How do I maintain financial wellness as a TA?
Hi everyone! I am Elyse Gueidon, a Graduate Student Orientation Coordinator and InterGrad Dialogue Coordinator at the GSRC, Student Educator at the Hammer Museum, and Graduate Educational Development Fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching who is passionate about improving graduate students’ holistic health and wellness, including financial.
As TAs, we often find ourselves considering many different opportunities that can offer us personal and professional development while also trying to rest and recharge and ensure our financial wellness, especially during the summer. For those of us who are new to the term, financial wellness means “feeling satisfied with current and future financial situations” (RISE wellness wheel handout). It involves 1). “obtaining, managing and maintaining finances”; 2). “Paying bills, allocating finances appropriately;” and 3). Cultivating a “healthy relationship with money” (ibid.). It combines with seven other dimensions of wellness to contribute to our overall physical, mental and social well being.
Juggling all our personal and professional priorities is enough to make a lot of us TAs feel overwhelmed, but there are some actions we can take to position ourselves for financial wellness, and resources we can utilize to prevent and address financial hardship. And there is no better time than right now to get ourselves financially ready for the summer and beyond. Given this, CAT and the Financial Wellness Program (FWP), via graduate financial wellness consultants, Arnold Dimas and Selendi Gonzalez-Hernandez, decided to team up to bring you some tips to help you maintain financial wellness in just a few steps.
Determine what your income will be and when you will receive it. As is best practice not only for TA positions, but for all the jobs you will have throughout your career, review your offer letter carefully and make sure that the title code listed is consistent with your current level (Teaching Assistant, Teaching Associate, Teaching Fellow). Also, check that the salary listed matches your title code. Remember that the amount listed is pre-tax, so do the math to verify how much will be going into your pocket each month. Additionally, check the percentage time for which you are hired. While many academic year TAs are hired at 50% time, it is not uncommon for summer TAs to be hired at time percentages ranging from 25% to 66%. As a reminder, you can work at up to 100% time during the summer, but make sure not to go over 100% time by checking the appointment percentage of all positions you might have. During the academic year, international students can typically work at up to 50% time and domestic students can typically work at up to 75% as long as they receive an exemption to do so. However, there may be additional restrictions on your appointment percentage time if you are the recipient of a major fellowship. If you have questions about your eligibility to work, check out the Graduate Student Financial Support manual and/or ask your department’s Student Affairs Officer. Finally, verify your pay schedule. While academic year TAs receive monthly paychecks, your summer TA pay will likely come all at once on August 1st, meaning that if your only source of income during the summer and Fall 2023 quarters is from TAships, you will not receive your next paycheck until November 1st and will need to plan accordingly.
If information about your title code, percentage time, salary amount, or pay schedule is missing from your offer letter or incorrect, contact your hiring department as soon as possible to have it added/corrected.
Work backwards to create a budget. Once you understand your income amount and schedule, you can take advantage of one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal to prevent financial hardship: creating a budget. This begins with defining your goals. Arnold and Selendi recommended the 50-30-20 rule as a starting place for budgeting. The idea is to divide your income into three categories, spending 50% on needs, 30% on wants, and 20% on savings. The strength of this system is that you can adapt it to fit your situation and make your budget work for you. This starts with reflecting on expenses (e.g. canceling unnecessary subscriptions, etc.) and coming up with a tracking system for due dates (e.g. credit cards, bills), including setting up automatic payments and alerts (e.g. overdraft fees). Arnold and Selendi recommended some free tools that you can use on your own like Mint, EveryDollar or, if you like to manually track your expenses, good old-fashioned Excel. You Need a Budget (YNAB) is also an option, but it is important to note that there is a small monthly fee associated with it. Additionally, Arnold and Selendi are available through June for 1:1 appointments during which they can assist you in developing your budget! If you need support over the summer and beyond, you can reach out to the new team of graduate financial wellness consultants starting in July. And make sure to check out FWP’s presentation on Money in Graduate School for more tips on budgeting!
Check in and make adjustments. Your budget is not set in stone. If your budget is not working for you, make a change! Arnold and Selendi underscored that financial wellness is intimately linked to the other dimensions of wellness that contribute to our overall health and satisfaction in life, so it can have a great negative or positive effect on us. Given this, it is important to periodically evaluate your wellness, including your financial wellness. As part of this process, another good habit to develop for jobs throughout your career is to review your paychecks and make sure that they are in the correct amount and arriving on schedule. If not, make sure to contact your HR department as soon as possible to resolve it and keep a record of the exchange as well as original and corrected paystubs. These check-ins are also a great time to practice self-care on a budget! Arnold and Selendi shared a list of 20 free/inexpensive activities you can do in LA to get you started. You can also check out the @ucla_gsrc #GradHacks series on Fighting Inflation on Instagram for more ideas.
When experiencing hardship, seek help as soon as possible. Sometimes when a financial crisis hits, it can be difficult to know where to go for help. Luckily, Arnold, Selendi, and the rest of the FWP team are trained to support you as well as to refer you to other services when needed. Depending on your situation, this may include the Economic Crisis Response Team (ECRT) or Financial Education, Loan & Support Services (FELSS). ECRT can, for example, issue basic needs grants to help you pay for food and other essentials and FLESS offers short term housing loans to assist students with rent. FWP has even compiled a list of such resources for your reference! So, if you are experiencing financial difficulties, don’t hesitate to reach out to FWP.
Ultimately, we want you to know that you deserve financial wellness all year round and we are here to support you along your financial wellness journey as a TA!
Financial Wellness Program
555 Westwood Plaza, Strathmore 106, Los Angeles, CA 90095
financialwellness@saonet.ucla.edu
Make an appointment with a graduate financial wellness consultant!
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