Mid-Life PhDs and Financial Regret | brokeGIRLrich
So, let’s talk today about mid-life PhDs and financial regret.
My brother wants to go see a Broadway play while I’m home next month.
I am getting absolutely walloped with expenses right now – many my fault. Some also are short term bigger expenses to lower expenses overall.
And my first though, after this very nice text was… ffs, we cannot afford this.
And I felt deep, deep frustration. The frustration of all PhD students, mid-life or not, when friends are doing fine in their careers (excellent, love that for them) and I am living off savings (or, as I recall from my MA, loans), and they suggest something that is a negligent cost to them as I do brain-scrambling math in my mind to see if it’s ok to do.
Because… of course I have the savings to do some stuff, but, like, how much stuff? Especially since Plan A of the PhD was to continue working digital events full time, which worked perfectly in year one, but year two and three have seen a serious drop in demand and a 75% income drop… which means I largely live off a finite quantity of savings now.
And who know what will happen when I graduate in terms of moving back into the workforce? I like to hope it will go smoothly, but, realistically, I know it’s not wise to plan as though it will.
And I’m not sure we should even get into whether or not my PhD will be financially worth the investment – $70ish thousand dollars plus three odd years of lost full time income. That is not including year one where income wasn’t what it could’ve been but wasn’t bad.
Oof.
I am so lucky and privileged that this is the problem of the day. I get it. That’s so true.
And it’s not like my life is super restricted. This is really heavily influenced by comparing myself to my peers. Which is silly. I know it’s silly.
My brain, it says, Mel, you know it’s silly to do this. Would you really be happy with their choices? Are you happy, at least largely, with yours?
And I am. I am. I have walked this really bizarre path through life for the first 39 years of it and it’s been… pretty glorious. I am largely happy with it. And it’s not all sunshine and happiness, some of it’s hard (like grad school) but… I know when challenges are done, and I look back, I am happier having done it than not.
Also, once I’m in, I’m in. I know I can’t not finish this. It will haunt me. Like medical and family emergencies aside, it will get done. And even if those happen, this will be just postponed, not abandoned.
And I didn’t expect this to feel great, falling behind all my friends financially. And also, I am so sorry to the friend with her PhD and all the adventures we invited her on during our twenties that she never went on – I understand how lousy that was. And I am even more impressed with you staying the course.
And I am so grateful that doing this a decade later than she did allows me to do more than she did during hers.
But. This whole rant is essentially to say it’s rough to say no to a fun night out. It’s rough because… it’s a fun night out. Who doesn’t want to have fun? But it’s also rough because it’s a missed memory, a missed experience with loved ones. And how many of those are we going to get?
Of course, the logical answer to this is to pivot to a lower cost activity and still build the memory together. Sometimes this is easier said than done. Relationship dynamics are kind of their own thing. It can be so upsetting to let some people down.
On that note, I will end this rant. Of this privileged temporary reduction in income. While I work on a legitimate, but undervalued issue in the arts that gets no funding but increasingly does win awards when I talk about it, indicating to me that I was right that it’s a problem, and bristle against the fact that you can’t have everything all at once in life.
Psht. Nonsense.
But here we are.
