How do you cope with the expenses of being a scientist?

Question: How do you cope with the expenses of being a scientist?

Asked by anon-201742 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin, George, Emily, Andy on 6 Mar 2019.
- Sarah O'Sullivan answered on 6 Mar 2019:
  
  So I’m lucky in that my PhD course fees are covered by the grant that also pays me my wage. There’s also a budget for me to buy the chemicals and equipment I need for my experiments as well as money for me to travel to conferences. I also don’t have to pay back my student loans from undergraduate just yet. I have to manage my own budget for my living expenses like most people and I sometimes pay for travel to conferences and then claim that back from my university but that’s not expected of me, I just do it if it ends up being a bit easier
- George Fulton answered on 6 Mar 2019:
  
  In our lab in Culham, we get given money from the government to spend on our research. We also get money from other sources, the main one is the Henry Royce Institute. We are on a budget though and this means you have to make sure that what you buy is what you need. Sometimes you can put in proposals for work at certain facilities and they will let you use their machines for free! An example of such a facility is the Idaho National lab in the USA, which conducts lots of nuclear material research.
  
  My salary is separate to the money I receive to spend on my work, so I don’t have money worries from my work.
- Emily Lewis answered on 6 Mar 2019:
  
  I’m quite lucky and work for a government lab so I get paid a good salary, they also help me when I need to travel for work. They recently paid for a trip to Spain so I could attend a conference which was great!
- Sophia Pells answered on 6 Mar 2019:
  
  I’m the same as the other answers. I have money allocated to me from a physics research council that covers my expenses to perform experiments and go to conferences. It’s my supervisor (an academic at the university) who has to write proposals to convince the research council to give our department money for my research but that was all sorted out before I started my PhD so I don’t need to worry about it.
- Andy Buckley answered on 7 Mar 2019:
  
  Like all the others, this is part of the cost of employing me: my work travel, conference fees, etc. are paid. And when I’ve lived in Geneva in the past, the funding bodies had to provide more money to cover the higher living cost. The cost of building and running big experiments like at CERN is a UK strategic choice: we pay into various programmes (pooling money with other countries) and then UK scientists and institutions get to reap the benefits.
- Meirin Oan Evans answered on 8 Mar 2019:
  
  The UK government has invested in science research, and hopefully will continue to invest, to help reduce the expenses on the scientists themselves. As well as my salary, I have two extra grants. My “Fieldwork” grant covers travel between my university in Brighton, and my lab in Switzerland. My “Research Training Support Grant” covers travel to conferences, any training courses I should take, any equipment I need and also any food whilst I’m at conferences or training!

Question: How do you cope with the expenses of being a scientist?

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