In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Zach Taylor, a repeat podcast guest with extensive expertise in financial wellness in higher education. Zach explains why financial peer mentoring programs have become so popular at colleges and universities and why peers are not always the appropriate people to provide this service. Zach and Emily discuss why colleges and universities provide financial wellness support and how it’s beneficial to both students and institutions. Finally, Zach shares how grad/prof students, and particularly those who are non-traditional and/or experiencing financial insecurity, can access university and community resources.

Links mentioned in the Episode

The Importance of Financial Student Services to Graduate Students on Stipends

Teaser

ZW (00:00): They’re realizing that a basic needs covered student finishes on time, they’re engaged, they network, they pursue those pre-professional career opportunities so they get a job after graduation. It is in these students’ best interests, therefore should be in the institution’s best interest.

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 (00:56): This is Season 22, Episode 4, and today my guest is Dr. Zach Taylor, a repeat podcast guest with extensive expertise in financial wellness in higher education. Zach explains why financial peer mentoring programs have become so popular at colleges and universities and why peers are not always the appropriate people to provide this service. Zach and I discuss why colleges and universities provide financial wellness support and how it’s beneficial to both students and institutions. Finally, Zach shares how graduate and professional students, and particularly those who are non-traditional and/or experiencing financial insecurity, can access university and community resources.

Emily (01:40): 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. 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/s22e4/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Zach Taylor.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:44): I am delighted to have on the podcast today a repeat guest, Dr. Zach Taylor. He was actually first on the podcast all the way back in season five, episodes 10 and 11, and it’s been such a pleasure to know Zach over the past more than five years, six plus years. I think now we’re both part of this, um, higher education financial wellness alliance community. So very concerned about, um, financial wellness in higher education. I’m there to kind of remind people, Hey, like you have graduate students on your campus too. Um, Zach does that as well because he has a PhD and in our prior episode we talked a lot about Zach’s background, childhood, um, his choice of where to attend graduate school, um, how to make that work financially, which was really challenging, high cost of living city, and lots of detail there about Zach’s background. So Zach, I would love for you to catch us up on what’s been going on for you professionally, um, personally as well, if you want in the last, you know, five plus years since our previous interview.

ZW (03:43): Absolutely. Yeah. I mean since, uh, 2020 nothing has changed, right? So I’m the exact same person doing the exact same thing, of course not. Um, yeah, so I, you know, after the, shortly after the interview came out, I graduated and earned my PhD, finished up that work, began working for a guarantee agency in doing communications consulting for minority serving institutions in the south. And uh, shortly afterwards took a tenure track position at the University of Southern Mississippi as an assistant professor of educational research and did a lot of financial wellness and financial education stuff as part of that position. And very recently I took a role that I think is really well suited to my personal background in childhood. And some of the things you talked about with me last time I chatted with you is I just started as the inaugural Director of Research and Strategic initiatives for John Burton, advocates for Youth.

ZW (04:43): So we are a nonprofit in California focused on improving the lives of foster youth and homeless youth through policy advocacy research, some direct service, making sure that every single little pot of money and every single opportunity is afforded to foster youth and homeless youth. And as a lot of folks know, California is really the epicenter for a lot of very inclusive policies, as may have been very well publicized by a certain governor of California very recently. But also there’s lots of inequity here. There are many, many foster youth. California is one of the leading, uh, states in the country, unfortunately in number of foster youth, homeless youth. And so it’s really a pleasure to be part of this organization and feel like I’m really nerding out for good <laugh> and serving other people. Um, so really happy to be back and to get caught up. And lots has changed, I’m sure for your listenership as well. But really happy to be here and chat with you again.

Peer Financial Mentoring Programs

Emily (05:44): Yes, that sounds so delightful. Oh, amazing. So we decided to focus our interview today around peer financial mentoring, which is something. We’ve never covered on the podcast before, <laugh>. So I’m really excited about this because it’s only something that I learned about through my attendance annually of the higher education financial wellness summit. Um, I noticed that a lot of financial wellness and financial education programs in schools across the country had these peer mentoring programs, but my kind of impression about it was that it’s mostly used by undergrads, mostly for undergrads. And so I’m aware of it, but I don’t necessarily talk about it that much or pay attention to it. But I think that this conversation may change my ideas about that. So can you tell me like what these programs are and like why they’re so popular?

ZW (06:30): Yes, and so over the past 20 years, higher education funding models and what is funding and formula and where the money comes from has drastically changed. And you really are seeing a rise in student employment and student employment opportunities. A lot of folks who listen to this podcast may have been federal, federal work study students way back in the day, right? Emily, you’re included in that. So that was at least the initial kind of foray into very kinda wide student employment in higher ed. But it’s kind of got this coinciding parallel development where there’s a high impact practice and very engaging successful practice of immersing students in a campus community, employing them at their school, making sure that they’re developing professional connections with their peers and with professionals who admissions financial aid, recreational sports, all sorts of stuff. But the parallel development has been this slow winnowing and cutting away of state appropriations to higher education where institutions are a little less likely now to pay somebody full-time with a bachelor’s or master’s degree to do something on campus.

ZW (07:47): And that re-envisioning on that position really has been relegated and delegated to student employees. So you’re seeing a lot of times now, especially on very large four year campuses, students doing the work that used to be done by a full-time credential, bachelor’s degree holding employee. That has been a very big shift, and especially I can speak much more to financial aid offices. It never used to be the case where a student’s financial aid paperwork was being processed by a peer, especially a peer before they graduated because of the fi-, you know, the financial security and sensitivity that information. But colleges, universities, community colleges are not in the financial point and space to be able to start saying, students can and cannot do this work. We need students to kind of do a lot of the work administratively that we do. And so that has naturally just trickled into mentoring programs and specifically peer mentoring programs of all different shapes and sizes.

ZW (08:47): I remember when I was an undergraduate, I went to an institution that I knew only really had one mentoring program. It was a summer bridge program. It was for first generation and low income students that eventually fed into Trio, the federal Trio program for low income and kind of marginalized that promise students now go to a typical college or university. It’s much more prominent the four year schools and the community colleges. But there’s peer mentoring for academic major, for extracurricular activities, for uh, for, for sports, for um, uh, social clubs and affinity groups. There are so many different types of mentoring programs because colleges and universities and institutions saw benefit of connecting peers to peers, but it’s also outta that financial necessity. So as everything in some ways kind of happens first at the undergrad level, as the financial pressures are hitting graduate schools, professional schools, law schools, medical schools, they’ll, they’re also seeing, Hey, wait a minute, a lot of these folks have a lot to offer their peers. Let’s start creating peer-to-peer mentoring programs.

ZW (09:54): And so now there are dozens of these peer-to-peer, specifically financial mentoring programs embedded in medical schools and in law schools where somebody, it’s very common tale. You might have a double major whose, uh, anatomy, physiology and business and they eventually wanna become a doctor. They go to med school, they’ve got that little bit of business background. They learned about taxation, about personal accounting, personal finance, and they’re pretty well suited and know a little bit more about money management than peers do. Who becomes a peer mentor of people who can be late twenties, thirties, forties. We know the graduate school population is very age diverse, but if you have a subject matter expertise and knowledge, you can mentor a peer across age and across difference. You’re seeing a lot more of that at the graduate school level. So that is kind of the trajectory of where peer mentoring has come from. Used to be very kind of strictly kind of social and academic. And now it’s really apparent in the financial wellness community and it’s trickled up to graduate schools now.

Emily (11:01): That’s fascinating. I was not aware that that pattern was also within like those professional schools. And it, it does make a lot of sense to me, especially if we, and I, I think this is true at a lot of . At any rate, if we saw the genesis of that from the financial aid offices, because there’s a lot of student loan counseling and so forth, very important area that would apply very well within the professional schools as well. A little bit different among funding graduate students, but still there’s a great need for it, even if the subject that you might talk about is like slightly different. So thank you so much for telling us like that, like history about it. But is this a universal good? Does everybody get exactly what they’re looking for out of a peer mentoring program? Or are there some like downsides to administering the help in this way?

Downsides of Peer Financial Mentoring Programs

ZW (11:43): Yeah, so one, if you are a peer mentor, that inherently implies that you are not a professional in the space, right? You’re a very well-educated, maybe well-intentioned peer, but you do not know everything for everybody. And there has been many documented cases at the graduate and undergraduate level where a peer gives some sort of financial advice. And we see in these kind of areas of taboo topics of areas that peers shouldn’t talk with peers about things like specific investments, gambling, betting, you know, things like that where it’s, it’s you should really be talking to a licensed professional at a financial institution about this kind of stuff. I go real professional about this. So one is a little bit of danger is when you unleash the peers who knows what information they unleash, whether it’s pre-professional, professional or otherwise, sometimes the information can be misleading or wrong or sometimes very kind of financially dangerous. So there’s also that point.

ZW (12:43): There’s also, especially at the graduate school level you just mentioned, you know, with those students that may have very different financial circumstances and maybe, maybe you are a fully funded student and, and maybe you don’t have, uh, the, the loan debt to navigate, but some students who raise their hand and want peer mentoring have such dire, specific timely needs that might be so tied to basic needs to a medical bill that has to be paid. That a a rent check has to clear that it’s so important that their issue is solved in a timely manner, otherwise they’re really at risk of of stopping out, dropping out or worse. And at that point then, do you want to put that person in that crisis situation in that very traumatic moment in front of a peer who may not be prepared to deliver trauma informed care? Are they professional enough? Do they have the resources necessary to really delegate services to someone who is in a crisis moment, is in a traumatic moment? And so we’ve seen a little bit more of this, especially at the graduate school level of students who are not fully funded. And this is particularly the case in, in medical schools where some of the medical school debt, we, we know hundreds of thousands of dollars, right?

ZW (14:14): So someone’s approaching graduation and I was talking with a colleague about this at a major public flagship in the Midwest as a medical school student. They were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and they were coming with a very dire problem related to credit card debt. They started racking up the student loan debt. That number became scary for them. So they started racking up the credit card debt and they came to a peer financial mentoring session with a peer to talk about how to consolidate $80,000 of credit card debt across six or seven different cards. And they were looking at still graduating with, you know, a little over a quarter a million dollars of student loan debt. Now that gravity, the weight of that problem and the issue and all of the very long-term ramifications it has, that’s where is this the best way to serve graduate students is by connecting with a peer? Especially when you know the earning potential of someone coming out of some graduate programs, especially in the harder sciences and law, you know, you know how to manage your money, invest well, you can be out of debt in five to 10 to 15 years very easily and beyond the track to upper middle class or or or higher lifestyle.

ZW (15:32): It becomes a little bit more of a problem with graduate students who are in the social sciences and the humanities, right? So thinking like your English PhD, it might be a very, you know, stereotypical example. What do you do with a PhD in English kind of thing? A la Avenue Q, right? What do you do with a degree in English? And at the certain point, do you wanna have somebody who is potentially racking up tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt going to graduate school knowing that the earning potential of that student is much, much lower? Does a peer understand that career trajectory? It’s a very different series of tips and, and advice and counseling you give someone when the entry point into the labor market is, is gonna inherently be much, much lower, at least initially than somebody who’s majoring in a STEM field or a financial field or a law or a legal field. So you can see how you start sketching out a few of the scenarios that I’ve talked to folks about and you can really kind of begin to question great intention, great idea to connect peers with peers, especially at the graduate school level. ’cause you may be, you know, graduate schools might have more adult experience, they’d be a little bit more knowledgeable on the flip side, adults can have even more dire, even more emergency type financial situations. Do you wanna put a peer in that spot? I don’t know if it’s best practice, but schools are doing it.

Emily (16:57): Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve made some of the same like observations like, wow, this financial situation or issue that you’ve come to me with and I don’t really even do coaching. Um, this is just people who communicate with me. It’s like, this is so above my pay grade <laugh>. Like, you need, you need debt counseling or you need a bankruptcy consideration or you know, there’s, it really can escalate in the financial realm. And so I’m wondering now have you seen programs, do they have a way for peers to escalate cases? Like, hey, you really need to talk to the staff member who is my supervisor because this is now beyond the realm of my training or life experience.

ZW (17:39): Yeah, so this is a, this is much better developed from what I can tell at the undergraduate level. But here’s the undergraduate version and we can kind of transpose to graduate level is there’s got to be that trusted adult who is the trainer of these students to know, here’s the clear dividing line. If someone in your mentoring session crosses this line, here’s where you go with this issue. Many stories we’ve heard at the undergraduate level where we are triaging with a case worker or a social worker on the issue that you’re having, we are gonna connect you to a financial institution. We’re gonna connect you to someone in legal at our institution. ’cause we think this is actually potentially a crime that you may be discussing, committing related to your finances. So it could be very serious, very, very quickly.

Costs of Hiring Professional Financial Advisors for University Students

ZW (18:25): At the graduate level. Here is what I’m hearing is kind of a little bit of the problem is that typically a financial counselor, like a really professional credential person, fill in the blank about their hourly rate. I mean typically, and this is kind of what colleges and universities that I’ve work with have kind of found is if they wanted to hire and vend this out as a third party, if they wanted to have somebody kind of full-time to be a personal financial counselor for graduate students, something along 250 to $300 an hour times the number of graduate students you have times the number of hours they may work a week, it very quickly becomes very unaffordable. And then you think to yourself, okay, well how many segregated and unsegregated fees are part of this program? And there’s this whole kind of rhetoric around tacking on schools, tacking on fees for every single bit and it becomes less understandable for graduate students who are enrolling about what their financial aid may and may not cover. And what am I responsible for now and I’m not gonna get paid for the first two months of my assistantship. How do I cover these fees that are due in the first day of classes? Things like that. So schools are a little bit hesitant at the sticker shock of how much it does cost to hire professional financial advisors to work as part of kind of a, a graduate program.

ZW (19:48): And so that’s one issue that I, I think over time, especially with financial value transparency, which is a, a really current hot button issue in financial aid as well as gainful employment colleges and universities, especially at the graduate level where the student loan debt or some programs is. So high institutions need to report the indebtedness, the loan default rates, all sorts of things to the federal government for, you know, kind of basic accountability measures. As those accountability measures are even more scrutinized in the coming years, I think those graduate programs are eventually gonna come around to maybe this is a worthwhile expense, maybe if it, if it helps out with our default rate, if it helps our students be able to better manage their student loans so we don’t have this level of indebtedness upon graduation.

ZW (20:45): Is it selfish? Yes. Because the schools want their metrics to shine, they wanna maintain accreditation. I think down the road colleges will make the investment, but I think we’re just at the cusp right now of the, of the kind of mass accountability for graduate school programs. And one thing I wanted to add on is University of Chicago was a, is a very prominent example of this. Right now they are freezing admission into many graduate programs because of the cost and the indebtedness and the way that it’s really impacting some of those accountability measures. Now one solution is freezing the admission of those programs. The other solution might be though these pure financial mentoring groups and these professional financial counselors that could be embedded in graduate programs to do a little better job mitigating the impact of how expensive graduate school can be.

Emily (21:41): Yeah. As you were speaking, I started thinking, is it the responsibility of these universities to help <laugh> the students with their finances? I mean that’s something that goes to the core of what my business is, right? And what we do in our, you know, HEFWA community. But as you were just saying, the argument is there, it’s because the schools already have a vested interest in how these students’ finances turn out because of the federal loan programs. So a little bit less relevant for the PhDs, but I think it bleeds over into that area as well. Um, and I’m curious what you think about the changes that have now occurred with the one big beautiful bill act and the lifetime and annual limits on student loan, um, acquisition. At least that’ll be phased in over the next few years. Um, is that what you were speaking to in like this, you know, increased era of accountability?

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act & Graduate Student Loan Borrowing

ZW (22:27): Absolutely. There’s gonna be breaks that are pumped <laugh> on graduate student loan borrowing. There’s just going to be, and and that is why initially there’s kind of these two things happening at once. As the federal government looks at graduate programs and looks at the indebtedness of some graduates, how much they’re actually earning, how many times they’re defaulting on student loans or missing payments or requesting forbearance, whatever the case is, there’s this rise of the private student loan industry that is really going to come after graduate students. And it’s timely that you asked about this because I was talking with a financial institution that shall not be named two weeks ago and they were looking at the readability and comprehensiveness of their loan packages and offerings to graduate students because everyone is getting ready in the financial industry to swoop in and take over where the federal government has said basically, we’re gonna wipe our hands a little bit of this and kind of get out of this industry.

ZW (23:29): So one piece of advice I think that’s really, really, really critical for people pursuing graduate school is first and foremost you get that full ride and you really understand what that full ride pays for always the best deal, right? Don’t pay that stuff back, don’t take out loans that is the best, but if you’re really passionate, you wanna do it, you can’t get the full ride funding. You are going to have to learn to navigate a bit of the private loan sector and it’s gonna look very, very different than the federal student loan portfolio. And that’s one thing that, and ideally I know it’s gonna be on your radar and college and universities are gonna have to provide the education to prospective graduate students to say, your parents, your friends who might have gone to graduate school 10, 15 years ago, you’re playing different ballgame. Here are their financial options available to you. Here’s the best information we can give you right now as chaotic as some federal policy making may be right now, this is as it stands today and y’all make the best choice you can. And so I think there’s gonna be a whole nother layer of knowledge that prospective graduate students will need to understand the next couple years to make it affordable, get the best deal they can and not get taken advantage of by the private loan industry, which we know can be very predatory in nature.

Emily (24:57): Yeah, so many changes and so scary. But you know what? Student loans have been scary for people even through the federal system. And so that was, that was a broken system in need of reform as well. So we’re trying something new here and everybody’s just trying to shift and do the best that they can.

ZW (25:11): Yeah, I totally agree. And that’s actually a little bit of the, the silver lining if you can find one in the big beautiful bill is that the borrowing is going to be throttled and it’s going to inherently force people to make decisions that may not be best for their immediate educational aspirations, but are probably going to protect them financially a little bit more in the long run. Which is, it is great for, for graduate school folks because you know, so many graduate degrees are so specialized and a lot of times you, you really can’t land that dream job that is exactly what your specialty was, right? So you find yourself working in kind of disparate fields and leveraging the soft skills and other kind of competencies that you developed through graduate studies in any field, which makes people crazy employable as it is. But you’re always kind of repurposing yourself for different kinds of work in, in some ways that really does force for good or bad people to make very reasoned planned decisions on degrees and career field. People will think twice about taking out that big loan for a degree in a very niche field. And that is probably, probably good for people. It’s probably gonna be a positive for the indebtedness that folks graduated with and a better opportunity for broadly colleges and universities to do a better job of preparing students for careers and saying, you’re entering this field, you’ve made this decision, you are better aware of the career opportunities. And I think colleges and universities, especially graduate programs, will be better equipped to provide support, I think. I think it’s over. Could be, could be seen as a good thing.

Emily (27:11): Yeah, I’m just thinking that the other community that I’m part of is the graduate career consortium. So that is people who work in career and professional development for PhD students and master’s students. And I know that like there are professionals who work in that field and they also do peer mentoring as you mentioned earlier. There’s peer mentoring on resumes and interview prep and all that kind of stuff. So the model is there as well. And as you were saying, that’s becoming even more like it was already important. It’s even more important at every stage because sometimes the best financial intervention that a PhD can get is before they commit to any program, right? And making sure that the PhD is the right choice, the field is the right choice, the school is the right choice, the price point is the right choice. Um, and if not, you know, getting outta that or negotiating for a better offer or whatever needs to happen to, to put them on a more financially healthy path before the sunk costs, you know, come into play and all that sort of stuff.

ZW (28:02): Yes, absolutely.

Commercial

Emily (28:06): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, budgeting, investing, and goal-setting, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2025-2026 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutes enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Accessing Peer Mentoring and Other Financial Services at Your University

Emily (29:25): If graduate students and professional students today want to access peer mentoring in the financial realm, um, at their universities, how can they do so?

ZW (29:34): Arguably I would have incorporated this in my graduate school search when I was looking, this is one thing that if current me could advise past me, here’s what I would’ve changed. I did not necessarily look into many student support services as part of my degree program. I was really kind of looking at can I make it work cost of living wise? Can I get a scholarship? Can I easily transport myself to and from campus? I mean that was really making sure financially that I could do it. Finances are super important, but there’s all the other services that come as part of a degree program that students really should understand because in the quote unquote compensation package of a graduate school admission letter, you’re also all of a sudden getting access to all these support services you just talked about career, career counseling offices and, and career advice.

ZW (30:32): Every arguably reputable university out there, every graduate program has somebody in career services to help you navigate. They have, they have, they have that covered. What they don’t have as covered as well is this financial wellness piece. So what I would’ve done is I would’ve dug much more into student services and said, if I need- have a-, if I have a question about my taxes at your university in this program, who can I go to? Who can I go to if I have an issue affording something emergency aid, um, I need finances to travel for this conference. If I wanna make sure to have a, an unpaid internship opportunity as part of my degree program, who do I talk to for that? I did none of that. I did none of that. And that was a big mistake. <laugh>. So I would say to all your listeners, anyone pursuing graduate school is, you gotta think about that admissions letter as a compensation package.

ZW (31:30): And there are lots of other fringe benefits of that compensation and it’s all these kind of auxiliary career services and ask, you know, do I have access to a a preferred credit union that can give me a really good savings account rate or, or a free checking whatever the case is. Do I have access to a financial counselor so I can actually help plan my, my my, either my indebtedness or my my budget to make sure that I can make things work. Asking those questions about personal finance that may help you make your decision. And that if future me, you know, current me could go back and talk to past me, it would be asking all those programs, can you help me find somebody to help me with my money to help me with personal finance? That would have really swayed my decision I think.

Emily (32:17): I think in the regular employment world they would call it like an employee assistance program. Employee assistance program. Yes. So just like all the sort of package of like support services that are available in that case to full-time employees. But yes, you’re exactly right in higher ed, a version of that exists for undergraduate, graduate professional students. Everybody. And I also did not consider this at all when I was selecting a graduate institution, but something I’ve been really, um, I guess impressed by my observation through the HEFWA community is the rise of basic needs support. And so I would maybe hold that up as like the top one, like you mentioned emergency assistance, um, loans or grants, that kind of thing. Like are there places where I can turn if I am having trouble and I can’t make rent this month or like I can go to a food bank and I’m able to get something that’s gonna, you know, tide me over till my next paycheck comes. Like I don’t love that people have to access that stuff, obviously it’s just better that people are paid reasonably well enough. But even if people are paid decently, there’s always gonna be those scenarios that come up, you know, from time to time for a graduate student, even in otherwise well-managed, you know, and sufficient financial life. So just having something there to help them bridge the gap is really, really helpful.

ZW (33:27): A hundred percent. And I was just talking to someone about this the other day with a basic need center in California where it was, if you don’t have Maslow’s hierarchy covered, the learning is so impossible. Not impossible, but it made so much more difficult. And I remember learning in eighth grade health class about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and every now and again, you know, my day-to-day work and when I was a graduate student for sure, it’s like why am I not focused right now? Oh I’m hungry, I’m hungry, right? I need a glass of water. Like the basic, basic needs type stuff, right? So I, I think you’re totally hitting the nail on the head where you gotta really think about yourself, but all of your needs, having all of your needs covered going into a graduate program where at least the best you can and you know, more and more so colleges and universities have really embraced this kind of basic needs movement in some ways where, I never remember as an undergraduate or even a grad student at UT getting an email hearing about a coat closet, career center, basic needs center, uh, helping college students apply for uh, SNAP benefits and, and and tax assistance for income taxes.

ZW (34:42): Never. Now, I wouldn’t say ubiquitous, but a lot more graduate programs are rolling that into services because they’re realizing that a basic needs covered, student finishes on time, they’re engaged, they network, they pursue those pre-professional career opportunities so they get a job after graduation. It is in these students’ best, therefore it should be in the institution’s best interest. And now we’re finally maybe putting student first, whereas it’s for the best interest of the student, then it’s the best interest of the institution and not the other way around. Where does it benefit the institution? Great, then the student gets the fringe benefit. We’re finally, I think maybe flipping that around. That’s a good thing.

Emily (35:27): Hmm. And yeah, I’m glad we sort of landed on basic needs and you know, you mentioned e- even like hunger. So I live in California as well and at the moment anyway, we have this universal breakfast and lunch program in, in public schools. So every single student does not matter what the resources of your family are financially or ability to fill out paperwork or whatever. Everybody has access to free, free breakfast and free lunch through their school. So that’s incredible. And I know that you mentioned earlier that you work with um, certain populations that are more vulnerable through your job now. And so let’s say that we have someone in the audience who’s a graduate student who came out of the foster system or was formerly homeless or, or maybe even currently is experiencing housing insecurity. Um, or maybe we have a student parent, another type of non-traditional student. Um, how can those people access, you know, these kinds of resources we’ve been talking about in particular their institutions?

ZW (36:20): Yeah, so there is typically a community liaison, social work type person at colleges and universities that their part of their portfolio of work is making sure that every single government benefit, every single community uh, amenity is connected to the university in some point. Going back to your comment about is it an institution’s role to provide this financial information? Like it’s going back to the idea of in loco parentis, how much should the institution be the parent for the student? Well there is a limit of that. The institution can only do so much, but at every institution there is someone or a team of people whose job is to be connected to public benefits, to community resources. But there is the hurdle with students of all ages, but it’s especially graduate students when you really maybe might feel that more of that uh, uh, imposter phenomenon creeping in is do I wanna raise my hand for help? Do I wanna be seen as someone who needs a government benefit or who needs a, some sort of commuter pass for low income people? Like do I wanna be associated with that group? I grew up saying I’ll take everything I can, I cannot provide it myself. I’m at my wit’s end, gimme all of it ’cause I am at wit’s end. However, a lot of people don’t feel that way. A lot of people are just on the fringes and feel like, you know what, buck up, you know, very bootstraps mentality. But it’s about raising your hand and being willing to say to yourself, I wanna be successful. I believe in myself. That might mean sucking up a little bit of pride and seeking out a benefit associated with X population and you just go for it and you find that person on campus. The other part that was really beneficial about my time at UT is that I only explicitly used public transit.

ZW (38:17): And public transit tends to run by the library, by the DMV, by banks, by by social services offices broadly. That’s where bus routes tend to run. It’s you know, connecting people to the governmental infrastructure in this country. Typically I would really encourage graduate students if you have committed to someplace and you know more or less the city that you’re gonna be in, get there as early as you can. Ride public transit and get to know where the social services are because you may think that your university, your institution is your community. You have access to resources so far beyond that community that you gotta know the city and know the location first almost. ’cause a lot of times the university may not have the infrastructure you need but right down the road or like county social services, they’ve got your back a hundred percent and of you know, unfortunately a lot of graduate students because they you know, come in being so low income, you qualify for all tons of stuff that you did not think you’d qualify for.

ZW (39:25): I was talking to a graduate student the other week did not know they did not have to be paying for their cell phone the past three years. There is a program for that for low income students just like you and graduate students are included. Just because you’re in graduate school does not mean you’re exempt from being able to access all these social services. So it’s a couple of hurdles of being willing to raise your hand and say you need help. Two, doing your own kind of navigation of knowing where services are and then three, having that mindset of just because I’m a super smart person who got into a grad program and I’m going to this prestigious school does not preclude me from these government benefits that I do qualify for.

Emily (40:07): Such a great point. And I, I learned actually, I think it was from someone else I met at HEFWA who was a podcast guest a couple of years ago, that most people in the United States who access the social safety net do so on a very temporary basis. It really is for most people acting as um, okay, your situation has changed and you need some help right now, but in the future you’re gonna be making a lot more money. This is very true for graduate students and contributing again, back to society and that social safety net. So like take it like take the help you need the help by definition you have qualified for these programs, take the help, it’s not gonna be forever and you need it right now and it’s really gonna benefit you right now.

ZW (40:44): Hundred percent. It is, it’s such a myth in the US about welfare. There’s such, so many myths that go around. It’s like statistically so many people are on it, like you said, for such a transient period. It’s really just a bandaid to something better. And there is though, you know, being admitted to grad school, you know, you feel like you’re in a competitive environment, you can’t show weakness. You know, you can’t be seen as needing anything. I’m self-sufficient, I’m strong. It’s a total mindset change to say actually I do need this benefit. And then recognizing too that the rest of your life you’re not gonna need it. It’s just to get you through to something better and don’t all that kind of like cultural zeitgeist and that, you know, mythology of welfare and people living off of welfare for their entire lives just not true.

Emily (41:37): Yeah, and I remember actually a previous podcast guest as well, um, at Portland State, she learned from her peers to apply for SNAP benefits. Like they were like as a group, like teaching one another how to apply. And the thing is that like you might perceive that some other people, and maybe this is even true for some people, they might look at you twice for having access this kind of benefit. But a lot of your other peers are gonna be like, how can I get that too? Like, can you tell me? ’cause I don’t wanna pay for my own cell phone. Like, that would be great.

ZW (42:03): I love that. I, and the thing is though, here, here we come in full, full circle, that is a form of peer mentoring. Is it not? It is people working together. Sometimes you feel a little more empowered if a friend will do it with you. So if you’re gonna, if you feel the need to raise your hand for a benefit that you may feel a little bit ashamed of, taken advantage of, have a find a friend, make a friend, raise those hands together, it’ll de-stigmatize a lot of what you feel like you might be doing. And then you get the benefit and you feel like all of a sudden, wow, I’m a little better prepared to be successful and putting myself in the best position. It’s all about just invest in your, in yourself as financial wellness as part of your professional development. It’s just being open to this, wanting to improve yourself and, and taking the resources and seeking them out that, that you deserve to have.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (42:55): Well I think you landed that plane beautifully, Zach, so we will end the interview there. I’m just gonna move on to our very last question that I ask of all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that relates to, you know, something we’ve talked about today or it could be something entirely different

ZW (43:13): To build on something we talked about today is when you’ve done your research about the affordability of the area and you really have honed in on where you’re going to go, think about that offer of admission as a package and you put it brilliantly. It’s kind of like this, this employer wellness package, right? I mean there’s other benefits that you get in addition to just the teaching and learning, right? You get access to student services, you’re, you’re put into a community where there are probably likely other county level, city level governmental resources that you can access. So when you’re admitted, you’re not only admitted to the institution, but you’re admitted to all these other services, you’re automatically qualified for so many other things. Do your homework, seek ’em out and don’t be ashamed to raise your hand and say, I need a little bit of help.

Emily (44:11): Love it. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Zach, and giving us this wonderful insight.

ZW (44:15): Thank you. All the best, Emily, you’re doing important stuff. Keep doing it.

Emily (44:18): Thank you so much

Outro

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

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