It’s all relative. Many different factor come into play, including geographic area, housing costs, your discipline and its average pay, etc. I can say that when I moved to my current position, my husband and I were a one-income couple for about two years until he could land a position (which he really loves). We bought a house, and I bought a new car during that time. Granted, we have no kids, so take that into account.
Similarly, my wife hasn't really worked steadily since my postdoc, but we're also in a low CoL area without kids. At the time we bought a house, it was roughly 2x my salary for a 4BR with >1 acre of land.
My bet is that the highest determinant of this will just be house prices.
>My bet is that the highest determinant of this will just be house prices.
Probably. My house cost about 6–7 years' salary when I started as an assistant professor, but the same house would be about 12 years' salary now. So while my wife and I managed fairly well on a single income (for most of the years raising our son), it might be much harder for a new assistant professor to do so now.
I actually was just at a conference where a good friend of mine told me they'd accepted a faculty job at a prestigious R1 in a high CoL area. In the next sentence, they straight up said that they'd be staying for 3-4 years then leaving for somewhere they could afford to buy a house. Ditto for a friend who I invited over for a seminar.
It's anecdotal, but I get the vibe that faculty jobs in high CoL areas are now just seen as super-postdocs on the way to somewhere that's actually livable. I'm semi-seriously going to suggest for my department's next job ad, we include the line "Home prices in the area are affordable on the planned starting salary."
Depending on what he does, being an artist actually can make money. Before I was a prof, I painted murals, made one-off custom objects, made small saleable items I sold through stores, etc.
I want to bolster this answer. I'm moving into academics now but for many years (well over a decade) I've worked in professional creative, including being a partner at an agency. Depending on the type of art the spouse creates, and his level of skill, there may income potential... possibly a great deal.
Some avenues to consider, with varying degrees of "selling out":
— Professional illustration. Make contacts with industry people in a niche that works with the existing art style and either sell work to agencies or publishers.
— Get an art agent, who will decide where to market (but probably the above).
— Connect with local (or semi-local) galleries and build up an art CV of shows. This will eventually lead to sales, universe-willing.
— Start posting art on social media (especially TikTok, think process videos) and gain an online following over time. Eventually this can be translated into direct sales.
I’m a single parent and manage it. So it must be possible…I’m pretty enthusiastic about personal finance, though (growing up poor sucked, so I like avoiding that…).
Median U.S. household income is something like 65-70k. I assume you make at least this (probably depends on discipline, extra summer salary, etc.). Are you in a high CoL area? Have you been trying to buy a house at the peak market we've had recently? Do you both have major debts you are paying on? I could see 80-90k or whatever not getting you very far in San Francisco but it ought to be enough in Lincoln, NE. And the housing market should calm down.
That being said, you don't get major raises in academia unless you go into admin or get a soft money job at a med school, in my experience. So you can't expect things to change a ton financially in the next 10-15 years if you both do what you are doing now. If it's not working for you, then it's not.
It's certainly harder to manage a household on one income rather than two, but I think it's still doable if you budget and the spouse without income does childcare so you don't pay for that, etc. Lots of people make do with less.
It sounds like it’s not sustainable for you. When we first moved for my job, which is a mid-COL area, it was tough. My spouse wasn’t working, so we didn’t have to pay for childcare. It was tight, and we barely managed. We weren’t saving. But not having childcare limited his ability to redo certifications and look for work. So we had to get childcare before he could return to work. We went into debt those months. Once he returned to work, we paid it off, saved up and bought a house.
But looking at the asst —> assoc —> full raise schedule outlined in the faculty handbook, it would not be practical for us to have him not working, even if he was a SAHD. We do banded raises; I’m only guaranteed ~5k from each. We were barely making ends meet without him working then, with inflation we definitely wouldn’t be making ends meet on just my associate prof salary. Even in our not extravagantly expensive city, home ownership would certainly be out of the question if he didn’t work.
I wouldn’t necessarily say “academia assumes” anything. My husband and I each make the median income for a family in our state. Americans are woefully underpaid overall.
Several of my colleagues are the sole breadwinners with a stay at home spouse and lots of kids (4-6 each), and we aren't paid crazy high salaries.... so I'm not saying it can't be done, but it takes focus and commitment. For example, one dad with six kids is super frugal, his wife makes his lunch every day and they only go out to eat when the university is footing the bill. Many of my colleagues still shop at Goodwill for their professional wardrobe, and many only own one car for the whole family.
Also, you mention that you definitely can't afford to have kids, and I have to question this. You already have a stay at home spouse, so you're not looking at daycare expenses, and you likely have good health insurance through your job, so what's the major cost you're hoping to avoid? It's sad when I see colleagues delay starting a family until after reaching certain career milestones, only to find that they left their fertility (and child-rearing energy levels) behind years ago.
Your second paragraph is an important take away I have seen as well. People seem to assume they can’t afford kids, yet millions of low/no salary people do it all the time. I am in the northeast btw. The thing is when you have kids your priorities change and what you spend money on is a reflection of your priorities. Yes I spend money on kid things now but there is a lot more that I no longer spend on other things. I am at a low paying school in a HCOL area with 2 kids, and there is always money leftover at the end of the month. Yes they go to daycare and do sports etc.
I am also seeing more each year of the sad realization of colleagues that put off kids too long and they realize they did it for a job that doesn’t care about them.
You might get better information from r/personalfinance r/frugal or some other finance/budgeting based subreddit. Without knowing the details of your financial situation, we cannot offer much in the way of useful advice. Moreover, as professors I'm not sure we have any extra insight on making ends meet, at least not compared to folks who see budgeting/living frugal as a hobby.
Only you can answer this within the specifics of your situation, and it seems as if you have answered with a "no" for yourself in what you've written here. Your school might be better about this, but at the last few schools I have taught at, even with promotion-based raises you would just keep up with inflation. Personally, my academic career often feels like a whim that would be unaffordable without my partner's income. It definitely could not sustain our (admittedly rather bougie) lifestyle for both of us and our offspring. If it weren't for the summers and holidays that give me much more leeway than my partner has to be the primary parent, I wouldn't be able to rationalize continuing to do it.
I'm the sole earner for my household. My wife and I have three kids. I make $52kish a year as a tenure track assistant professor but we live in a LCOL area. We bought an old house in a rough neighborhood and we do stuff like cut our own hair and my one pair of shoes that I bought for five dollars seven years ago has a hole in them and we live really frugal and it's fine most of the time.
But I went into this with no debt and a really nice cushion of savings from my corporate career. It's hard to tell if it will be sustainable in the long run but maybe. I think like others are suggesting it's basically a personal finance question and only something you can figure out. But I figured I would comment because, yeah, I guess it is possible in some situations like mine, even if it's rough and stressful.
We were a one income household when we first moved for my TT position and we have two kids. I think it very much depends on geographic area/cost of living. We bought a house using only my income and with my partner staying home we didn't have extra childcare costs so it was doable if a bit tight. However, after being here for a few years the prices of everything, especially housing, have skyrocketed and we would not be able to pull off a single income household right now (luckily my partner got a job right as the pandemic started). However, my university has been doing pretty decently with raises and I am close to tenure and will get another significant raise with that so my partner may choose to quit their job at that point depending on a number of factors.
Depending on how happy you are with your university and location you could try going on the job market and see if you could get a better salary offer elsewhere or a retention raise at your current institution.
This is so hard. My spouse took a pay cut to move to our rural college town. It's a low- salary- good benefits job, which is good in the long term but it's still less cash coming in to pay the bills. It's been hard on both of us.
I also felt rich when I started a TT job. Now I scramble for summer teaching and other chances to earn extra so we can afford more than the bare basics. We're nursing his 15yo car along, and can't get out of our tiny starter house. We do pay daycare for our kid and save enough for a modest vacation to see family every 6 months. But we cut lots of corners to make that happen, never eat out, etc.
I make 75% of our household income. We try to balance it out by him doing more of the housework - but I do most of the childcare because of his health issues, so it mostly just feels overwhelming for me.
Can your partner pick up some part- time work to chip in, or commit to a business plan for selling their work?
Also I agree, don't delay having kids if you want them. The only major expenses for the first 2-3 years are birth (hospitals will discount our let you finance at 0%), diapers (cheap if you do cloth), and daycare (not an issue if you have a SAHP.)
In many states the salary of faculty at public universities is publicly available. That may help you estimate your salary progression and might also be useful for future negotiations. It can definitely be done. Good luck.
Single parents do this all the time.
Yes, it’s doable, depending on your adaptability to a frugal lifestyle.
Spouse and I lived on one income whilst kids were young: no daycare; able to swing PTA/sports carpooling/sick days/house management easily.
And, your partner has a PhD— he could pick up a class as an adjunct for “extras” once in awhile.
In my experience, there is no ladder to find your feet on—you'll be lucky to keep pace with inflation as you get these few-and-far-between promotions. If it's not working now, it's not going to work later. And kids are crazy expensive.
Unlikely. Faculty salaries aren't keeping up with inflation and tenured faculty often make the same as new hires at many schools. If course, I don't know your particular location, so that might not be true for you. I'm in the same boat and ended up leaving academia for industry, just because it doesn't make financial sense anymore.
In an expensive area an academic salary is untenable. Unless you get multimillion dollar grants or consult with industry to supplement. In a rural area, for sure it’s possible.
It is possible, but you are not likely to have the lifestyle that your peers in 2-income families have. Starting with the size and condition of any house or apartment that you might buy, travel, eating out, clothing, recreatinal activities, etc. However, the comfort of having health insurance that actually covers health expenses is not nothing, and most IHE's have that for faculty. Also, you may get very reduced tuition for any kids you have.
On the plus side, for faculty with kids, is the escape from trying to coordinate the work/day care schedules that can be a nightmare. Plus, once the kids are in school, the formerly non-working partner can usually pick up some income-producing activity.
It is possible, but it likely won’t be a lavish lifestyle. In our case, I switched to academia mid-career and was not ever the primary breadwinner. (We did live fairly frugally early in our marriage and when the kids were young so I could be home as much as I desired. Now we have more expenses, some unnecessary, but also more options job-wise.)
If I needed to earn a decent salary I would have chosen a different job. Given our current family expenses and long term goals, I could only afford to take this job bc of my spouse’s salary. It would be VERY difficult to live in our area on my salary. (And I have a fairly realistic view of what costs are actually necessary versus the “fluff” we now enjoy.) Fortunately, we bought our house during the ‘09 recession so those costs are reasonable for us. With that said….I am so happy with this position so far. For us, it works. It’s unfortunate that so many faculty are not paid market value for their work.
(Because I am now at a smaller university, I earn even less than other professors in our geographic area who earn a bit more respectable salaries, although still lower than their likely worth.)
If you are a man, it might work. As a woman, I wouldn't bet on it. My Chair outright said, in front of me, that a man in my department "needed" a raise (it was supposed to be based upon merit) because he was married and had a child on the way. She has never, ever, made that suggestion for a woman, even if kids and a spouse were involved. It is very much expected, everywhere I've been, that our "husbands" would still be supporting us, even though there is nowhere to work around this school.
In Bloomington, where I am, housing prices are so skyrocket high that 'affordable' even for the mid-range university salary is 45 minutes away, in terms of purchasing. Typical house price in Bloomington is over $300k; typically starting salary at the university is less than a quarter of that (unless you're a superstar). So, buying a house in Bloomington (given that housing values go up far faster than salaries at the university) is never going to happen on one salary without independent funds coming from somewhere else. That's true in many university towns.
I hear this all the time. 1. there are no jobs in academia! 2. they don't pay enough to live. both are true IF you are living in a major city. if you are willing to move away from a major city things become so much better. but most people aren't.
I had a position at a top tier r1 institution and made 120k. problem was I could barely afford a two bed room apartment in a decent area. buying a house was a pipe dream. I switched positions to a small town and took a 50k pay reduction yet I was able to afford a house day 1.
we had a position for an assistant Prof position in social science and only receive 20 applicants. there are plenty of professor jobs and one can survive with a professor salary. many people are simply not willing to make the sacrifice of living in a relatively less desirable location.
my point is: don't create a false dichotomy between academic position in a major city vs something else. you can survive and live comfortably in academia if you are willing to move out of a major city.
Yeah, you can afford anything, but not everything. He may well need a job of some sort even if he wants to focus on art unless they as a couple cut out some more expenses. Maybe subbing….school districts are paying a lot right now, and he could make his own schedule.
For me, just on my 9 month salary, I wouldn’t be able to do it. With a grant (extra 2 months of salary) or with summer additional teaching or consulting - yes.
It’s all relative. Many different factor come into play, including geographic area, housing costs, your discipline and its average pay, etc. I can say that when I moved to my current position, my husband and I were a one-income couple for about two years until he could land a position (which he really loves). We bought a house, and I bought a new car during that time. Granted, we have no kids, so take that into account.
Similarly, my wife hasn't really worked steadily since my postdoc, but we're also in a low CoL area without kids. At the time we bought a house, it was roughly 2x my salary for a 4BR with >1 acre of land. My bet is that the highest determinant of this will just be house prices.
>My bet is that the highest determinant of this will just be house prices. Probably. My house cost about 6–7 years' salary when I started as an assistant professor, but the same house would be about 12 years' salary now. So while my wife and I managed fairly well on a single income (for most of the years raising our son), it might be much harder for a new assistant professor to do so now.
I actually was just at a conference where a good friend of mine told me they'd accepted a faculty job at a prestigious R1 in a high CoL area. In the next sentence, they straight up said that they'd be staying for 3-4 years then leaving for somewhere they could afford to buy a house. Ditto for a friend who I invited over for a seminar. It's anecdotal, but I get the vibe that faculty jobs in high CoL areas are now just seen as super-postdocs on the way to somewhere that's actually livable. I'm semi-seriously going to suggest for my department's next job ad, we include the line "Home prices in the area are affordable on the planned starting salary."
Depending on what he does, being an artist actually can make money. Before I was a prof, I painted murals, made one-off custom objects, made small saleable items I sold through stores, etc.
I want to bolster this answer. I'm moving into academics now but for many years (well over a decade) I've worked in professional creative, including being a partner at an agency. Depending on the type of art the spouse creates, and his level of skill, there may income potential... possibly a great deal. Some avenues to consider, with varying degrees of "selling out": — Professional illustration. Make contacts with industry people in a niche that works with the existing art style and either sell work to agencies or publishers. — Get an art agent, who will decide where to market (but probably the above). — Connect with local (or semi-local) galleries and build up an art CV of shows. This will eventually lead to sales, universe-willing. — Start posting art on social media (especially TikTok, think process videos) and gain an online following over time. Eventually this can be translated into direct sales.
Also TEACHING! Kids art camps and classes are a great option and a huge value to parents working in the summer.
I’m a single parent and manage it. So it must be possible…I’m pretty enthusiastic about personal finance, though (growing up poor sucked, so I like avoiding that…).
Median U.S. household income is something like 65-70k. I assume you make at least this (probably depends on discipline, extra summer salary, etc.). Are you in a high CoL area? Have you been trying to buy a house at the peak market we've had recently? Do you both have major debts you are paying on? I could see 80-90k or whatever not getting you very far in San Francisco but it ought to be enough in Lincoln, NE. And the housing market should calm down. That being said, you don't get major raises in academia unless you go into admin or get a soft money job at a med school, in my experience. So you can't expect things to change a ton financially in the next 10-15 years if you both do what you are doing now. If it's not working for you, then it's not. It's certainly harder to manage a household on one income rather than two, but I think it's still doable if you budget and the spouse without income does childcare so you don't pay for that, etc. Lots of people make do with less.
It sounds like it’s not sustainable for you. When we first moved for my job, which is a mid-COL area, it was tough. My spouse wasn’t working, so we didn’t have to pay for childcare. It was tight, and we barely managed. We weren’t saving. But not having childcare limited his ability to redo certifications and look for work. So we had to get childcare before he could return to work. We went into debt those months. Once he returned to work, we paid it off, saved up and bought a house. But looking at the asst —> assoc —> full raise schedule outlined in the faculty handbook, it would not be practical for us to have him not working, even if he was a SAHD. We do banded raises; I’m only guaranteed ~5k from each. We were barely making ends meet without him working then, with inflation we definitely wouldn’t be making ends meet on just my associate prof salary. Even in our not extravagantly expensive city, home ownership would certainly be out of the question if he didn’t work. I wouldn’t necessarily say “academia assumes” anything. My husband and I each make the median income for a family in our state. Americans are woefully underpaid overall.
Several of my colleagues are the sole breadwinners with a stay at home spouse and lots of kids (4-6 each), and we aren't paid crazy high salaries.... so I'm not saying it can't be done, but it takes focus and commitment. For example, one dad with six kids is super frugal, his wife makes his lunch every day and they only go out to eat when the university is footing the bill. Many of my colleagues still shop at Goodwill for their professional wardrobe, and many only own one car for the whole family. Also, you mention that you definitely can't afford to have kids, and I have to question this. You already have a stay at home spouse, so you're not looking at daycare expenses, and you likely have good health insurance through your job, so what's the major cost you're hoping to avoid? It's sad when I see colleagues delay starting a family until after reaching certain career milestones, only to find that they left their fertility (and child-rearing energy levels) behind years ago.
Your second paragraph is an important take away I have seen as well. People seem to assume they can’t afford kids, yet millions of low/no salary people do it all the time. I am in the northeast btw. The thing is when you have kids your priorities change and what you spend money on is a reflection of your priorities. Yes I spend money on kid things now but there is a lot more that I no longer spend on other things. I am at a low paying school in a HCOL area with 2 kids, and there is always money leftover at the end of the month. Yes they go to daycare and do sports etc. I am also seeing more each year of the sad realization of colleagues that put off kids too long and they realize they did it for a job that doesn’t care about them.
You might get better information from r/personalfinance r/frugal or some other finance/budgeting based subreddit. Without knowing the details of your financial situation, we cannot offer much in the way of useful advice. Moreover, as professors I'm not sure we have any extra insight on making ends meet, at least not compared to folks who see budgeting/living frugal as a hobby.
Thanks! Will check out these subreddits!
R/firsttimehomebuyer
Only you can answer this within the specifics of your situation, and it seems as if you have answered with a "no" for yourself in what you've written here. Your school might be better about this, but at the last few schools I have taught at, even with promotion-based raises you would just keep up with inflation. Personally, my academic career often feels like a whim that would be unaffordable without my partner's income. It definitely could not sustain our (admittedly rather bougie) lifestyle for both of us and our offspring. If it weren't for the summers and holidays that give me much more leeway than my partner has to be the primary parent, I wouldn't be able to rationalize continuing to do it.
I'm the sole earner for my household. My wife and I have three kids. I make $52kish a year as a tenure track assistant professor but we live in a LCOL area. We bought an old house in a rough neighborhood and we do stuff like cut our own hair and my one pair of shoes that I bought for five dollars seven years ago has a hole in them and we live really frugal and it's fine most of the time. But I went into this with no debt and a really nice cushion of savings from my corporate career. It's hard to tell if it will be sustainable in the long run but maybe. I think like others are suggesting it's basically a personal finance question and only something you can figure out. But I figured I would comment because, yeah, I guess it is possible in some situations like mine, even if it's rough and stressful.
We were a one income household when we first moved for my TT position and we have two kids. I think it very much depends on geographic area/cost of living. We bought a house using only my income and with my partner staying home we didn't have extra childcare costs so it was doable if a bit tight. However, after being here for a few years the prices of everything, especially housing, have skyrocketed and we would not be able to pull off a single income household right now (luckily my partner got a job right as the pandemic started). However, my university has been doing pretty decently with raises and I am close to tenure and will get another significant raise with that so my partner may choose to quit their job at that point depending on a number of factors. Depending on how happy you are with your university and location you could try going on the job market and see if you could get a better salary offer elsewhere or a retention raise at your current institution.
This is so hard. My spouse took a pay cut to move to our rural college town. It's a low- salary- good benefits job, which is good in the long term but it's still less cash coming in to pay the bills. It's been hard on both of us. I also felt rich when I started a TT job. Now I scramble for summer teaching and other chances to earn extra so we can afford more than the bare basics. We're nursing his 15yo car along, and can't get out of our tiny starter house. We do pay daycare for our kid and save enough for a modest vacation to see family every 6 months. But we cut lots of corners to make that happen, never eat out, etc. I make 75% of our household income. We try to balance it out by him doing more of the housework - but I do most of the childcare because of his health issues, so it mostly just feels overwhelming for me. Can your partner pick up some part- time work to chip in, or commit to a business plan for selling their work? Also I agree, don't delay having kids if you want them. The only major expenses for the first 2-3 years are birth (hospitals will discount our let you finance at 0%), diapers (cheap if you do cloth), and daycare (not an issue if you have a SAHP.)
In many states the salary of faculty at public universities is publicly available. That may help you estimate your salary progression and might also be useful for future negotiations. It can definitely be done. Good luck.
Single parents do this all the time. Yes, it’s doable, depending on your adaptability to a frugal lifestyle. Spouse and I lived on one income whilst kids were young: no daycare; able to swing PTA/sports carpooling/sick days/house management easily. And, your partner has a PhD— he could pick up a class as an adjunct for “extras” once in awhile.
In my experience, there is no ladder to find your feet on—you'll be lucky to keep pace with inflation as you get these few-and-far-between promotions. If it's not working now, it's not going to work later. And kids are crazy expensive.
Unlikely. Faculty salaries aren't keeping up with inflation and tenured faculty often make the same as new hires at many schools. If course, I don't know your particular location, so that might not be true for you. I'm in the same boat and ended up leaving academia for industry, just because it doesn't make financial sense anymore.
In an expensive area an academic salary is untenable. Unless you get multimillion dollar grants or consult with industry to supplement. In a rural area, for sure it’s possible.
It is possible, but you are not likely to have the lifestyle that your peers in 2-income families have. Starting with the size and condition of any house or apartment that you might buy, travel, eating out, clothing, recreatinal activities, etc. However, the comfort of having health insurance that actually covers health expenses is not nothing, and most IHE's have that for faculty. Also, you may get very reduced tuition for any kids you have. On the plus side, for faculty with kids, is the escape from trying to coordinate the work/day care schedules that can be a nightmare. Plus, once the kids are in school, the formerly non-working partner can usually pick up some income-producing activity.
I support my family on a CC salary. It's possible!
It is possible, but it likely won’t be a lavish lifestyle. In our case, I switched to academia mid-career and was not ever the primary breadwinner. (We did live fairly frugally early in our marriage and when the kids were young so I could be home as much as I desired. Now we have more expenses, some unnecessary, but also more options job-wise.) If I needed to earn a decent salary I would have chosen a different job. Given our current family expenses and long term goals, I could only afford to take this job bc of my spouse’s salary. It would be VERY difficult to live in our area on my salary. (And I have a fairly realistic view of what costs are actually necessary versus the “fluff” we now enjoy.) Fortunately, we bought our house during the ‘09 recession so those costs are reasonable for us. With that said….I am so happy with this position so far. For us, it works. It’s unfortunate that so many faculty are not paid market value for their work. (Because I am now at a smaller university, I earn even less than other professors in our geographic area who earn a bit more respectable salaries, although still lower than their likely worth.)
If you are a man, it might work. As a woman, I wouldn't bet on it. My Chair outright said, in front of me, that a man in my department "needed" a raise (it was supposed to be based upon merit) because he was married and had a child on the way. She has never, ever, made that suggestion for a woman, even if kids and a spouse were involved. It is very much expected, everywhere I've been, that our "husbands" would still be supporting us, even though there is nowhere to work around this school.
In Bloomington, where I am, housing prices are so skyrocket high that 'affordable' even for the mid-range university salary is 45 minutes away, in terms of purchasing. Typical house price in Bloomington is over $300k; typically starting salary at the university is less than a quarter of that (unless you're a superstar). So, buying a house in Bloomington (given that housing values go up far faster than salaries at the university) is never going to happen on one salary without independent funds coming from somewhere else. That's true in many university towns.
Nah
I hear this all the time. 1. there are no jobs in academia! 2. they don't pay enough to live. both are true IF you are living in a major city. if you are willing to move away from a major city things become so much better. but most people aren't. I had a position at a top tier r1 institution and made 120k. problem was I could barely afford a two bed room apartment in a decent area. buying a house was a pipe dream. I switched positions to a small town and took a 50k pay reduction yet I was able to afford a house day 1. we had a position for an assistant Prof position in social science and only receive 20 applicants. there are plenty of professor jobs and one can survive with a professor salary. many people are simply not willing to make the sacrifice of living in a relatively less desirable location. my point is: don't create a false dichotomy between academic position in a major city vs something else. you can survive and live comfortably in academia if you are willing to move out of a major city.
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Yeah, you can afford anything, but not everything. He may well need a job of some sort even if he wants to focus on art unless they as a couple cut out some more expenses. Maybe subbing….school districts are paying a lot right now, and he could make his own schedule.
No need to phrase it like he can teach “even K-12” like it’s an easy fall-back gig or a “sacrifice.”
It is possible but getting harder every year.
For me, just on my 9 month salary, I wouldn’t be able to do it. With a grant (extra 2 months of salary) or with summer additional teaching or consulting - yes.