their employer matching their contributions or anything like that. Um, but uh, I found in my case this probably holds at some other universities as well that there’s something called a supplemental retirement account where they’re like, we’re not gonna contribute any money to this as your employer, but you’re allowed to put money into it. Um, at first this wouldn’t seem like it has that much of an advantage compared to just your own IRA because you’re managing that yourself. Why would you worry about involving your employer? But I noticed when I was reading the benefits that the 457B seems to have some really specific advantages that are actually quite nice and that I don’t think you can really get, uh, through any other account that I’m aware of. Um, so if you’re not as familiar with, uh, retirement accounts, uh, they, whether they’re an individual retirement account, an IRA or an employer sponsored plan, uh, there’s usually two types, either Roth or traditional. So Roth, you’re paying your taxes on your income now, um, and then contributing it to the account where it can grow, uh, without getting taxed on your dividends or anything when you’re investing it. Uh, and then when you withdraw it when you retire, uh, you don’t owe any tax on it. Traditional is the other way around where you’re saving on your taxes for what you contribute. You don’t have to pay income tax on it, it grows without getting taxed on the dividends. And then when you withdraw it in retirement, you, uh, owe tax on it at that time. Um, so there, there’s two different strategies depending on whether you wanna pay your taxes now or pay your taxes at retirement. And a lot of people seem to recommend the Roth accounts in situations where it actually doesn’t really seem to make sense. Um, the typical advice that you hear is, oh, if you’re, you know, a graduate student or somebody else with a relatively low income, you’ll probably be, uh, earning more money in retirement or when you’re older, so you might as well do the Roth now, uh, and save on your taxes ’cause you’ll owe more tax on it later. Um, there’s really no way of knowing exactly what your taxes will be in retirement because you don’t know how policy will change and how your lifestyle will change. Um, but let’s say for instance, you’re in the 12% tax bracket now and you’re in the same one when you retire. Um, if you contribute to a Roth account, you’re saving the 12% or you’re paying the 12% now and then you withdraw that tax free later. Um, but if you’re contributing to a traditional account, you’re paying, you’re saving the 12% now and then you pay o tax when you retire. But if you’re in the same tax bracket, the first chunk that you pull out goes to your standard deduction and you don’t owe tax on it, the next chunk you pull out is in the 10% bracket. And not only after that, uh, do you owe the 12% tax on it. So your average tax rate will actually be probably lower than your marginal tax rate. So it’s a little more advantageous in many circumstances to do traditional. Uh, one of the disadvantages with traditional, as opposed to Roth, is that money is tied up until you’re 59 and a half and you’re not allowed to remove it early without owing both the income tax on it and also a 10% penalty. Uh, with Roth, one of the nice advantages is you can take that money out, um, that you’ve contributed early without owing any penalties on it. Uh, that’s only a contribution. It’s not what it’s grown from being invested. But the unique thing that I found out about the 457B plan is it kind of is the best of both worlds. You get the tax benefit now, um, which like as I just laid out, is probably in most cases gonna be saving you money on your taxes overall. Um, but uniquely with it you can actually withdraw the money you contribute before retirement age as long as you’ve separated from that employer. Uh, and as a graduate student, I’m not planning on being employed by Penn State for the rest of my life just until I finished my PhD and then after that point I’ll have access to that money should I want it. Um, and I think that this is a really nice advantage because it’s nice to have the flexibility. You know, if years down the line I have a loved one who gets sick and I want to quit my job and you know, for a year or two live off of what I have saved up, I would be able to do that and I would just owe my income tax and not any extra fee. If I get to age 50 and decide I wanna retire, then instead of waiting until 59 and a half, if I have enough money, I could just go ahead and do that and use this account. So it gives you a lot more flexibility about how you wanna use it. Um, yeah, the, this does get withheld from your paycheck, so you have to a month in advance go in and say how much you want withheld. Uh, I’ve kind of adopted a flexible approach about this where I just look at my, uh, expenses and budget and how much money I have and I’ll be like, I have more money saved up than I need, so I’ll make my contributions a little bit higher. Or, oh, I had an unexpected expense this month with car repairs or something, I’ll make it lower. Um, but I’ve been trying to save up through that and uh, I think on average contributed in the like eight to 9,000 per year, uh, into this account, which is actually more than the space from an IRA.

Emily (37:25): Thank you so much for that thorough explanation. Um, I totally agree. So, because I think most, most Americans, if they have any kind of workplace based retirement plan, it’s gonna be a 401k or maybe if they’re a federal employee or something, TSP, but a lot of people who are employed by nonprofits, um, and also government agencies at whatever level, um, might have access to a 403 B and maybe also a 457 as you do, but, but because it’s such a small like kind of percentage of the population, this account doesn’t get a lot of airtime, you know, when retirement accounts are discussed. So you’re exactly right that like this benefit of being able to remove the money early without penalty is pretty unique. Um, that is to say without having a special circumstance, like you can remove sometimes for education or like stuff like buying a home, stuff like that, but, but without any reason, right? You just, you just have access to it whenever you want it. You don’t have to justify it. It is a really unique thing and especially attractive for people who are going for early retirement or as you said, might just wanna access a chunk of money for whatever reason, for special life circumstances or, um, what have you. So it is really unique. It sounds to me like you are using this as your primary tax advantaged retirement account, right? Like you’re, you’re not using a Roth IRA or anything similar in addition.

Kyle (38:39): Yeah. Ever since I found out about this account, I’ve only contributed to that for retirement. Uh, I still have the Roth IRA from before that’s been accumulating money in the meantime. Um, but because of the advantages of this and that I’ll only have access to it for the time that I’m a graduate student, uh, I’ve just been prioritizing anything that I’m saving for retirement into this account.

Emily (38:59): Absolutely. And I do wanna point people to season 17, episode nine, my interview with Dr. Corwin Olson. So he and I had a, a long discussion in that, um, episode about what you were just mentioning, how sometimes contributing to a traditional retirement account, even when you’re in graduate school or a fairly low tax bracket, uh, makes sense, makes sense in certain situations. It’s still not something that I’m gonna say is my number one <laugh> best thing to do. I still firmly believe in the Roth IRA for most people who are going to expect that higher income marginal income tax bracket in retirement. But certainly like we talked about with Corwin, like people who are planning on retiring early have to do a lot different kinds of considerations about filling up like the standard deduction aspect of their, um, income and the 10% bracket and the 12% bracket and so forth. So it’s kind of a different calculation. Um, but I appreciate you bringing that to light again and yeah, why this could be certainly a legitimate choice even for a graduate student.

Kyle (39:56): Yeah, and as far as I understand too, the fact that I have a Roth IRA, um, from before actually pairs well with this because, you know, I could withdraw from the 457B up to the standard deduction or up to the 10% tax bracket, and then if I’m still spending money beyond that withdraw from the Roth IRA without owing any extra taxes.

Emily (40:15): Absolutely correct. Yeah, I, that’s one of the reasons why I say that it’s great to have both traditional and Roth money available to you when you get to retirement so that you can do that kind of tax optimization. And we’re even talking about pre-standard retirement age in the case of the 457 that you, you would’ve access to it, as you said, as long as you’ve separated from your employer. So that’s a really exciting account to use. Um, as you kind of mentioned early on, you do have to be an employee of your institution to have access to this. So like you mentioned your first year you were on fellowship, I’m suspecting this letter came after you transitioned over to an employee type position. So for those listeners, um, for those listening, if you are an employee, then certainly this is something to check into. I would hazard a guess that, um, large public universities part of state systems like the one that you’re at are more likely to offer this kind of benefit than private universities, or it might depend on your state as well, like maybe some state systems do, some don’t, but I have heard of this for, you know, certain employees at um, large public institutions.

Kyle (41:19): Yeah. My understanding is that, uh, it’s more of a benefit of public universities, so you wouldn’t find it everywhere and some universities might just not offer it, but worth looking into if you’re employed by a public university.

Emily (41:32): Absolutely. Before I ask you my final standard question, I was just wondering, with all these strategies you’ve been using over the past five, six years, what’s been the effect? Like, have you, you’ve mentioned numbers here and there, but like have you significantly increased your income or your net worth or reduce your stress or like, what, what has been the effect of actually employing these strategies? And I guess also the cost, like how much time do you spend on these kinds of activities

Kyle (42:01): Overall, the result of these has been, you know, thousands of dollars that I’ve saved up. And because any extra money that I’m saving up, I’m putting into retirement accounts that’ll continue to compound. So, you know, a thousand dollars saved now will be even more thousands of dollars at retirement age. Um, so it’s really kind of had a snowballing effect, uh, where just a little bit saved results in making it easier to save more money, uh, which will result in more money with investments further down the road. Um, so I found it to be definitely worth pursuing. Uh, my net worth has definitely increased quite a bit in graduate school, although part of that was having a Roth IRA from even before I’d started graduate school. Um, and like you said about, uh, benefits to stress and wellbeing, I think that’s a very strong part of it as well. Uh, by having enough of an emergency fund, uh, saved up that you can do these sorts of strategies and have money to contribute for, uh, 529s or bank bonuses or whatnot, um, and having enough extra money like that beyond your monthly living expenses is really a source of stress relief. Uh, it’s nice to know that uh, if something unexpected comes up, I’m not gonna be unable to pay my bills that month. You know, and there’s circumstances where, you know, for instance, one point in graduate school, both my parents injured themselves within a few days of each other and I flew out, uh, to help take care of them. And you know, having enough money that you can just book a last minute, uh, flight without having to, you know, be unable to pay your bills, uh, is really a source of stress relief

Emily (43:40): About the cost question. Like how much time would you say you spend doing the stuff? Like per week or per month?

Kyle (43:45): Really not that much, I would say. Um, a lot of these things, especially over time have gotten better at optimizing. Um, you know, in terms of like contributing to a 529 plan and stuff like that. Um, you know, once you’ve got it set up, it just takes a few minutes to say, you know, transfer a thousand dollars into this account and then just put a reminder on your calendar to do taking it out next week. Um, so some of these are pretty low effort. I would say that the bank bonuses and credit card bonuses take a lot more time and that’s something that I’ve not been doing as much lately, especially as I’m trying to finish up my dissertation. Um, but it’s something that, you know, was a nice extra source of cash here and there, there, and you can kind of devote time flexibly to it depending on if you’ve got extra time to look up if there’s any good signup bonuses right now. Um, but then since you’re not depending on that income, if you’re don’t have the time or don’t wanna deal with it, then you don’t have to.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (44:47): Yes. Oh, such a wonderful position to be in. Thank you so much for sharing all of the things that you’ve learned and tried out and, you know, found what works and what didn’t for you, um, over the course of your time in graduate school. This is really amazing. I really hope the listener is gonna take away at least one thing to experiment with <laugh>. Um, so let’s wrap up with, um, my final question that I ask of all my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

Kyle (45:14): Yeah, if I had to sum up everything that we’ve touched on in this interview, it’s that things that are small amounts of money here and there and just a few percent of recurring things, uh, really add up over time. Um, that by saving a few percent off your living expenses, having your emergency fund earn a few extra percent, uh, per year, um, saving a few percent on your taxes for money, that’s gonna grow a few percent every year until you retire. Um, these things when combined, uh, really start to add up and let you, uh, get to a place where you have enough money that you have more financial stability and more flexibility, uh, to do the things you want. Um, and really a lot of it comes from having enough of an emergency fund saved up that you can do these sorts of strategies. Um, so especially anything that you can do to save up extra chunks of change if you don’t have an emergency fund. And then once you get to the point where you, you know, got four or five months of your living expenses you’ve saved up in the bank, you can start to play around with some of these other strategies to let that money snowball.

Emily (46:18): Wonderful. I love it. Thank you so much, Kyle, for volunteering to come on the podcast.

Kyle (46:23): Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.

Outtro

Emily (46:34): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

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

December 2, 2024 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

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

Links mentioned in the Episode

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

Teaser

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

Introduction

Emily (00:24): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:53): This is Season 19, Episode 8, and today my guest is Dr. Paulina Cossette, a former professor and the owner of Acadia Editing. Paulina followed the prescribed academic path, but found herself profoundly unhappy in her faculty position. After leaving academia, Paulina stumbled into academic editing and eventually started working under her own brand. As a business owner, Paulina earns more, works less, and has true flexibility, which has enabled her to design her lifestyle in a way that was not possible within academia. If you’ve been enjoying this podcast and want to see it continue, would you please help spread the word? Take a minute to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, text a recent episode that you enjoyed to a friend, or give it a shout-out on social media. Any of those actions helps me to grow Personal Finance for PhDs and continue finding amazing guests for the interviews. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e8/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Paulina Cossette.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

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

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

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

Paulina (03:32): Yes.

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

Dr. Paulina Cossette’s Academic Journey

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

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

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

Building an Academic Editing Business

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commercial

Emily (17:47): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2024. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2024 tax season starting in January 2025, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students and postdocs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about hosting these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Personal Finances as a Professor and as a Business Owner

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

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

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

A Message for Academics Who Are Unsatisfied With Their Jobs

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

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

Get in Touch With Dr. Paulina Cossette

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

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

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

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

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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

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

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

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

Outtro

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

This Grad Student Channeled Her Financial Exuberance into Teaching and Coaching Her Peers (Part 2)

November 4, 2024 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily interviews Elle Rathbun, a 5th-year PhD candidate at UCLA. This is a continuation of a conversation started in the last episode. Last year, Elle shifted her financial education efforts into an official position with the UCLA financial wellness office, through which she delivered presentations and provided one-on-one coaching. Having a 75% position with the university required her to adjust how she managed both her time and money. Elle and Emily conclude the interview by sharing ideas for how the listeners can start helping their peers at their own universities with respect to their finances.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This Grad Student Channeled Her Financial Exuberance into Teaching and Coaching Her Peers

Teaser

Elle (00:00): Because I, I grew up with so much anxiety regarding spending and money that is, I, I think it was actually really good for my health, mental health that I sort of figured out where, where to cut, um, that anxiety from just because I needed to be able to save time in order to do my job, um, to do both jobs and get enough sleep.

Introduction

Emily (00:57): This is Season 19, Episode 6, and today my guest is Elle Rathbun, a 5th-year PhD candidate at UCLA. This is a continuation of a conversation started in the last episode. Last year, Elle shifted her financial education efforts into an official position with the UCLA financial wellness office, through which she delivered presentations and provided one-on-one coaching. Having a 75% position with the university required her to adjust how she managed both her time and money. Elle and I conclude the interview by sharing ideas for how the listeners can start helping their peers at their own universities with respect to their finances.

Emily (01:37): You’re probably listening to this podcast because you’re interested in improving your own practice of personal finance, and you want to learn the best PhD-specific strategies to do so. Well, you don’t have to listen through the entire episode archive to do so. Instead, go to PFforPhDs.com/advice/ and enter your name and email there. You’ll receive a document that contains short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast to my final question regarding my guests’ best financial advice. The document is updated with each new episode release. Plus, you’ll be subscribed to my mailing list to receive all the latest updates there. Again, that URL was PFforPhDs.com/advice/. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e6/. Without further ado, here’s part 2 of my interview with Elle Rathbun.

Financial Wellness: Struggling with Motivation

Emily (02:47): I’m curious what you learned once you, or you said you had to get up to speed on student loans and so forth. That makes sense. Um, once you started talking outside of your like biosciences peer group, were there any, aside from the financial things you already brought up that were more like taxes and bureaucratic kinds of things, any financial patterns that you noticed or issues about the PhD community more broadly at UCLA? Like what were people struggling with or what, what do they have questions about aside from retirement, aside from taxes, aside from pay checks.

Elle (03:14): One of the main things was motivation. Um, and so this is mostly to speak about the wellness side of it, but it has a huge impact on the financial side of it. And so, um, people just didn’t seem, it’s really hard to convince someone to save for something that’s like 30 plus years out, right? And so, um, a lot of the people I talked with, um, they, they just needed to feel a little bit more motivated or they’re like, I know I need to start investing. I have no idea how. Um, but also I think credit cards were a huge aspect of it as well. Um, I think there’s a lot of misinformation, um, about how to pay off credit cards, um, and when to pay off credit cards. Um, and so, so I think credit card, like debt in general, um, and student loans, uh, as well as just motivation of how to get organized to the point that you then felt comfortable going forth and either paying off that debt or investing or just saving or just spending, um, certain things. And so there was that, there was also just what, what resources are available. Um, UCLA is phenomenal in terms of offering so many student resources. Um, besides financial wellness, we also have, uh, like loan services where you can talk about your student loans and figure out a repayment strategy, but student legal services was incredibly helpful to me when I was figuring out, um, some stuff with like my employment and, and the pay schedule and overpayments. Um, and, uh, so I think there are just so many resources that students are not necessarily aware of or they needed to be reminded of. And so just being able to point them in the right direction, um, was a huge thing that we talked about. Um, and it wasn’t a huge burden to me. I was like, oh, there’s an office specifically for that, and they’re much more capable of talking about that. Um, so I would just redirect them to there.

Emily (05:03): That’s one of those great advantages of being a student that you might not realize until you’re no longer affiliated with the university is like there are so many resources available to you and a lot of them are free or low cost because they’re designed for students. And yeah, once you exit the university system, you’re on your own and you have to pay for everything. So like, yeah, get all your checkups, your financial checkups, your legal checkups, whatever needs to happen, like before you leave the university.

Elle (05:27): Yeah, absolutely. And I will say also that there are people who before graduate school, whether they’re master’s program, uh, or PhD or what have you, um, they would, they worked right? They, a lot of them worked in the UC system. And so when I helped a, there were a couple people who I helped create a, a Roth IRA with, I would just, they would screen share or I would sit next to them, um, and they would see, because uc use- the uc system uses Fidelity as, uh, its brokerage institution. They would see a retirement account with like tens of thousands of dollars in there. And they’d be like, is that mine? And I’m like, yeah, that’s yours. That’s all yours. Um, this is the type of account it’s in. This is, these are some of the restrictions. Just know it’s there and know where it is and know what you could do with it. Um, and so that was actually really nice to see that, um, you know, a lot of people don’t necessarily pay too much attention to their withholdings and um, and things like that, which is totally fair. People are busy, but also, um, you’re, you’re paying into that for, for a reason. And so it’s already there. You may as well may as well know that it’s there and know how to use it.

Emily (06:30): That speaks to the power of pay yourself first, that you can literally forget that money was being removed from your paycheck for that, you know, great purpose and oh, discover it like free money later. You didn’t even, you didn’t even miss it. That’s the whole point.

Elle (06:44): Absolutely.

Working for Financial Wellness as a PhD Student

Emily (06:45): I’m also curious about the logistics of you working, um, for this office. And I understand you’re not working with them anymore, right? So it was maybe a nine month, eight month kind of period, right?

Elle (06:56): Yeah, uh, the beginning of November to the end of June.

Emily (06:59): Okay. Were you paid W2?

Elle (07:02): Yes.

Emily (07:02): Okay. And so how did this work with your existing funding or your existing stipend?

Elle (07:06): So my income was W2, um, for the first, when I first became employed through the Department of Neurology, which is the department my PI is associated with. Um, and so they would both appear, so I had to get explicit permission from my PI to sign off so I could have a higher percentage of effort. Um, so it was basically 10 hours a week or 25% effort for this financial wellness position. Um, and then I was at 50% effort for my graduate student researcher position, uh, with neurology. Um, and then things had to become rebalanced because that grant that I applied to did get funded. And so, um, so then I was partially had partial effort on, uh, for neurology. The 25% financial wellness remained the same. And then I was a certain percentage on my own grant, which was not W2. But now is.

Emily (08:02): Yeah, that’s the highest percentage I’ve heard of a graduate student going up to in terms of employment. So it’s not at all surprising to me that you had to get like the special permission and everything to do it. And then in terms of like your own work and your own time management, did that 10 hour per week that you were devoting to the financial wellness office, was that like over and above a 40 or more than 40 that you were already working?

Elle (08:22): Yes, very much so. Um, and so it is one of the things that I had laid out in that initial email to my PI requesting to, to be able to apply for this, and then eventually, if I got it, um, that he would sign off on this. Um, and he’s been nothing but supportive. He’s been phenomenal, um, in this whole process. Um, but one of the things I laid out was this is not a zero sum game. This will not take away from my time or effort in lab. Um, I am one of those people who the more things I have going on, the more productive I become. Um, and, uh, so, so I maintained many hours in lab, um, and that never faltered during my time. One thing that I had to come to terms with was I had to be okay with spending more. So I knew that if there was a way to save time in my personal life, um, even if that meant spending a little bit more, I had to take it. So I didn’t meal prep as often, um, and I didn’t drive out of my way to get the cheaper gas because that takes like 20 minutes. Um, and so, so there were things that I just had to come to terms with. Um, I, it was definitely a net gain. Um, I was paid $24 an hour for that position, and so, um, that added up in a month. But, um, because I, I grew up with so much anxiety regarding spending and money, that is, I, I think it was actually really good for my health, mental health that I sort of figured out where, where to cut, um, that anxiety from just because I needed to be able to save time in order to do my job, um, to do both jobs and get enough sleep, um, and serve as a mentor to, you know, my undergraduate students and a rotation student who is, um, uh, working on my project. Um, and just to make sure I wasn’t slipping in any ma- major areas, I had to be able to, to pay for saving time.

Emily (10:13): So this, tell me if you thought about it this way, but I guess the way that I would think about this is that despite the fact that it was associated with the university, you had to get the special permission you’re paid by the university and all of that. Essentially what you were doing is you had a side job, you had a side hustle, maybe you were doing it, you know, during your regular, what other people would consider their, you know, nine to five. You had permission to do it, but essentially it was a side job. And really what this is, is kind of a hobby that you decided to monetize, right? So like, it’s something that you clearly had been devoting time to before that point on a volunteer basis, and then you switched at least some or maybe all of that effort into this paid position. Um, and so it absolutely makes sense to me. Like it’s essentially like you took on a side hustle, right?

Elle (10:56): Absolutely. Yeah.

Emily (10:57): And then the other thing that I’m thinking about this is that, um, just what you were talking about there of like making the decisions of like, okay, I need to manage my time a little bit differently. I need to manage my money a little bit differently because I had this extra position. Probably all the work that you’d been doing in YNAB and everything really helped you make those decisions because you already had a really good perspective on what you’re spending, how you were managing your time and so forth. And so it was probably very easy for you to make decisions about what you could shift now that you had more money, but a little bit less time.

Elle (11:27): Yeah, it did. It made me, I, I sort of looked at my budget and said, okay, um, if I didn’t meal prep, how much would I spend on eating at the hospital cafeteria or, uh, getting something from the store or, um, just, you know, going somewhere else and, and dining out. Um, and so, so I knew exactly how much I was comfortable increasing my food budget, my gas budget, um, and uh, I think those were the two main things. Um, but I also had to look at my calendar. So I think part of it is financial. Absolutely. And part of it was also where is this coming from in terms of time? So I stopped giving strangers advice on Reddit, <laugh>, that was one of the boundaries for me. I’m like, okay, um, I can still read stuff and still look for opportunities, um, and resources, um, but I’m gonna spend less time writing paragraphs. Um, so

Emily (12:14): I also had to create a Reddit boundary with myself because I loved it so much. I could not continue at all.

Elle (12:21): <laugh>. Um, yeah. And I’ve, you know, and after, uh, ending the position, um, that I, I sort of slipped back into that. Um, and so, but really figuring out where that time was going to be coming from was essential. Um, and just relying on every day I would just like wake up. I had no idea what I did the day before. I had no idea what I was doing that day. I just had my Google calendar tell me everything. Um, and so, um, so yeah, it was really, it was, it was very busy. Um, but I loved it so much. I don’t think there’s ever been another time or activity in my life where I felt like I was making such a huge positive difference in other people’s lives. Um, and so that was incredibly rewarding to me.

Emily (13:02): But you’re not with them now, right? Because I think you said

Elle (13:05): I’m not with them now

Emily (13:06): Sometimes, like the structure changed, but you, you ended the position basically last June.

Elle (13:11): Yes. So, um, I got my NRSA funded, um, and that started in 2024. And so the NIH has the stipulation that I can’t work more than 25% elsewhere. Um, and there was a little bit confusion around that. Um, I thought, great, I can, that’s financial wellness, 25%. Um, however, I’m at 21% effort with neurology. So essentially what it boiled down to is, um, if I had taken the financial wellness position for this coming year, I would be at 46%, which is significantly different. Um, and, and then, so, so I wouldn’t be able to take that position. Um, and I would still be able to continue it theoretically, um, if I was willing to, to decrease my neurology appointment. So essentially I would be paid less for the same work. ’cause I’m really working, um, for neurology no matter what.

Emily (13:59): Yeah, the PhD has to get finished.

Elle (14:01): Yeah, exactly. I’m like, well, I have no other choice. Um, but so that was, so that became the question to me is, uh, am I willing to essentially not get paid anymore to keep this position? Um, and because I had to make sacrifices in my life that cost more, um, I wasn’t able to, I decided against, um, against maintaining and keeping that position. Um, and so, um, I I’m so excited, like financial, well, they’re right across the street from my, my lab. Um, I told them I will be at their events. I’m still in touch with, uh, coaches in that office and with the director. Um, but, uh, in terms of can I do 10 hours a week for the next year, um, without additional pay? Um, the, the answer to that was no.

Emily (14:44): Yeah. And so I’m wondering, you know, you mentioned your Reddit usage came back <laugh> once the, uh, once the position ended. Have you made any other shifts to like sort of scratch this itch in the personal areas of your life? Like, are you back to chatting with your peers more like what’s changed?

Elle (14:59): Absolutely. Um, yes. So, um, I think my peers are tired of listening to me. Um, I do post a lot on our Slack. Um, we have a, I I created financial, uh, channel on our slack. So if there’s something that I discover, um, for instance, you can pay taxes with PayPal, um, <laugh>. And, um, uh, so, so that’s one way I scratched the, the, the NSID or the neuroscience and PhD specific itch. Um, I also started volunteering for junior achievement in SoCal, and so that’s more focused on educating, um, young people, so middle schoolers and high school students. And so that’s been incredibly rewarding. And I just started this summer, um, because I knew I, this, there is an itch to scratch and their headquarters are fortunately really close to where I live. Um, and so, uh, and so just doing a lot of like, work in the community, um, and, and talking to individuals and sort of just always being open. I like if I’m introducing myself, um, not necessarily the first thing I say, but also it’s always, it’s a huge part of my identity in that like, I have a passion for personal finances. And so, um, and so I just have friends who aren’t associated with the university at all, who are then open to budgeting. I have friends who do a lot of like freelance work in the entertainment industry, and so I talk about YNAB with them. Um, and so I think just sort of putting myself out there, I I, there are things that I don’t need to share. I don’t need to share what, what banks I bank with or my net worth or anything to have a, have a good discussion in that like, oh, I love my budget budgeting software, or, oh, I have so many thoughts about student loan repayments, um, and things like that. So yeah, just putting myself out there and, and doing more work in the community, but on a more flexible schedule and timeline.

Commercial

Emily (16:46): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2024. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2024 tax season starting in January 2025, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students and postdocs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about hosting these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Writing a Book About Lessons Learned During Financial Coaching Sessions

Emily (18:02): So I see a lot of, um, parallels with my situation when I was in graduate school, um, engaging in many of the same activities. Um, what I was doing at the time was blogging about personal finance, because blogging was a thing back then, um, 10 plus years ago. So I think because I had this blog and it wasn’t like anonymous, like I would, you know, link to it, you know, on like my personal, like social media page or something like, and I would talk about it with my peers too. I was open, it was clear to other people that I was open to talking about this stuff because I talked about it on the internet. Um, now fast forward, you know, we’re in 2024, blogging is not so much of a thing now, but, uh, creating social content is, so you’ve talked a lot about creating actual in-person face-to-face connections, you know, with your peers and with the, the people you’ve met through the financial wellness office, and that’s amazing. I’m wondering if you do any content creation or if you’re interested in that, um, sort of for the wider internet.

Elle (18:55): Ah, great question. I am actually writing a book, um, which is nowhere near, uh, being ready for a manuscript or anything. Um, but something that came up as, uh, a QuestBridge scholar and a PhD student is that a lot of people just need to know where to start. Um, and I, I think a lot of people, and probably a lot of listeners know like, okay, I know I need to invest. I know I need to save, I know I need to pay off debt. Um, but it’s really hard to know what order to do things in, um, and to feel comfortable in whatever you pick. And so, um, I’m sort of putting together lessons that I’ve learned for, from those coaching appointments, um, into a book that will hopefully be available for very, very cheap or free, um, and, and sort of putting that together in a more synthesized, very thoughtful way. Um, I do avoid social media, um, just for my own like mental health and benefit. Um, Reddit is really as far as I go, Reddit and LinkedIn. Um, but I’ve never really like posted on LinkedIn, um, except for like one review article that I wrote. And so, um, but yeah, so I, I do want to have like a choose your own adventure book. Um, hopefully physical, but maybe just published, um, as an ebook as well. Um, and that’s sort of the brainchild of conversations I’ve had with, with fellow QuestBridge students and with the founder of QuestBridge as well. So they’ve been hugely supportive even after I’ve long graduated from undergrad in, in helping alumni try to figure out where, where to go from here. Like, okay, great, you have, you started your new job, um, now what? And, and I think it’s, that’s not, that’s not a unique situation for people to be in. I think that’s very widespread. So, um, yes, uh, that, that will eventually come out. Um,

Emily (20:37): I’m so glad to hear that my question was not a suggestion, honestly, <laugh>, because social media can be, as you already know, because you’re not really using many forms of it, um, such an incredible, uh, time suck. And it also doesn’t necessarily, some people can blow up from it and, you know, make it their whole thing or their whole business or whatever. But I think because you have this other career <laugh> that you’re pursuing, um, a book is an amazing like, place to put all of your like thoughts and knowledge and, and observations and what you would guide other people to do. And it’s such a, I I’m a reader, like I love consuming books. And so I just think it’s a wonderful format, like for teaching, and you can obviously have a great teaching experience through a book and not have it take over your entire life <laugh> the way that social media can. So I actually really love like the balance of your striking, and you obviously need to strike that balance because we’ve talked about the time management, like you can’t be on socials like all day long because you have so much to do. Um, so I’m, I’m really, I’m really glad to hear that and I would love to, you know, when it’s finished, like I’ll help promote it, like let me know, you know, podcast listeners I’m sure would be interested in, in seeing it as well. So that’s amazing. I’m really glad you’re working on that project.

Elle (21:42): Thank you. Yeah. Um, I’m very, I’m very excited about it and I think I, I, in terms of content creation, I do do it like I do investing. I set it, forget it. Like I don’t want to have to maintain something, um, because I know that it’ll just always be omnipresent. Um, and, and so I would like to focus on, on my research, um, but I absolutely want to to sort of, uh, compile everything that I’ve learned and, and put it out there because I’m gonna do it anyway. Um, may as well be something that’s accessible.

Supporting Financial Institutional Knowledge at Your University

Emily (22:12): Yes. I’m so glad to hear that. Maybe there are some other listeners to the podcast who, like you listening for a long time, you know, got really excited about personal finances, wanted to, you know, read the books. Consume other <inaudible> Learn a lot and they have a lot of insight into how things work at their university in particular, and all the idiosyncrasies that go along with their, their own experience as a graduate student at their university. Um, do you have any suggestions for listeners on how they might do some of the things that you’ve done or similar things, just how to help their peers because they have so much of institutional knowledge and how can they pass that on?

Elle (22:47): Yes. Institutional knowledge is the first phrase that popped into my mind. So, um, do whatever is sustainable and if there’s one particular person who’s driving this, um, or one particular person, for instance, like a student affairs officer who will be at the university for a long time or even a professor, um, if they are okay with just like owning a Google Drive, that’s really what my resources are. They’re just all in a Google Drive. I can share it with anyone, it’s publicly available. Um, people can share the links to it. I don’t care if anyone from outside of UCLA sees it, it’s great. Um, but sort of just, I think whether it’s an individual effort or a group effort, just start. Um, so if you give a presentation, um, even if it’s 15 minutes of how to sign up for direct deposit or how to enroll in your university’s retirement plan, et cetera, um, just write it and just put it somewhere. And I think once you have somewhere to put it, then it makes writing it even easier. And a lot of the content I’ve created and a lot of the resources I created took me maybe an hour, sometimes less, sometimes a little bit more, but just having a place to stick it where it could be organized. Um, and then I can create copies of, for instance, I create copies of my managing finances presentation for orientation every year and I edit it. Um, but it always just gives me a launching point. And so, um, finding a place to stick that institutional knowledge and then just, just doing it or hosting a conversation, um, creating an outline of, um, of what you might wanna talk about with your peers. Maybe there’s a question you don’t know the answer to that, um, that maybe just a discussion with a few people who are older or have been in the program longer, um, that they can answer, I think is, is huge. Um, so few people know exactly what they’re doing, <laugh>. Um, and so I think the more we talk about it, especially with people in similar situations with us as us, um, are are is incredibly useful just to have those conversations and then, you know, someone can just take notes and then stick it in whatever Google drive or box account, um, that they have. But, you know, it’s, it’s surprising how quickly those resources build up once you just dedicate yourself to, okay, every time I have a discussion that’s a little bit more structured, every time I have a presentation that’s a little bit structured, um, this is where I’m going to put it, um, I think is useful. Even if that’s like a, something that’s pinned on a Slack channel, which is currently what mine is. <laugh>. Yeah,

Emily (25:13): I think that makes so much sense. Um, especially the part about like where you started, which is to find like a sponsor who’s going to, whose tenure at the institution is gonna last longer than any one individual graduate students. Um, I love the idea of asking a staff member or a faculty member to house that, um, so they can for, you know, years and so to speak, generations of students to come can keep pointing to it. Another suggestion to throw in there is to maybe involve a student organization, like your graduate student organization in your school or your university or even at the departmental level, if that’s where you went to start, like that’s where you started. Those institutions, although the people change, the group itself stays on for, you know, decades. And so that could be another place too, how these kinds of resources, and I love that the way you phrased it as like, um, sort of a collaborative effort. Like yeah, you might be creating some resources or having some conversations, but also if you make it known that this is the place where these sorts of things go, other people can create them too. Anything they learn can go in there. So our episode from season 18, episode three with Dr. Carolina Mendoza Cavazos, she talked about, again, this institutional knowledge, um, and how it built up with her over time, very similar to the story that you’ve told as well, like some of those weird things about pay schedules and, you know, tax withholding and all this stuff. Um, so, so practically useful and yet until you’ve lived through it, you don’t know that it’s coming. So like, yeah, just a place to house these resources so that people can get prepared for that month or two where they’re not gonna have paycheck, which is so scary. Or like with, which I talked about with Carolina, like lapses in benefits if you don’t handle like a transition between funding sources properly, like just giving people a heads up that stuff is coming is so, so important. So I love this idea. Thank you so much for suggesting it. Um, anything else on that topic of like how people can help their peers if they’re excited about this topic?

Elle (26:56): Um, I think if you don’t have a financial wellness, uh, program or office at your university already, I think talking with administration, whether that’s, um, of your program or even higher, um, the, the way financial wellness at UCLA was started is like 10 years ago. Um, student feedback was, please give us a resource that where we can learn about things like credit, like credit cards, we’re getting this great education, but also there’s things in our daily lives that we need to know that we currently don’t have a great way of learning, at least through the university. So, um, if your financial, well, if a financial wellness office exists already at your institution, I think just going and seeing what resources they have. Um, I didn’t know that financial wellness created all these workshop presentations that are publicly available, um, to anyone even outside of UCLA. And, uh, so just seeing, seeing what resources they have, um, getting involved, if it’s also a passion of yours, um, which I’m sure a lot of listeners of this podcast it might be. Um, but if it doesn’t exist, if that office doesn’t exist and that resource doesn’t exist yet, make it known that you want it and, um, you’re definitely not alone in that. Um, I think just having a lot of names on a letter could at least get the ball rolling for those future generations of students because it worked at UCLA. Um, and I think it’s sort of, uh, continuing across the country as more and more financial wellness offices and programs pop up and, and start really helping students in a way that really matters.

Emily (28:25): Yeah, so I’m part of this, um, community, I guess called the Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance, and it’s, it brings together financial wellness professionals from universities and colleges across the country. So when I attend like their conference, it seems to me like everybody has a financial wellness office. Maybe that’s not the case, but I will tell you that a lot of universities have financial wellness offices. It’s just that they might be focused on the undergraduate population. Now at UCLA, it sounds like they had like a position for like a graduate student, you know, two, two graduate student peers, um, peer counselors at a time, which is amazing. I’ll tell you that that’s not common. But the more and more graduate students who go to their financial wellness offices and say, we want these resources, and by the way, we want them tailored to our specific situation because it is different than an undergraduate situation. Um, the more and more they hear those requests, they will try to meet them, um, eventually <laugh>, but I think right now a lot of these offices don’t see graduate students ever. And so they don’t, it’s like the two popula-, they’re just not talking to each other, right? It’s not that graduate students don’t need this information, it’s just that they’re not going to that specific source and asking for it, but they should. So yes, I agree.

Elle (29:33): Amazing. Yeah, I think if you, if you never speak up right then, then um, it’s great to have, yeah, one Google Drive folder housed by like a professor, but, um, think about how great it would be to yeah, expand, uh, a university’s financial wellness program to include or be more inclusive of, um, graduate students. I think there’s always going to be work to be done, but um, I think it needs to start with, with a voice.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (29:55): Awesome. Okay, well let’s end with the question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve already touched on in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

Elle (30:09): Yes. Um, I thought a lot about this, um, because I knew the question was coming. Um, but I think, you know, there’s, there’s of course the, the starting a Roth IRA and budgeting, but I think the main advice I would give is to make time. Um, I think it’s so easy to put off something because this is sometimes scary for a lot of people. If you’ve never invested before, if you’ve never even heard of something, um, just make time, set a schedule maybe for me, I set aside two hours every week where I focus only on, or sorry, two hours every two weeks to focus on only my finances. So I pay off my credit cards, I check my credit report sometimes. Um, and, um, I, I look at, I update my net worth tracker, I look into if there’s a credit card that might have a good bonus. Um, I sort of see where I am in terms of my budget and my, my goals. Um, and then I also look at like potential investing opportunities. My, my investing is strategy is pretty set, um, and that I don’t want to really touch it, but, um, but when I was first starting, I think just making myself make time for it and then dedicating only those like two hours of just educating myself, figuring out what an index fund is, um, what, what I wanted to do, uh, in, in terms of like tax strategy, all that stuff, paying taxes, et cetera. Um, I think make, it starts with, with making time to do it, um, and not putting it off.

Emily (31:39): I love that piece of advice. Some people call this a money date, um, a recurring money date that you have by yourself or with your partner or whatever your applicable situation is. Um, I would also add in there like, I mean, all the things that you listed are things that, um, you can do either every time you have the money date or maybe they’re sort of seasonal or occasional. Um, but I would also add in, uh, consuming content. So like maybe that’s okay, I have two hours set aside every two weeks and it took me 75 minutes to do my tasks and I have another 45 and I’m gonna read a book, or I’m gonna listen to this certain podcast, whatever, just to like further that. And I, I love that, you know, keeping that space on the calendar, you obviously, um, do block scheduling with your calendar time block planning. Um, so that’s like an amazing way to do things and just to have that protected time because then if something does come up in your financial life, like I had something come up recently, which is that, um, my 401k provider is no longer my 401k provider. They ended the program for everyone. So like, I had a lot of administrative things to do to like, get this 401k moved elsewhere. And so just having that protected time on your calendar is great when something like that comes up because you can sit, you don’t have to steal time from, you know, some other aspect of your life. It’s already recurring there. So I really love that suggestion. Um, Elle, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, spending this time with us. I hope the listeners really enjoyed this episode, got a ton out of it and are inspired like I am to continue the work. So thank you again.

Elle (32:58): Thank you so much. Yeah, it’s, I’ve, I’ve been hoping to come on this podcast for so long and I was just always like, maybe I’m not ready, but, um, I hope, yeah, I hope this is useful to your listeners and thank you so much for having me. I, I really had fun.

Emily (33:09): Awesome. And a note to the listeners. Yes. So Elle and I happen to meet each other in person and I said, why do you not come on the podcast? Like, let’s make that happen. And as she just said, she’d been waiting and waiting, waiting to volunteer and yeah, there’s never gonna seem like a perfect time. Your story is done and whatever. Just go ahead and volunteer pfforphds.com/podcastvolunteer. That’s the form you can go and fill out and uh, I would love to have you and have another wonderful conversation like the one we just said. So yeah, I hope uh, more people volunteer and more people will take up the mantle for what you’re doing as well.

Elle (33:38): Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Outtro

Emily (33:50): 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.

Navigating the Career and Financial Transition Out of Academia

October 7, 2024 by Jill Hoffman 1 Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jill Hoffman, a former assistant professor who left academia to become a stay-at-home parent and part-time business owner supporting academic entrepreneurs (including Emily!). Jill recounts how she decided that academia was no longer the best place for her and how she and her husband planned out how to swap roles as the stay-at-home parent and move cross-country to be closer to family. One of the major themes of this episode is how to prepare financially and in your career for transitions. At the end of the interview, Jill gives not only her best financial advice but also her best advice for someone looking to leave academia and someone starting a side business.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Navigating the Career and Financial Transition Out of Academia

Teaser

Jill (00:00): There are different seasons of life. Um, I think this is a season where like the benefits of, of flexibility, um, with our schedule and our time, um, and having a low stress job, um, they greatly outweigh, um, having that second full-time income right now. Um, and I know that it’s just like this period of time, not forever.

Introduction

Emily (00:31): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:01): This is Season 19, Episode 4, and today my guest is Dr. Jill Hoffman, a former assistant professor who left academia to become a stay-at-home parent and part-time business owner supporting academic entrepreneurs—including me! Jill recounts how she decided that academia was no longer the best place for her and how she and her husband planned out how to swap roles as the stay-at-home parent and move cross-country to be closer to family. One of the major themes of this episode is how to prepare financially and in your career for transitions. At the end of the interview, Jill gives not only her best financial advice but also her best advice for someone looking to leave academia and someone starting a side business.

Emily (01:45): I’m looking for interviewees for Season 20 of this podcast! This is your official invitation to volunteer to be interviewed. I love that on this podcast I get to feature PhDs and PhDs-to-be who are almost exclusively regular people and learn and share their real-life stories and strategies. If it’s been in the back of your mind to volunteer, please go to PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/ and fill out the quick form, and I’ll be in touch over email. I look forward to interviewing you in the coming months! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e4/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:43): Today’s episode is a really special one because I have joining me today as a guest, Dr. Jill Hoffman. Jill is actually a returning podcast guest. She was originally on season three, episode four, and we’re going to use the interview today to just kind of like catch up financially and what’s been going on in Jill’s life overall, um, in the years since she gave us that prior episode. Um, to give you a tiny preview, Jill was a tenure track faculty member at the time of our last interview, and now she’s not <laugh> and she’s doing other things in her life, um, including working with me, uh, in personal finance for PhDs. So that’s what we’ve been doing together for the last about year and a half. Um, yes. So how did Jill get to this point? <laugh>. Um, Jill, please give us, um, a slightly longer introduction, um, and catch us up to where you were when we had that last interview.

Jill (03:32): Yeah, sure thing. So, um, I got my PhD in 2016 in social work. Um, and I worked as an assistant professor for six years. I quit my job right before or right when I was supposed to go up for tenure, um, which was two years ago, so 2022. Um, and then we moved back across the country to be closer to family from Oregon to Virginia. Um, and now, um, I am mainly a stay at home parent. Um, I’ve got one kid in preschool and one in elementary school, and my husband, uh, works full-time. And as you mentioned, um, we, we work together. I also have my own, um, small business providing virtual assistant services for online business owners, especially, um, academic entrepreneurs.

Financial and Personal Life Updates

Emily (04:14): So exciting. Let’s go all the way back to when you were on the podcast before. We talked a lot about student loans, we talked about public service loan forgiveness. Like let’s just kind of close that story first of all.

Jill (04:25): Yeah. So we have taken a, like student loans are on the, the back, back, back burner, um, right now since that time when we were really focused on student loan debt and kind of like figuring out what to do with it. Um, we, with all of the changes that have been going on with student loans, with like the save plan and um, with the covid pause and all those things, we just kind of said, all right, we’re, we’re not, nothing’s really happening with them at this moment. Um, we’re not doing anything with ’em. I got to a point in my, because I was doing public service loan forgiveness, um, I got to a point where I think I have like a little over a year left, um, and until I could potentially get them my loans forgiven. Um, but it, the trade off between staying in my job, um, and, and leaving it just for me personally, didn’t, the payoff wasn’t as, um, um, good as I thought it would be.

Emily (05:30): Anything else would you like to tell us about, you know, that maybe the time between our last interview and when you decided to leave your job?

Jill (05:37): A lot of things have happened, um, since that time and since kind of that when I decided to leave, two kind of big things happened. We had two like family emergencies that happened, um, since we last talked. So at the end of 2019, my dad unexpectedly passed away, and then my mom, um, had multiple major hospitalizations from like 2019 through 2021. And so those two things happened. Um, and then I had, in terms of like life events, not emergencies, I had another baby in 2021. Um, and so it was shortly after my dad passed away that we kind of were like, we’re too far from family. Um, we wanna move back to the east coast. We were on the West coast and, um, I don’t know that this is the job for me. Um, and so we kind of like used that time to figure out like, what do we, what do we do? ’cause we didn’t move until 2022 and I didn’t quit until 2022. Um, so we had a couple of years to like figure out what we were doing, um, in terms of next job, um, and, and where we were moving.

Emily (06:46): Yeah. I’m so sorry about your dad passing, especially unexpectedly, and I can certainly understand why that would cause you to rethink, um, what, you know, how you’ve set up your life and what you wanna be, um, doing with it. But obviously obvious to everyone who’s listening, like the decision to leave a tenure track job is huge. So tell us more about what was going on job wise that made you think wasn’t really the right job for you.

Jill (07:11): Yeah. I, there were a lot of different aspects to it. I think what it boiled down to was what, that I always felt like you have like the, the research, the teaching, the service, the three aspects of the job. And it felt like each of those could be a full-time job in and of themselves. And I felt like I could never do, um, like to the, like I was doing like a mediocre job at all of ’em, <laugh>, and it never felt like I felt like I was doing something unattainable, I guess. Um, and I was doing well and like, you know, I, um, was, had positive reviews, um, up until that point. Um, it just wasn’t, it didn’t feel meaningful enough for me to, to keep kind of working in a job that didn’t feel meaningful. I guess <laugh>, um, for, for me and the teaching aspect, there was a lot of teaching involved in my role and it wasn’t, that was never, um, why I got into academia. I really enjoyed the research part of it. And so, um, while I enjoyed like working with students, especially like one-on-one, um, and kind of like talking about career plans and things like that, I did not enjoy the teaching aspect and it just was so draining. Just like, I can’t, I can’t do this, um, for the rest of my career.

Emily (08:36): Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I remember, um, you had, or maybe still have a blog, right? Hmm. Toddler on the tenure track, and I remember that you, you’re into like time management and productivity and those kinds of things. And so obviously you put effort into your job and like trying to do your job as best you can, and you were intentional about that and you had tools at your disposal and so forth. And it, it’s, it’s very obvious to me that the job let you down, you know, like, you know that not the other way around. Right? Um, do you wanna say anything more about that?

Jill (09:11): Yeah, you know, I think the, the blog, starting the blog, um, was my way of like, trying to make it something that I wanted to do. Like it brought like some fun and meaning and like interest to it for me. And so, um, it was almost like, all right, I’m gonna figure out how to do this job in a way that like, allows me to really enjoy it. Um, ’cause how I’m doing it now is not, is not cutting it, I guess. Um, and so like by, I think just kind of like taking more time to reflect on like what I was doing, how I was doing it through the blog was a like my way of, of trying to figure out like, can I do this? Or is like, is this something that I wanna step away from?

Financially Preparing to Leave Academia

Emily (10:00): Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so how did all this work financially, right? Because I also remember from the time of our last interview that I think you had your job but your husband wasn’t working at that time, right? So yeah. Talk about <laugh>, how, how the finances of leaving your position worked.

Jill (10:17): Yeah. Yeah. So this was like, we, um, so my husband was a stay at home dad for, um, pretty much the entire time we were in Oregon, which was about six years. Um, and we kinda slowly made the switch to him working full time and me being at home. When covid hit there were like whispers at my university that faculty might be furloughed a day a week. And I did the math in terms of like what income we would lose and it did not look great <laugh>. Um, and so my husband and I started kicking around the idea of him getting a part-time job, um, to, to boost our income if we needed that. Um, and uh, he ended up getting a, um, remote part-time, um, customer service job with Squarespace, um, that was like incredibly instrumental in helping us get across the country. Um, and just super helpful for making that actually work. Um, and so he started that job in like the fall of 2020. Um, and I can’t remember how many hours a week he was working. It wasn’t a ton, but we would, um, you know, as like most people that time like no childcare, so we would just kind of like switch off. Um, and I did a lot of evening, um, online classes and so, um, I would work in the evening and on the weekend and um, when he wasn’t working during the week, um, and then we’d like switch, um, child childcare or caregiving roles um, when I was done. Was not an ideal, like not an ideal setup. <laugh> as I’m sure lots of people know, um, but we knew it would, would be kind of temporary. I did not, um, end up getting furloughed. Um, so everything that he made, we threw into savings to save up for this move that, like, we weren’t at that time it was like, do I get a job? Do I get another job? Like do I keep my job and do it across the country? Like, what’s gonna happen? Um, but we knew that we likely wouldn’t have an employer paying for our move, so we were saving up for, it’s expensive to move across the country, <laugh>. Um, so we were kind of thinking towards that goal in terms of finances at that time, um, of saving up for this potential move the more like life happened. Um, with my mom being kind of in and out of the hospital and then having a baby and all these things, I was ju- I got so like burnt out and just like exhausted from life that I was like, I just need a break <laugh>, um, from like a, a higher stress career. Um, and so I made that decision to, to step away, um, just to kind of like let myself breathe a little bit, even though there’s like plenty of <laugh>, plenty of stress and all those things that come with caregiving, um, and taking care of family members. But um, not having the added stress of a job on top of that or like a full-time faculty job, um, felt a lot better to me, um, than than trying to stay or to move into another role.

The Two Income Trap

Emily (13:39): We’re going to continue with your story in just a second, but I wanna make an observation. Um, which is that there was this book that I read, actually my husband was assigned this book in college for some class he was taking, I read it afterwards. Uh, it’s called the Two Income Trap and Elizabeth Warren is the author or co-author or something like that. Um, and so it’s about how middle class families fall into what she calls the two income trap, which is we have two full-time jobs between the couple and our lifestyle consumes all of, you know, most all of that income. And so I see in your story, you and your husband intentionally avoiding the two income trap by if ever there was more than a hundred per- Yeah. Let’s say more than, um, one full-time job between the two of you. Like you said, that was going into savings. It was like an intentional like, um, uh, safety plan or like a backup plan, right? To get, have him get that part-time job when you had income uncertainty. And so at the point that one person has to leave a job or chooses to leave a job or whatever, then the other person, that couple can step up, take a full-time job and still be providing completely for the family because you’ve intentionally set your lifestyle so that only one full-time income is needed or something, you know, close to that. Um, so I just wanna make that observation. That’s very unusual actually, it these days. I mean, even since that book was published, it’s become more the case that people fall into and live in the two income trap because cost of living is so high compared to incomes. Um, so I just wanna make that observation and ask you like maybe how intentional that was from the finances side. I certainly understand why you would do it from like a lifestyle perspective, but how about from that financial perspective? ’cause your husband also has at least a master’s degree, right? He’s also like highly educated.

Jill (15:27): Yeah, yeah. He has a master’s degree. Um, I think the, I think when we first decided that he would be a stay at home parent, that was like a, definitely a financial decision there in terms of like childcare is so expensive. Um, and his, he has a master’s degree, but he’s in, um, his background is in counseling. Um, which not to say you can’t have a really high income with a counseling degree, but they’re not necessarily known for like super, super high incomes. Um, and so we figured that like him getting a job when I was working my faculty job, like most of that would be going to childcare, student loans. We don’t- rather him be able to spend, you know, his time with our kid, um, while I’m working, um, than be at a job and, and have our kid in in daycare. I’ve been budgeting for a long time in terms of like looking at what’s coming in, what’s going out. Um, and so we had a good sense for like what we spent in various areas and what we knew obviously what my salary, um, was. And when we moved to Oregon, he didn’t have a job so we were living on just my income and continuing to make it work. And so it stuck. Um, and we like the flexibility that it allows. I think we’ve just gotten so used to that <laugh>, um, that like, I think to have us both working feels like even though financially it would be really helpful, um, from like a logistical perspective, it just feels like, oh, I don’t, I don’t wanna do that. <laugh>.

Emily (17:14): Yeah. I remember thinking when my husband and I bought and moved into our house three years ago, it was the first time we were homeowners that there was just so much work to go around <laugh>. Like he works full-time, I work part-time and we have children and we have a house to take care of. My goodness, what is this? There’s just a lot of work to do and it’s, it is very, very helpful if there’s not in the mix two full-time jobs as well. Right. Um, so let’s pick up back with your story and about, um, you know, gearing up and for that cross-country move.

Financially Preparing to Move Across the Country

Jill (17:46): Yeah, so that, so we moved in 2022 when I, um, when I made the decision that I was not going to look for another job, my husband started talking to people at his work about like, can I, like how can I get to full-time? ’cause we knew that my benefits would not be around forever. Um, and so he was able to move into a full-time position in the, the same role that he was the same like customer service role, um, that he was in. This was like two months before we moved. It was kind of like last minute, last minute switch. Um, it was not, the pay was not great, but it got us benefits and we had a lot in savings. So we knew like we will be okay for a little bit, um, and we can do like a more, um, focused job search when we get to where we’re going if, if needed. Um, he continued to, um, look at open positions within his company and the month we moved, moved into another role with his company, um, higher paying, um, full-time remote position, which is where he is, um, current-, what he does currently. Um, and all of those things like allowed us to make all of this work without having to do too much like of a like major job search and, and um, like taking time off to interview and all these things like it since it was at his, um, employer already. And it was just really, really helpful. <laugh>,

Emily (19:26): Tell me about the cost of living difference between where you are in Oregon and where you live now.

Jill (19:31): Yeah, so in Oregon, um, we were in Portland, which is a high cost of living area. Um, and now we’re in Richmond, Virginia, which I was looking it up, it looks like it’s about average, maybe like a little below average, um, in terms of cost of living. So that was another really helpful move for us. Um, in terms of the house we bought here in Portland would’ve been like way out of our way out of our price range. Um, and so it’s just made some, some things possible that we probably, if we were moving back to like where I’m from in the DC area, I know you’re from there too. Like we wouldn’t have been able to <laugh>, um, buy a house probably at all the income difference. So when I was working as a professor, my highest salary, um, was just under 75,000 for like the 10 months. Um, so not super high. Um, we made it work. Um, and right now our total income is like a little bit above that, like 77,000. So that includes my husband’s salary, my part-time work, and then some interest income. Um, and so we have like roughly the same salary in a lower cost of living area, however, we’ve added one child, um, to our family. And so like we’re not saving anything right now. Um, and we’re not doing anything with student loans, as I mentioned. And I think it’ll probably stay like that until my daughter, my younger daughter is in kindergarten and I can add on like a client or two. Um, but I think like there are different seasons of life. Um, I think this is a season where like the benefits of, of flexibility, um, with our schedule and our time, um, and having a low stress job, um, they really outweigh, um, having that second full-time income right now. Um, and I know that it’s just like this period of time, not forever.

Emily (21:36): I, I think I’ve mentioned to you before, but I’ll say it for the benefit, um, of the listeners who have children or may want to have children in the future. But parenting wise, everything got so much easier. When our youngest got to kindergarten, like I felt like my whole world opened up <laugh> because they’re just so much more independent by that point and being in school and everything. So I can definitely see like just the lifestyle choices that you need to make, you need to make, to get through that like young child period. And like you just said, it’s not gonna last forever. Like things will be different in just a few years. Um, and so you can always make a different career decision. Either one of you can at that point.

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Starting a Business While Working in Academia

Emily (23:32): Let’s talk now about your business. Like why did you, um, start it? Was it primarily motivated by money or something to do with your time and your brain? Like, tell us how that got started.

Jill (23:44): The business has had like various iterations over the years. So when I was working as a faculty member, like my role was like community manager, um, for another person in the personal finance space, um, Jamila Souffrant with Journey to Launch. Um, and so I got a taste for like entrepreneurship, um, through working with her. I did that for about a year and a half. Um, and since that time I had like tried out a bunch of different things, just like curious about like, oh, there’s all these people making money online. Like it’s opened up a <laugh> whole new world. Um, to me in terms of like what it just broadened, I guess my perspective on making an income, um, and that it doesn’t have to be the traditional jobs that we, um, think of like doctor, lawyer, professor, all these things. So I kind of was playing around with various things. Um, on my way out of my faculty role, I thought perhaps I’d wanna do some like coaching for, um, faculty who are interested in like leaving their jobs. Um, and I used some of my professional development funds, um, to pay for some training, um, in that area ’cause it was like aligned with what I was doing too with students. So I was able to kinda make a case for using money for that, um, or my professional development money for that. But to like run a business, you also need to fund it. I needed more, um, money to like fund the business, um, that I didn’t want to pull from like our personal income. And so, um, as I was kind of thinking about how to do that, um, I think you emailed your list at one point, um, needing, needing support. Um, and this is after I left my my faculty position. You emailed the list, um, needing some support. ’cause you had somebody who had left and I was like, oh, that fits with, um, like what I, you know, the skills that I have, um, interests that I have, um, I’ll apply. And um, so we started working together and kind of since that time I’ve really enjoyed supporting, um, other like small business owners. Um, and I have moved away from the coaching. Um, I did that for a little bit, but really like I enjoy the, the supporting other entrepreneurs. Um, and so, um, right now I work with you and I have one other client, um, just provide-, like it depends on like the needs of the business. A lot of like backend support once my, I thought about adding another client. Um, and I think once my daughter, um, is in kindergarten, I think I’m, I’m setting my sights on, on that time for expansion. But I think right now, like two is a good <laugh> a good number for the amount of time that I have, um, uh, when my daughter is in preschool ’cause it’s not, not many hours a week <laugh>.

Emily (26:38): Yeah. Well this is, um, just a curiosity on my part because I know that the work that I ask of you is very seasonal. Um, so we have a really busy tax season and then less at the other times of year, but sort of variable from week to week and and month to month based on your interest in like productivity and everything like that. Like do you have any, I don’t know if it’s for me, but strategies for people who go through like busier and less busy, like periods <laugh>?

Jill (27:02): I think what I find at least for myself is like really, I think it can be easy to like try and force yourself to use like, uh, you know, whatever task management tool. Um, because other people are using it or like, it, it could be so easy to get into like, well other people are using this and they say it works. Um, I’m just gonna like force myself to do it. I think using what, um, works best for your brain, um, is helpful. So I just had like, I used to use notion a lot, um, which I still love for like my planning, um, and all those things, but I’ve been finding that like just I needed something a lot more simple. Um, and so now I just have like a notebook where I like keep track of things, um, and write things down and check them off. Um, and so I think really like don’t, if something isn’t working, try something else. Like figure out a system that works for you and your brain and that might change depending on like the time of year it is. Um, and, and what you’re doing. Um, but don’t like, feel like you have to force it to make it work. Um, ’cause that just makes it that much harder. <laugh>.

Emily (28:19): Yeah, I’ve been reflecting. So as you know, we use Asana, um, to keep track of tasks and I find that if I get really busy, I need to go outside of Asana and use paper. Um, because in a task management system like that, I mean, I could blame myself too. It’s not necessarily the tool, it’s the way I use the tool. Um, I find that like everything is given so much equal weight <laugh> when they’re all like different check boxes on the screen and I’m like, actually one of these is much, much, much more important than the other ones. And so the paper helps me clarify like, what are my real priorities for the day or the week or whatnot. Um, not just like, what is my task management software telling me to do? Um, and I think I’ve been listening to a lot of Cal Newport recently and reading his books and stuff, and I feel like this is the difference between, I can’t remember what he has, like some kind of name for it, but basically like checklist productivity versus like actual, like getting things that are important done, uh, productivity. So when things get really busy, I have to draw a distinction between those two and focus on, uh, what’s actually important versus what I’m, I’m being told to do by my software <laugh>. Uh, let’s leave with some words of advice then a little bit more advice than I usually ask my guests because the first sort of person I want you to think of is a person who’s considering leaving a tenure track position or maybe even just maybe even before that point, like someone who was going down that route and maybe is deciding to leave graduate school or not pursue a postdoc or just basically step off of the path that they thought they were on. Um, do you have any advice for, for that person considering a major career shift?

Advice for Major Career Shifts

Jill (29:48): I’m thinking about the things that were helpful for me that I did. Um, I think one of the main things was like creating a plan, um, both financially, logistically on what things could look like. Um, when you leave wherever it is you’re at. Um, I had so many spreadsheets, so many like notion databases of just like different iterations of like what me leaving my job could look like and where we would move would look like. Um, and I think obviously this, like, this will change depending on if you’re going into another job. Um, if you’re, you’re taking a break between jobs, if you’re staying at home, if you’re starting a business, um, if you’re moving, um, I think there’s like a lot of different aspects of that that when you create like a, a detailed plan as as detailed as you’re able to get, um, I think those things can become a little bit clearer for you when you have it all out, all out on paper, um, or the screen or wherever. Um, I remember my, when we were in the process of like our move, we would have move meetings like once a week, my husband and I of like, okay, like what are the things, like here’s this big goal, like what are the things we need to do to get it done? Um, that was very helpful. But, um, yeah, so I think those things were like intertwined, um, in, in this process, especially if you’re tenure track faculty, I can’t speak to like being a postdoc, um, and grad school, this might be a little bit difficult. Um, but I think using the resources that are available at your institution to help support you and figuring out what you wanna do next. Um, so I think I mentioned earlier, um, if you have professional development funds to use, is there a skill you wanna build? Um, do you wanna get some career coaching? Um, do some networking at a conference, buy some books. Um, I think using any and all of the resources that are available to you, if you’re able to kind of make a connection to what you’re doing in your job, um, and it’s relevant to what you wanna do next, um, I think it’d be a helpful way to, to find that extra support.

Emily (32:02): Yeah, we’ve heard that advice actually from several other interviewees on the podcast who have made, whether it’s like a grad student, you know, graduating and moving on to something else or a faculty member. I’ve, I’ve heard that numerous times. It’s, it’s kind of amazing that people can make those connections between what they’re doing now and what they think they’re doing next and, and get training that is supportive of both of those roles.

Jill (32:22): Yeah, yeah. Another thing, like another resource, um, I guess that was helpful for me. It was just like I asked so many questions of HR <laugh>, um, and this process just like hypothetical, like if I were to like quit at this point in my contract, like how long will my benefits last? And just kind of getting those logistical pieces that are helpful to know like, okay, my, my husband needs to have his health insurance, um, by this date because mine will no longer be in effect. And if that doesn’t happen, we need to get temporary health insurance and all those things. I think HR can be a really helpful, um, resource, um, if you’re comfortable like talking with them about potentially leaving. So like when my dad died and my mom was hospitalized, um, I was doing all the like estate settlement and then I was considering going back and helping with my mom’s care. Um, and then Covid happened, so didn’t, that didn’t happen, but I talked through with hr, like I think at that point I was kind of considering like, do I wanna quit or do I just need like a, a significant break? And so I talked with HR about like, can I use FMLA to go care for my mom? Like how can I take a break without actually quitting and doing the things I need to do? Um, and I didn’t actually use, um, FMLA for my parents, but did for, um, uh, when my daughter was born. Um, if, um, like family medical stuff is, is, um, any anyone is going through that. Um, I think they’re also a helpful resource to talk through, like what your options are. I think another thing that was so helpful for me is to seek out other people who have done what you’re trying to do, um, and talk to them if possible. I had a lot of Zoom conversations, phone calls, um, just to talk about like how did they, how they made it work, any tips they had. And honestly, just to like, I think when you’re still in the position, it can be, it could feel like impossible. Like, this isn’t ever gonna happen. I’m not gonna be able to find something else, or I’m not gonna be able to make this work. Um, so just seeing o- other people, other examples of, of doing the thing that you wanna do, um, and is so, so helpful. Um, and there are a number of, at least for like leaving academia, um, Facebook groups. Um, if you’re into Facebook, um, Academics say goodbye. The professors out, PhD mamas leaving academia, those were three that I, um, joined and kind of like, um, looked into as I was trying to make that, um, decision. And I think also related to other people like using your network, including family and friends, um, like tell them about what you’re wanting to do. Um, even if they can’t support you directly, they might know somebody who might be able to help you out in some way. Um, whatever it is. And so I think that helped a lot, just kind of like sharing this is what we’re, we’re doing. Um, do you know anyone might that might, um, be able to talk to me about X, y or Z?

Emily (35:36): It’s, it’s not surprising to me that you were able to find so many other examples, um, of people who had left tenure tech positions or those Facebook groups, for example. It’s just a little sad, it’s just a little sad that this profession, people make it their identity so that leaving and they make an academia makes it seem like it’s a one way street, right? You can never get back. It’s a permanent decision. So people put a lot of weight on the decision, right? Um, and yet it’s also such a difficult place to survive <laugh> that a lot of people want to leave <laugh>. Um, it’s not, it’s not everyone’s dream job as it turns out once you’re actually in it. So, um, but that is really, really great. I thank you for mentioning those groups specifically and, and the networking aspect of it. And yeah, there, we’ve had numerous people on the podcast too who have left academia, so I’m pretty sure including Jill, any of those people would be good ones to reach out to. Um, if, uh, you aren’t considering the listeners considering, uh, such a shift. Um, okay. Let’s talk about advice then for another type of person, which is, um, someone who wants to start a business, let’s say on the side, like part-time, the way that you’re doing right now. Um, and they could be at any stage in their career when they wanna do that. Uh, do you have any advice for that person?

Advice for Starting a Part-Time Business

Jill (36:45): Yeah, I think, I mean, I think a lot of the I things that I just shared are, are applicable to, I think also the, the networking and just seeking out other people. There are a lot of people, especially academics who, um, start businesses it seems. Um, and so talking to those people, um, and asking kind of the same, same thing, like how, how did you make this work? Um, or like listening, finding other podcasts that, um, where, where people are talking about kind of these, these types of things. I think too, like if you’re in, especially if you’re in, you’re in a faculty position, like it could be helpful to look at like your university’s policies on having a, um, an outside, outside employment. Um, I know my previous university, because I was in social work, so a lot of people like saw clients outside of, um, outside of our like faculty roles. Um, and so there was definitely language somewhere. I can’t remember exactly what it, what it said, but it essentially like, as long as, if you’re working like during work hours, like no more than eight hours a week or something can go to your, um, like outside business, um, or outside income. Um, and so it’s just making sure that like, honestly no one ever talked to me or asked me about it <laugh>. Um, but I think just so that, you know, um, what the university’s policies are, I think that can be super helpful to, to look into.

Emily (38:19): I noticed something, um, when you were describing the start of your business as well, which was experimentation, um, which I did too. And I think a lot of people who start businesses also do, uh, in terms of like businesses that like make it, maybe they become big or you know, whatever, it’s usually those entrepreneurs like third, fourth, fifth, seventh business, like, it’s usually not the first thing they’ve ever tried and they’ve had either failures in the past or just things they’ve abandoned along the way. And you didn’t necessarily abandon your business, but you just tried different things, different activities, different ways to make a money, different types of clients and figured out what you preferred. And I’ve done that too, even within like personal finance for PhDs, different ways of making money, again, different clients to work with different modalities and like figured out what worked best for me. So don’t, I guess for the listener, like, don’t be surprised <laugh>, if the first thing that you try is not the thing that you end up doing, um, after some time and it’s perfectly natural and, and should be experimented on because you’ll, you’ll find a good fit along the way. Um, it’s not necessarily, even though we were just talking about visioning and planning, like it’s not necessarily that your vision is gonna work out exactly the way that you thought it would from the beginning, but you can get to that point by just taking steps. So just getting started with something is the most, uh, the best thing to do.

Jill (39:30): Absolutely. And you learn so much throughout that journey. Um, I think, yeah, I feel like from where I started, I think I started with doing, um, online, like planning, yearly planning workshops for faculty and, and grad students. Um, and just have learned an incredible amount. <laugh> since those days are just like, oh wow. Like I, this is actually, people are actually paying me to do this. This is, it’s wild. So I think it gives you that confidence and then you learn like what you, like, what you don’t like, and, um, yeah, it’s a journey. <laugh>.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (40:02): Yes. Um, okay. Well let’s wrap up with my official last advice question, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that can be something that we’ve touched on in the course of the interview or it can be something completely new.

Jill (40:16): I think knowing exactly what is coming in and what is going out in terms of finances, um, at least for me has been so impactful. Um, knowledge is so powerful, um, especially about your finances. Um, it allows you to make more informed decisions. Um, and I think there’s something about seeing all that data, um, at least for me, it’s really motivating, um, in terms of like, you know, reaching savings goals or like seeing your retirement funds grow or it, I think it’s, it helps you, makes you wanna do it more. Um, at least I, I found that <laugh>, um, and I think like tracking those, like your expenses and income in a way that works for you. I know there’s like a ton of different budgeting apps and tools. I alway- I’ve used a spreadsheet, um, for a long time, um, and have tried out some apps, but just like I can’t, I always come back to the spreadsheet. Um, and so each year I start out with a new spreadsheet. Um, I have a tab for each month that looks at, um, what we spent, what we earned, um, that I’m updating on a weekly basis. And then I also keep track of like, um, savings, retirement, mortgage, student loans, um, on a monthly basis. Um, but that spreadsheet, um, has so much, it’s, it’s interesting to look at over the years and in preparation for this interview, I was looking back from like 2019 to now and it’s wild. Just like all the changes, um, that have gone on financially for us.

Emily (41:53): Yeah. And I think that the tracking, like you said, knowing your numbers, knowing what’s coming, what’s going out, um, enabled you and your husband to make those big financial decisions about jobs and moves and, and where to live and buying and all the things that have happened in the last few years. Um, because I think that people who sometimes people can get so, um, emotionally, um, intimidated by looking at their numbers that they don’t and they, it becomes an avoidant thing and then they become paralyzed and they’re not able to make those like bold decisions to change their lives because they just really don’t know what’s possible. They can’t do the visioning exercises, they can’t do the planning because they’re just not looking at the numbers. And so that’s just the first, the first step is really just to be able to like open that bank account, you know, um, you know, open it, look at the transactions, like look at the balances and everything and it all kind of like flows from there. Um, I was actually just listening to Ramit Sethi’s podcast. Um, I will teach You to Be Rich just earlier today, and the episode I’m listening to as so many of his episodes are the people he was interviewing, the couple, they were telling themselves a story about their money that was absolutely not true once you actually looked at the numbers. And it’s so clarifying to actually look at the numbers and the answers can come from the numbers. You just have to be like, brave enough to face, you know, the data and, uh, yeah. So I’m, I’m really glad to have this story from you, this example of how, um, your finances and your career and everything have all like played together and how you’ve been able to make those big decisions to do what works for you and your family, um, especially during the, the young kids season, the challenging time of life. Um, yes. So thank you so much Jill for volunteering to come on the podcast. It’s been lovely to speak with you, uh, in a different way than we normally meet

Jill (43:31): <laugh>. Yes. Yeah, thanks so much for having me, having me back on the podcast. It was fun.

Emily (43:36): Absolutely.

Outtro

Emily (43:36): 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.

side hustle

Links mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

PhD Offer Letters and Funding Sources

Side Income: Graduate Community Assistant

Side Income: Adjunct Faculty Member

Commercial

Impact of Side Income on Finances During Grad School

Academia Approved Side Hustles

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Outro

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Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Minimizing Student Debt During Undergrad and Grad School

Strategically Choosing a PhD Program

Increasing Your Income During Grad School With Side Jobs

Applying for Small Scholarships and Career Planning

Commercial

Housing and Transportation Choices That Kept Expenses Low

Using Free or Low-Cost Campus Resources

Transitioning From Grad School to Full-Time Employment

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Outro

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Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Motivation Behind Pursuing Financial Hacks

Grad Student Financial Hack #1: Participating in Research Studies

Grad Student Financial Hack #2: Editing as a Side Hustle

Grad Student Financial Hack #3: Credit Card/Banking Bonuses

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Grad Student Financial Hack #4: 529 Contributions

Grad Student Financial Hack #5: 457(B) Retirement Accounts

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Dr. Paulina Cossette’s Academic Journey

Building an Academic Editing Business

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Personal Finances as a Professor and as a Business Owner

A Message for Academics Who Are Unsatisfied With Their Jobs

Get in Touch With Dr. Paulina Cossette

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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Teaser

Introduction

Financial Wellness: Struggling with Motivation

Working for Financial Wellness as a PhD Student

Commercial

Writing a Book About Lessons Learned During Financial Coaching Sessions

Supporting Financial Institutional Knowledge at Your University

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Financial and Personal Life Updates

Financially Preparing to Leave Academia

The Two Income Trap

Financially Preparing to Move Across the Country

Commercial

Starting a Business While Working in Academia

Advice for Major Career Shifts

Advice for Starting a Part-Time Business

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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