Smart planning. I had zero time off. Fortunately moving post PhD I could crash with @caosnes in Leeds whilst doing a shittily-paid post-PhD but NotPostDoc job. Had zero savings though, still struggling to save tbh now that I'm renting solo and getting trains everywhere.
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I could only save because I get additional pay from teaching and because I feel like I have *had* to. I have not enjoyed saving whilst doing my PhD but I have nothing to fall back on and in my first year when I had no savings this caused a lot of sleepless nights.
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And to be clear, my savings would not stretch toward a deposit - I have different goals. I.e. my first lot of what I managed to save went all toward my citizenship, majority of other savings have been spent on travel. It costs me ~£700-1000 every time I see family
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Another big expenditure was when I was a bridesmaid for a good friend. It feels awful to say this but as the whole thing cost me ~£800, I wish I had declined that invitation. It really set me back and it was something I couldn't have afforded as my brother got married same summer
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Yeah, I couldn't afford to pay the 800 quid to see my family during my PhD either. Thankfully they covered it.
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I have had my mum and dad pay for things before but now they’re both retired and in ill health, they need all the money they have for themselves
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Which is actually bad on two fronts:I get very little empathy from my family for only visiting once a year and the cause of our annual argument among siblings is how I claim to be too busy and too poor to contribute. It creates a lot of tension and my family has no idea what it’s
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like to be doing a phd. I do envy people who get support from their family, in my family the roles are reversed and I am under constant guilt for not being supportive enough
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I haven't had any support, literally any, from my family at all other than what I described. Growing up was really hard because lack of emotional support had led to some very deep, and sadly very serious, issues in my later life. So yeah, I feel you.
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I was spending 70% of my PhD money on rent. And every month was right on 0 in my account. I knew if I bought anything extra I was playing with fire. I was on about 14k pre-tax in London. How could I save anything? I couldn't afford the deposit to rent a place, my parents did it.
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There were times I couldn't afford to take the bus to uni and just got on anyway (if people recall the old bendy 29, you can imagine exactly how I did that). The reason was my uni was too slow in allowing me to buy discounted student fairs so I had to wait for them to process it.
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Anyway, my point is it wouldn't matter what the place cost. If it was even 1k-2k, I was not able to buy it. I couldn't afford a laptop back then and was using one my parents bought me as an undergrad.
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This is why my first postdoc was so liberating... I finally got a salary that was 50% (less) spent on rent and not 70%.

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