Personal Finance for People in Teaching and Research
The Short Version In the past few months a number of grad students, post-docs, and early-career faculty have asked me about the US academic job market during the Great Recession. They are rightly horrified by the likely job prospects they face in the coming few years. Covid-19 will be different, no doubt, but maybe the […]
Smart People Can Be Money Dumb (but don’t have to be) Readers of Degree of Wealth are smart people. Most have gone to college and most have even gone to graduate or professional school. They probably work in research or education. They spend their days learning new things and explaining them to others. Personal finance […]
An Unpopular Opinion It’s the season for deciding if you should attend a graduate program. Here’s the single most important consideration: if a graduate program accepts you without adequate funding, you should turn them down. There are obvious exceptions: professional programs (MBA, law, med school), programs that have high placement rates into lucrative career tracks, […]
‘Tis The Season Spring is the season for admission to graduate programs. It depends on the field, the university, and the department, but offer letters go out as early as January or as late as May/June. The controlling date is April 15th. Not only is it Tax Day (here’s info on filing your taxes for […]
‘Tis the Season This is the time of year when teachers and faculty are asked to write letters of recommendation. This winter has been typical: I’ve written 4-5 letters for grad school, 3-4 letters for people applying to faculty positions, 2-3 letters for undergrads applying to summer research programs, and another handful for folks applying […]
Tax Season! For those of us in the US, it’s time to start thinking about taxes. It’s painful to pay taxes, but, as we’ll discover, at least you can file your taxes for free! It is a very good idea to know why you owe what you owe in taxes. Once you do, you can […]
Let me tell you how it all began. In 2015, I was on sabbatical. While I liked to think of myself as a generally money-wise person, I was acutely aware I had been making big financial decisions (buying a house, taking the no-pension retirement option, taking a full year sabbatical) with guesstimates and napkin math. […]
