My daughter accepted a permanent position as a professor last week, at St. Andrews in Scotland.
She's been living in the UK since 2018, off various grants and scholarships. Her post-doc fellowship at Cambridge, which still has 2 years to run, is an insane sweetheart deal, coming with a good salary, housing, food, parking, 2 private medical insurance plans in addition to the NHS. The fellowship is one of the world-class situations, she was terribly lucky to score it.
However, she's walking away from the last two years of it because she's already accomplished her research aims, in addition to publishing several books. And, as she explains it, the fellowship exists to provide the freshly-minted Ph.D. some troublefree years to carry on their research, while trying to find one of the very rare permanent positions.
The position in Scotland pays in salary about 1/2 what her insane fellowship provides, and does *not* come with food, housing, parking, or fancy private insurance. The cost of living in St. Andrews is vastly lower than Cambridge though, and she made a solid budget to make sure she'd be fine, which she will be, on her salary.
Now, my daughter has a trust fund left to her by her grandmother. She has received no distributions from the trust since it came to her in 2015. I have been managing the fund as the trustee for her, and have substantially increased its value. She has enough in there now that she probably could live off the income off it for the rest of her life. I give her quarterly reports on her trust balances and investment positions, and she now consults with me on the management of the funds as a learning exercise.
And still, to this day, she's never asked for a dime of it. Even when she hit the magic age 4 years ago when she was entitled to simply take possession of the whole pile, she decided to ignore it and allow it to continue to grow, as she spends very little, and her fellowship and her Ph.D. scholarship more than covered her living expenses.
Know also that the kid hasn't spent a single dime of her substantial 4H earnings from her teen years, it's grown to ~$30k now by itself.
Now that she's moving and needs to live like a grownup, her new circumstances require an automobile. In our conversation today, she was explaining the situation, and told me she'd like me to free up some funds for the automotive expenses. I said "sure, it's your money, tell me how much and when you need it, I'll get it to you ASAP".
Now, she could buy a Ferrari, or two, and have plenty left over. Her ask however was "Maybe $10k US, I'm looking at a 2017 Mini Cooper base model this weekend, and between the car and insurance and the upcharge for a flat with parking... The car will be about $6000, Dad, and I've already had a mechanic inspect it. I have the cash saved up already, but that's my reserve fund, and I'd like to refill the reserve fund after buying the car, I don't like living paycheck to paycheck."
I was very proud that she was being so sensible. Mission accomplished.
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Originally Posted by iris lilies
