Run the Numbers
A salary is a headline. This is the rest of the story: what lands in your account, what a month costs here, what the loan takes, and what's left. Both careers, side by side. Nothing here is graded and nobody else sees it. It saves as you go.
How this works
- Start: your two careers and their local entry salaries carry in from your Career Research Sheet. Check them, then guess what you'd have left each month. Lock the guess before the math can shape it.
- Take home: the tool converts each salary to a California take home figure using this year's tax tables. You can check it against SmartAsset, and the tool will tell you if your SmartAsset number is one paycheck instead of one month.
- The loan: what your pathway costs, what you'd borrow, and what that costs every month for ten years.
- The budget: real local costs, one row at a time, with a reference range beside each row so you know if you're in the neighborhood. You type the number. The tool never fills it in.
- What's left: the number that matters, before and after the loan, plus where the biggest gap between your two careers actually is.
- Your analysis: four short written parts. Then Build and Copy, and paste once into the Career Financial Comparison box in Canvas.
Do your work on the Canvas page itself. Chrome keeps a tool's saved work separate when it's opened in its own tab, so a budget built in another tab won't show up here.
Two careers, two salaries, one guess
Your careers and local entry salaries should already be here from your Career Research Sheet. If a salary is blank, type the annual Riverside or California figure you found at the 25th percentile.
Do this: confirm both salaries, slide your gut guess for what you'd have left each month after bills for each career, and press Lock. The take home step opens after that.
Career 1
Career 2
Gross to take home
The salary on BLS is gross. Before you see a dollar, federal income tax, California income tax, Social Security and Medicare, and California disability insurance come out. The tool runs this year's tables for a single filer with no dependents. Your real check will differ a little. The shape won't.
Do this: read both take home numbers. If your job will take anything else out of your check before you see it, like your share of a health premium or a retirement contribution, add a monthly amount. Then, if you want a second opinion, run the same salary through SmartAsset and type its monthly number in the check box.
How the tool figures take home (and where the numbers come from)
Federal income tax uses the 2026 brackets for a single filer with the $16,100 standard deduction (IRS, October 2025). California income tax uses the 2025 single filer brackets with the $5,706 standard deduction, the latest the state has published. Social Security is 6.2 percent and Medicare 1.45 percent, plus 0.9 percent on wages above $200,000. California SDI is 1.3 percent for 2026 (EDD). No credits, no 401k, no itemizing. That's why SmartAsset may land a few dollars away. If SmartAsset is hundreds of dollars lower, you probably copied a paycheck, not a month.
What the pathway costs, and what the loan takes every month
Education is an investment with a price tag and a monthly bill. Pick the pathway you'd actually take for each career, estimate the total cost, and type what you'd really borrow. The tool turns that into a monthly payment on the standard ten year federal plan at this year's undergraduate rate.
Do this: for each career, tap the pathway, type the total cost (your research sheet's estimate is a fine start), then type the amount you'd borrow. If family, grants, or work would cover it, borrow less. Zero is allowed and honest.
How the loan math works
Federal Direct Loans for undergraduates first paid out between July 1, 2026 and June 30, 2027 carry a fixed 6.52 percent rate (Federal Student Aid). On the standard ten year plan that works out to about $11.35 a month for every $1,000 borrowed. Graduate loans run 8.07 percent. The Loan Simulator at studentaid.gov will show you the same payment and the other repayment plans.
A real month, for each career
Every row has a reference range beside it from a named source so you know whether you're in the neighborhood. Ranges are for one adult in Riverside County. You still have to look up your own number. Use real listings, your actual bills, or ask an AI for a local average and verify it.
Do this: fill every row for both careers. Most rows will be the same for both, so press Same for both and move on. The rows that differ between careers (health insurance, the loan, maybe where you'd live) are where the comparison lives. Don't shrink a number to make a career look better. The point is to see what the career pays for.
What's actually left
Two numbers per career. What's left after the month's bills, and what's left once the loan payment comes out too. Then your gut guess from the Start, next to the real figure.
Your read, now that you've seen it
Career 1
Career 2
Your analysis
The numbers are the setup. This is the assignment. Four short parts, each a few sentences, in your own words. Point at specific numbers from above. You're graded on reasoning you can defend, not on which career wins.
Build it, copy it, turn it in
Build checks that every part is done and writes the whole comparison as plain text: both take home figures, the loan math, every budget row side by side, what's left, your gut guess next to the real number, and your four written parts.
Do this: press Build, read it once, press Copy, then paste into the box on the Career Financial Comparison assignment page in Canvas. That one paste is the whole submission.
Moving my work another way (a code instead of a file)
The Download progress file button above is the easy way. If a file is awkward on your device, press Export, copy the code, then paste it into this box on the other device and press Restore.
Build your text and copy it out before you close the tab. Don't trust this tool with the only copy. Reference ranges: MIT Living Wage Calculator, Riverside County, 2026 update; Rentometer Riverside, San Bernardino, Ontario metro report, January 2026; IRS 2026 inflation adjustments; California FTB 2025 tables; EDD 2026 SDI rate; Federal Student Aid 2026 to 27 Direct Loan rates. Figures are reference points, not your numbers.