Yup, this hits the nail on the head. I was in the same situation- I lucked out into a very nice fellowship whose stipend the first four years of grad school sta

Yup, this hits the nail on the head. I was in the same situation- I lucked out into a very nice fellowship whose stipend the first four years of grad school started out one or two kilobucks higher than the standard level, and (amazingly, for a grad school stipend) went up a little bit each year. By the end, I was almost at $30k, and felt like a millionaire compared to friends who were on the school's standard stipend scale. Of course, during the fifth year, for various reasons, the fellowship's funding agency adjusted their stipend scale, at which point I discovered that there is a very real difference between making $25k and $30k. Even better, my funding ran out entirely a few months ago, so the last four or five months of my PhD have involved living off of my savings from the previous five years and the odd bit of consulting income. Let this be a lesson to other grad students out there: save like heck, 'cause you never know when there's going to be a gap in your funding, or a change in its level.