Career Path Calculator

How this is worked out

Money ahead is everything you have taken home after tax, minus living costs, minus school and certification costs you paid yourself, minus loan payments, minus whatever you still owe on the loan. It assumes you keep whatever is left after your living costs. Year 0 is the start, at age 18.

• Training first, then work. College comes first, then graduate school, then a certification, for whichever of them a path has. There is no income while training. Training that ends partway through a year starts your pay partway through that year.
• Salary growth. By default, year 1 of work is the starting salary; pay then rises by the same amount each year to the career’s typical salary in year 10, and again by the same amount each year to its senior salary in year 20. If the senior salary is missing or below the typical one, pay stays at the typical salary after year 10, and the page says so. After year 20 of work, pay stays at the senior salary; no further raises are assumed. You can choose instead to reach the typical or the senior salary by year 5, 10 or 15 and stay there, and you can change any of the three salaries.
• Tax. Take-home pay is salary minus the effective tax rate you pick.
• Living costs are one figure, the same on both paths in every year, college years included, so neither path is favoured. A school’s room and board is shown for information only and is not used in the calculation.
• Living at home. If you choose it for a path, the years it covers (while studying or training, and up to 5 years of work) cost the “living at home” figure instead of the general living costs, and that path borrows less by default.
• School costs. Each college year costs tuition minus grants and scholarships. A school’s average aid is shown as a hint only, and is not subtracted unless you enter it. A certification’s cost is paid in its first year of training.
• Loans. The suggested amount is the smaller of the federal loan limit for your years of study ($5,500 for one year, $12,000 for two, $19,500 for three, $27,000 for four, $31,000 for five or more) and everything there is to pay while studying: tuition minus grants plus your living costs for each college year, plus any certification cost. A certification with no college is held to $5,500. Source: Federal Student Aid. Borrowing pays those costs in the order they come; anything not borrowed is paid out of pocket that year. Simple interest at the loan rate builds up on the amount borrowed while you study and is added to what you owe when repayment starts. Standard repayment starts the year after training ends, worked out exactly as the Student Debt Calculator does. From July 2026 the standard plan’s length depends on how much you owe when repayment starts, on both loans together: 10 years under $25,000, 15 up to $49,999, 20 up to $99,999, 25 above that. The page picks that length for you until you choose one yourself. Only the required monthly payment is assumed; an extra amount paid each month, if you add one, all goes to what you owe and ends the loan sooner. Income-based repayment is not modelled.
• Every year, 0 to 40. For each path, the yearly table shows the salary that year ($0 while training), the debt still owed at the year’s end, and the loan payments made that year, interest included. The salary is green in every year a path earns something, and plain while it trains. The debt and the loan payments are red in every year a path still owes money and green from the year the debt is paid off, which is marked “✓ Debt paid off”; a path with no loan owes nothing, so they are green in every year. Money ahead, year by year, is in the chart and the milestone table.
• Graduate school has its own loan. The suggested amount is the smaller of what graduate school costs (tuition minus grants plus your living costs in those years) and the federal limit for loans first paid from July 2026, when Grad PLUS ended for new borrowers: $20,500 a year and $100,000 in total for a master’s or other graduate degree, $50,000 a year and $200,000 for a professional degree (law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary, optometry). There is also a $257,500 lifetime limit across all federal loans, and the definition of a professional degree is being decided in court, so check with your school. You can type a different amount, for example a private loan. Its default rate is 8.07%, and it accrues interest while you study and is repaid alongside your college loan from the year after all your training ends. Source: Georgetown University.
• Pays for itself is the first year a path’s money ahead is back to $0 or more after being below zero. A path that never goes below zero is ahead from year 1.
• 40 years. Everything is worked out for 40 years from age 18. The summary sentence and the first view of the table and chart cover the first 20; “Show years 21 to 40” adds the rest. Debt-free, pays for itself and the catch-up year look across all 40 years, so a loan paid off after year 20 is still found.
• Required, recommended or not needed comes from each career page’s education section and the certifications we list for that career, the same information the Career Explorer’s degree filter uses. A trade or vocational school route on its own does not count as college.
• Today’s dollars. There is no inflation, and no raises beyond the salary steps above.
• A certification with no cost typed in is counted as $0, and the page says its cost isn’t included, so you still see a result. Type the cost in for a fuller picture.
• Where figures come from. Salaries come from our career pages and school costs from our university pages, both AI-generated estimates. A certification cost is filled in only when the site states one single figure. Anything we do not have is left empty for you to fill in.

These are estimates to help you compare, not financial advice. Real salaries, costs, aid and loan terms vary.