Welcome to the Fall! If you are a first year student, welcome to your graduate program! If you graduated this summer, congratulations on defending! I think the fall semester can bring a time for reflection and new beginnings for all of us. This newsletter will focus on a list of actions that everybody can get done in a relatively short time and cost nothing. 

If you are new here, welcome! If you are a member of the community, ask someone that wants to work on their finances to join this newsletter💸. Anybody that signs up for the newsletter gets a free copy of my toolkit!

Before jumping into the newsletter, I have a favor to ask you. Finances with Carolina LLC needs one more gig to surpass last year’s revenue! Please, please, please recommend my services to your graduate/fellowship program or your DEI committee. Your recommendation means a lot, if you need some data outside your own experience, visit my reviews page and the 2023 finances with Carolina summary. 

I have compiled a bunch of free resources including books that you can access through the Madison Public Library. If you are not in Madison, I suggest that you check your local library, lots of branches have access to kanopy and hoopla.

I have also written about content in a previous newsletter that includes more types of media such as documentaries and online classes.

I was featured in the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast! In this interview I cover some of the issues that a funded student might encounter during graduate school and why personal finances are a DEI issue.

This newsletter!  You are already on the loop, bring someone you care about by encouraging them to sign up, they will get a free copy of My Toolkit when they do so. 

I have covered the need for an emergency fund and why to host it in a HYSA in a previous newsletter. Briefly, an emergency fund is a cash cushion that can cover anywhere from 1 to 6 months of your needs (not wants like Hulu) for when 💩 hits the fan. A High Yield Savings Account (HYSA) is a savings account that usually pays 5-10 times the national average of a standard savings account, they are able to do this because they are mostly online banks. 

I have used HYSAs since graduate school and today my household’s emergency fund lives happily at Ally. My referral link for Ally, shown below, will give you (and me) a $100 cash bonus on your deposit if you or your friends are eligible.  If you are looking to do more research, here is a Nerdwallet article on what online banks offer these types of accounts. FYI, they also use referral links, and the commission goes to a large business not to Finances with Carolina LLC! Learn how referral links work here.

I want to be perfectly clear that working on your finances is not going to fix an unlivable wage. If you want to do something about unlivable wages: join your union, participate in your program’s committees and/or graduate student senate, and vote if you are eligible.

Having said that, ignoring your personal finances while in graduate school, is not going to magically make financial issues go away. For the same reason making more money is not going to solve your personal relationship with finances. The American Bankruptcy Institute states that ~16% of NFL players declare bankruptcy within 12 years of their retirement. The reasons for declaring bankruptcy vary, but one thing remains true: making large sums of money was not the solution to avoid bankruptcy. Personally, I am not making NFL money at my industry job, but the jump in income was SUBSTANTIAL (2.8X more than grad student stipend). I am very glad I had set financial systems that allowed me to “hit the ground running” on retirement investing when I started a post graduate job.

Something I have learned from cognitive behavior therapy is that challenging our “unhelpful” thoughts can change the way we feel about certain situations. To get started here are two templates that you can use for free: the guide covers how to start a budget from scratch and its accompanying spreadsheet, which is a starting place for your brand new budget.

Budgeting has bad rep, it should be reframed as a liberating practice. I budget to allocate money to the things I care the most about automatically.  Ramitt’s Seitthy’s quote: “Spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t.” was the topic of August newsletter.

Do you want to go over these actionable items with an accountability buddy? Did you complete these goals and want to work on the next steps? Are you starting the job hunting process and want to ask questions about industry? These are all things we can tackle during coaching sessions. If you are on the fence, check out these reviews.