132: 5 Budget-Related Tasks to Complete Before Saying Yes to a Grad Program

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Welcome back to the Grad School Femtoring podcast. Today's solo episode is on five budget related tasks to complete before saying yes to a grad program. So budget related, money related, topic today. And I am bringing it up because it's April, which means that for those of you that applied to graduate school, especially those of you that are applied to doctoral programs, you have a very short amount of time to say yes to these programs, and sometimes with the rush of an excitement of deciding where you're going to go. Or if you're going to say, yes, it's really easy to forget the fact that this is a big financial decision that you're making in your life, that may actually follow you for many, many years to come, especially if you take out student loans. And with that in mind, I want to make sure that you have your bases covered and that you feel confident, and that you are making this decision in an informed way. So don't say yes, quite yet, until you've done these five budget and money related things.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So the first thing is you want to inquire about funding. Hopefully you've done this already, hopefully, you've received a good amount of information about funding opportunities available to you, maybe you got a full funding package, or maybe you did not maybe apply to a master's program, and it's only partially funded or it's not funded at all. No matter your situation. It is okay to ask about funding, even they say there's no funding, you can ask them if there are other opportunities for you to apply for. And you can also ask them about other opportunities. Let's say you are fully funded and you think you're good to go. You might actually be missing out on additional opportunities that you have no idea are available unless you ask. You can ask if the department provides funding to cover relocation expenses, you can ask them, do they provide summer funding? You can ask them if they provide travel grants, research grants, professional development funding, and FYI, some folks use their professional development funding to work with me, you can ask if they provide childcare scholarships. So again, these are all things that you would never know. Unless someone tells you to ask, what's the worst thing that can happen? They tell you no, they don't have this. Or they tell you no. But the university as a whole has this childcare scholarship you can apply for are no but you can apply to this other travel grant. And so again, with that inquiry, you're finding out about other opportunities that will benefit you. The first task, inquire about funding, you may think you're done. But now if you haven't asked about these other things, make sure you do that.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The next task that I'm assigning to you is to find out when you should expect to receive your first paycheck, that is your first stipend, your first ta check your first scholarship amount. Why? Because I have witnessed one too many times folks not ask us and work under the assumption that they're going to get their first paycheck as soon as they start grad school. And it may not come in until a month, sometimes even two months after you start. And that can be really hard if you've had a relatively dry summer with not a lot of work and don't have a lot of savings. And you're expecting anticipating needing that paycheck, to pay for your rent to pay for your bills that is really hard to watch. Students have to put things down on a credit card or just stress, stressing out figuring out how to make ends meet for that first month or two of grad school. So find out when are you going to get your first paycheck so that then you can plan out your summer starting now. Which means that if you're not getting your paycheck right away, and you know you're not going to have enough money for that first month or two, then maybe it might be a good idea to get some sort of part time or full time job in the summer to save up for that. Let's see what else do I have to say about that?

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I think I'm gonna move on to the third task, which is to make sure you calculate your moving expenses. This is a good time to think about that because in most cases folks are actually moving. Even if you're moving cities, it can still be rather costly to move because not only Are you having to account for gas and we know gas is very expensive nowadays, perhaps you're renting out a U haul. Perhaps you are if you're going out of state, you need to book flights, you might be shipping materials over, you might be doing a cross country drive over. And all of this adds up. So you want to calculate your moving expenses in advance again, so that you can plan your summer out and do some saving hopefully. You don't have to go into debt just to move and I am speaking to you from experience, I did incur that not to go to grad school because I was one of the lucky ones. I stayed in my state, same institution for grad school as undergrad. But when I landed my my second job, full time job after finishing my PhD, I did move cities, and it was rather costly. And it took me several years to pay that off, I had on a credit card for several years. It took a while but it had I plan in advance have had I learned a little bit more about financial literacy, gotten a little bit more comfortable with, with owning up to my numbers. And you know, just I've always been one to hustle, but I was never very clear with what my expenses were. And so it was really hard for me to make those saving related goals when I didn't know what I was saving for. So in your case, if you know, I need to save to move, then it's great to be able to have your budget, this is how much I estimate it will cost me to move.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

In fact, I'm doing this for myself. And this is just me sharing a little bit about my personal life. Those of you that have been listening to me for a while, you know, I moved abroad, and I moved sight unseen to a random city in Portugal. And now that we're here and we're a little more settled, we actually realize I think we want to move to another city. And it's only maybe 5, 10 miles away from here, the areas that we're looking into. But it's still a move, the place we're at now is fully furnished, which means that there's a good chance we're gonna move to a place that is unfurnished. And right now, what am I doing? Because I know I'm moving in the summer, I am calculating my budget, how much do I think it's gonna cost me to get furniture and furniture on a budget, I'm not talking about fancy furniture, I'm talking about IKEA, and things I can get on Facebook marketplace, I'm on a budget still. But even though I'm on a budget, it's good to have an idea of how much it's gonna cost me because from here until then, I need to figure out how much extra work I need to take on to save up for that. So again, it's good to know your numbers, calculate those moving expenses, even if it seems scary, it's good to know like, oh, I am going to have to pay for this security deposit. How much is that? Find out.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Alright, task number four is similar. And it's all about calculating your cost of living expenses. Because you're moving odds are, the city, the new state, you might be moving to has a similar costs, I mean, it has a different cost of living expense. And it you shouldn't expect to be spending the same amount in your bills, as you are now after you move. It's a different city different expenses. You want to compare your cost of living with the amount of funding that you're getting, or the amount of income that you're going to be receiving, maybe you're not getting funding, but you know, you're gonna keep your full time job, what is your income, or maybe you are getting partial funding, and you're gonna have a part time job, or you're gonna take on the side hustle, whatever it is, want to know what your income is compared to your cost of living in the area that you're moving to. This is going to help you with accounting for whether or not you can afford your graduate program.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I've also seen this happen. I've witnessed this happen many times where folks get into their dream program. And this is more common in the applied master's programs, the professional master's programs, it's a really amazing top program program of their dreams, and then they get no funding. And then they find out this program is two years long. And it's $60,000 of tuition per year and all of a sudden after completing the program, they're going to be walking out with six figures of debt. I don't recommend six figures of that for anyone. It takes a long time to pay that off. I mean, it's taken me a while to pay off my student loans and it's only a fraction of that amount. And so that's why again you want to know your numbers now. And you want to think about long and hard? Is this financial investment worth it, you haven't if you hadn't thought about higher education as a financial investment, it is, even if you're not the one paying for it, even if you've been having scholarships and fellowships, and you are one of the lucky ones that doesn't have any student loans, it is still a financial investment to do it. So calculate the cost of living, calculate your income and see if you'll be able to make ends meet, even if it's tight. But if you can make ends meet wonderful, then I think that you're going to be in a pretty good position by the time you graduate.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Okay, task number five is finding out the salary bands for individuals who get jobs with the degree that you are pursuing. are you pursuing Masters of Social Work? are you pursuing a master's in family therapy? are you pursuing a PhD? in higher education? are you pursuing an EdD and leadership development? are you pursuing a an MBA or you're pursuing, you know, medical degree, those are outside of the realm of what I usually cover, but no matter the degree that you're pursuing, MA, MS. PhD, PsyD, EdD, they all have alumni, they all have career tracks that they're kind of sending you toward. And sometimes the career track aligns with what alumni are doing. Sometimes it doesn't like let me tell you a lot of a lot of doctoral programs, PhD programs, they're training you to become a tenure track professor. But a good majority of folks who get their PhDs, including myself, don't end up becoming tenure track professors. So you want to find out well, what are the other options? And what are people actually doing with a PhD? And what is that salary band? And am I comfortable with the kind of salary that I'm gonna be making? And how much is that even gonna look like when you're actually getting a paycheck? Or how much is that a month?

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

You know, if you calculate a particular salary band, like a certain amount, and then you take out a third of it to account for benefits and taxes. And that's how much you're living off of that's like your net pay. That's not your gross pay not, that's not the total, that's your net, what you actually take home. Can you live off of that? And then if you have student loans, how much can you actually pay off with that salary? Why am I saying this? I'm not saying this to stress you out. I'm not saying this to freak you out. I'm saying this because I want to inform you. So if you find that, okay, so people in this discipline typically make 40 to 60k, 60 to 80k, 80 to 100k. And they figure out, where's that number at take home number for you? A month? Is it $3000, $5000, $7,000 a month? How much? Are your living expenses right now? Are they going to change in the future? Are there going to be other things for you in the future, like for me, in my case, I have two kids, that's to other human beings that I'm paying for, or have student loans, that's, you know, I want to hopefully one day buy a home, I did that before and then sold it because I became house broke and decided that that was not something I wanted to do. I didn't want to be in that position. But I hope to one day, buy a house and not be house broke. So these are all goals that I have in my life, and you likely have goals in your life and getting a graduate degree is a stepping stone for that goal. It is not the only goal. It is only one chapter of your life. Sometimes it feels like grad school is our life because it is for that 2, 4, 6, 8 year period. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is a whole life and a whole world out there outside of it. And I want you to be a little bit more prepared for it. So find out those salary bands. And then that's that was task number five, I said it's this five budget and money related tasks to complete before saying yes to your grad program.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

But I have a bonus one because it is related to task number five, and that is if you've taken on student debt, or any other kind of debt for that matter. Calculate the amount of debt that you owe, with a calculator that you can actually go to these debt calculator websites online, you Google debt calculator, or debt repayment calculator, and then you can include your total debt, the interest rate of the loan that you got, or if it's a credit card, the interest rate of that credit card, and how much realistically do you think you'll be able to pay off? Once you land your first job out of your graduate program? Are you going to be paying off $250, $500, $1,000? I don't know what that number is for you. But you calculate it, crunch numbers, mess with the numbers, just for fun not to stress yourself out. And then see is how long is it going to take you to pay this off? Is it going to take you five years, 10 years longer. Because again, I want you to think about yourself, not just now, but into the future, I want you to be compassionate with your future self. And make sure that you're making decisions that won't come back and haunt you later on. If you find out that you're going to graduate program, you're getting partial not full funding, you are going to have to account for the other part of it with student that the student that you're getting is an amount that is enough to scare you, but not so much that it feels like you'll never pay it off. And you do the budget calculate it, maybe it'll take you five years, or ten years, or assuming that you're at an income bracket.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

But remember, no matter what the salary bands are in your discipline, if you keep working, you're not just going to stay at that salary. If you keep working and you move up, hopefully, the goal is that you keep moving up and with moving up, you get a salary increase. And if at some point in your career, you find yourself stuck in a position where there is no room for advancement, no room for salary increases, or the salary increases do not even account for inflation, if you're only getting 3% increases, and inflation was 7%, whatever it is, if you're not getting like a huge salary increase or huge opportunities for advancement, then you might want to kind of, you know, look around apply for different jobs. It is okay to do that. Yes.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

All of this to say I think I went off a little bit on a tangent about you and your future self and this money conversation, making sure that you're financially okay, not just now, but 5, 10 years into the future. It's important to think about these things before you say yes to grad program, it can be like I said earlier, it's really exciting to get in it is a huge accomplishment, you should definitely celebrate this when it is incredibly competitive and hard to get into graduate programs. But at the same time, they're not only choosing you, you are choosing them, you are making a very big decision. And if you do these five things you asked about funding to make sure you didn't miss out on anything. You find out when you're getting paid. You calculate your moving expenses, and you also calculate your cost of living. You find out how much can I expect to make with this degree and the career of choice that comes with this degree. And you calculate how long it's going to take you to pay off debt. If you have debt. You're going to be in a really good spot, a very, very good, informed, empowered spot. And that's what I want from everybody who listens to my podcast is I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just trying to make you aware. That's it for this week. I hope y'all have a good rest of your week.