How Poor Are Grad Students? (And How Poor is The Poor Grad Student?)

Howdy! Welcome to this chronicle of the financial tribulations of a 24 year-old grad student at a major American university. This personal finance blog will catalogue how I scrape by financially while devoting myself to the life of the mind. And avoiding the real world. I prefer to think of it as the former, but you can take your guess. But first, you might ask, why "Poor grad student?" Are grad students really that poor?

The cliche, of course, is that grad students are really stupid smart people who go to grad school to avoid the real world and pay for it by being desperately poor and lonely for the rest of their lives. As with most things in modern American society, The Simpsons provide a vivid illustration:



Got that? Grad students are so poor they live on crumbs, but only when their professorial overlords allow them. Yikes! But it gets worse.



$600 a year? Even Bart can see that's a lousy way to live.

Of course the reality isn't so bad. It is true that most grad students are smart capable people who could be making a lot more money trading bonds or creating ads or working for Microsoft, so from a financial perspective they probably did make a "terrible life choice." Of course, knowledge is its own reward, blah, blah, blah, and other platitudes that make the Ramen taste better.

That was a joke. I actually haven't eaten Ramen since freshman year of undergrad. I buy normal food at a normal grocery store.

And while grad students make less money then they probably could, not all are poor. For one thing, many spent a few years in more lucrative careers and then came to grad school. For another, there's a wide range in grad student stipends, so that while some are encouraged to apply for food stamps , many live on a reasonably comfortably on a salary that palces them in the lower-middle class. Unless they have kids. Then it's hello crushing student debt to support your family.

Thankfully, I'm in the later category. I earn enough to put myself around the 25th percentile for household income, not bad for a 24-year old when my household consists of just me. So while I don't own a car or live in a big apartment, I can afford to have a beer out at the end of a long day and to not eat Ramen. Which I hate. Having to eat Ramen would definitely be a deal-breaker for me. Being somewhat financially literate, I even save some and have some money in the market.

So that's the overview of grad students and money. Over the next few days I'll set out in more detail just how poor I am (my networth) and how I deal with it (my budget) and what I want to do with what money I do have (my financial goals).