Hi,

I have just been offered a PhD in the molecular biology field. This offer came with bad news also. Funding had been cut for the project, meaning that the stipend was reduced from €16,000/year to €8,000/year. That would mean 4 years living off not an awful lot!

Have any of you survived on such little money for 4 years while studying? What measures have you taken to endure that you got through it with some morale left? Should I be seriously considering taking out a loan?

I you have any other advice, i wold be very thankful for it, as this particular project is VERY interesting.

Thanks a million!

I would suss out the teaching available. You can earn quite a bit of lecturing and marking, if the work is available. It obviously detracts from your PhD, but takes the pressure off having to get a loan. I also do lab demonstrator work and have a few small admin part time jobs around uni.

Not sure if its possible in your field, but I also earn from consultancy. If you have a 'other half' then I think you can get tax credits or something too.

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Sneaks has given you some good ideas of how to earn a bit extra on the side, so I won't add to that.  The only thing I can say is that I've converted the amount you shall be getting to sterling and I've lived off less for 4 years as I did my degree. Of course I don't know if where you'll be studying has high living costs (so if it does then my experience will not really apply) but I managed with most of my sanity. :p

So I think it is doable and I think you would survive.  You just need to be very careful with your spending...I'm not a big fan of loans but if you felt you needed better living standards for your final year then maybe you could get a loan then...or simply so you can give up the extra work to focus on writing up.

So my point...I think it is doable but if you can get the extra work then even better.

Good luck!

If you're right handed you could probably get a good price for your left arm. Or kidney, lung, blood plasma. You could try selling one brain hemisphere depending on the type of PhD you are doing (arts/science), but make sure it's the right one.
Hope that helps.

Incidentally if anyone wants to buy 'wax' to polish furniture, just ask!

do you mean the 'right one' as in right/wrong or right/left?

I'm on another forum where a member is currently considering working on sex-chat lines

Did she leave a phone number? :$

no but she posted this...apparently this is from the website she's looking at working for - this is advice they give to their staff

Group 9: Granny / Mature chat > This is a very popular group and you will get quite a few calls come through on group 9! It is true that not every man likes a 21 year old skinny blonde and here is the evidence! The customers coming in on group 9 like the ladies to be as old as possible. The older the better! You can chat sexual on this service but again I would chat clean for as long as possible so you can build your minutes up. If you could imagine your fiction character that you will be using but as an older version, perhaps you could put on an old croaky voice as this would definitely make it a more realistic experience for the customer.

An older version of Miss Marple?! I couldn't pull that off.

Although I don't know the specifics of the work and your circumstances, my prior belief is that you shouldn't touch it. Most molecular biologists I know need to be in the lab 9-5 and often can't afford to take time to do regular teaching or other activities. Often they find themselves working in the labs during the evenings and weekends too which makes getting part-time work difficult. You need a good stipend to support this work. Furthermore, if funding has been cut for the project, I would also be concerned about the budget for consumables (i.e. money to pay for all the experiments you need to do) and whether there is enough money to cover all the activities you need to do to complete a PhD. Science costs money and if a project doesn't sound like it has enough from the outset I would leave well alone!

I have friends in social sciences and arts who do a fair bit of teaching. However, I'm in biomedical science, and none of my friends here have any time for anything like that, as we're in the lab 9-6 most days, and then reading/analysing data/writing papers whenever we're not in the lab. Perhaps one of two will demonstrate in an undergrad pratical, but this will be about 4 hours per term - nothing more. So if you're in any kind of science, I'd tread carefully.