Science != Sad and Broke part 7- Incidental Expenses

Cutting incidental expenses is usually the easiest…if you can actually track your spending in this category. This is because these tend to be either impulse or habit purchases such as the daily coffee, smokes, random snacks, newspaper or magazine, etc.

How much does that daily habit cost you? It’s easy to spend the money thoughtlessly since it’s only a small amount each time, but these small amounts can add up to big money over time.

Coffee: All labs should be equipped with a coffee machine. PI’s that expect insane levels of productivity will generally equip the lab (or at least their office) with a coffee machine to keep the caffeine running and the research energy levels high. Coffee is cheaper when you brew your own cup. If you don’t like the way your own brewed cup tastes, figure out how to make a better cup. If you can determine the exact growth conditions needed to trick that cell into doing what you want, you can figure out how to make coffee the way you like it.

Cigarettes: If you want to save money, kick the habit already. There are tons of health reasons why you should, and the price of this habit is only going up.

Newspapers/magazines: If you read your local newspaper religiously, then consider getting a subscription to it. Be sure to check if there are any student discounts. If you don’t, you should just stop buying something you probably won’t have time to read since you still have to read that one article for journal club, and the other dozen or so articles for your research project.

Random snacks: Stock up on these at Costco or the grocery store. Those little packages of chips or 100-cal packages of mini cookies are much cheaper when you buy them in bulk.

Science != Sad and Broke part 6- Educational Expenses

Find out how much you spend on your own education: Text books, paid note services, tuition, registration, course fees, professional fees, etc.

You know how much you spend on your own education, right? I know that the financial aid office may deduct your tuition from your rewarded aid money before you even see it, but at the very least you should know how much your education is costing you.

Why? Well, do you want to finish in debt or debt-free? If you’re in a doctoral program (in STEM) disciplines, many of these non-negotiable fees are passed onto the PI’s or the department, but this is not necessarily the case if you are in a doctoral program outside the STEM disciplines. Additionally, if you are a graduate student in a masters program you will definitely want to pay attention to the cost of your education.

As a student financing your own education, you should apply for as many scholarships and fellowships as you can because increasing your cash inflow will allow you to build up your emergency savings if you are unable to lower your cash outflow. Although many educational expenses are tax-deductible or have associated tax-credits, which is another reason to know what you spend on education.

You can also save a lot on text-books, especially if you will not be using them as references in the future. Many companies now offer decent rental services on textbooks which allow you to use them at a much lower price. If you really don’t want to spend a dime on textbooks, ask the professor to put the book on course reserve. It’s much easier to read the book when at a library when you have a time limit anyway as it really forces you to focus.

Science != Sad and Broke part 4- Cutting Internet/Telephone/Cable costs

Communications services have overlapped a lot in the recent years, so it’s strange to actually subscribe to all three of these services. If you have decent internet speeds, you don’t really need cable services to watch TV. If you have cable internet, you can probably get VOIP service and skip having telephone service. If you spend all day at the lab and only go home to sleep, you probably don’t need cable or internet service at home since you won’t be using it anyway.

If you do need telephone service, consider looking into public assistance programs, because on the graduate student stipend, you will probably qualify. California provides the lifeline service which can help you get telephone service for cheap, and other states offer lifeline as well.

For internet (whether cable or DSL), most companies don’t seem to reward loyalty. They seem much more keen on stealing new customers from rivals than actually retain old customers. This is why the churn rates in these companies are high. That’s why there are huge incentives to jump from company to company rather than stay with your existing provider. However, service providers may offer discounts to keep you from jumping if you contact them about cancelling existing services. This will depend on the customer service rep. that you’ve managed to reach so don’t call to cancel if you don’t already have a rival’s offer in mind. If you like your service provider, but want to pay less for your current service, ask to be placed on a lower tier/cheaper service and check again in 3-6 months to see if there are any upgrade discounts available. Always keep in mind that service providers may have one-time activation fees or “non-contractual” minimum terms. The “non-contractual” minimal terms are there to try to reduce churn rates, at least until these companies can successfully further reduce your options by merging or buying one another out. Take advantage of the discount prices from this pseudo-competitive market while you can.

Looking ahead: a warning. Note that many cable and telecom companies have been trying to merge and/or buy one another out. Don’t expect to keep paying a reasonable price for service as these companies merge into bigger regional monopolies than they already are–especially since several companies have already been blackmailing Netflix into paying them. If you’re concerned about extracting reasonable value for your service, pay attention to proposed mergers of various service providers as well as the net neutrality issues especially since service providers are setting up fake anti-net neutrality consumer groups.