Example plan. Change anything below to make it yours.
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Plan your path
Jobs this major leads to
Majors that lead to the most of these jobs
Your path
What if…
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The money behind it
Change the assumptions
Food, car, phone, going out. Whatever's left after rent, loans and this goes toward the home.
Schools, government, nonprofit hospitals and many counseling and social work jobs qualify. It only changes plans for jobs that are often done there.
How this works
- Rents are HUD's Fair Market Rents by apartment size, which run a little below typical asking rents. Rent counts as comfortable when your share is under 30% of your pay before taxes.
- Pay comes from the government's yearly survey of what each job pays in each area. Your path starts near the low end for that job (about what new grads earn), reaches the middle after about six years and the upper middle after twelve. Real careers move faster or slower.
- A home counts as affordable when its monthly cost (mortgage, property tax, insurance and mortgage insurance) is under 28% of your pay before taxes, all debt payments together are under 36%, and you've saved the down payment plus 3% for closing costs.
- Until you buy, you pay your share of rent and your everyday spending, and whatever is left after taxes and student loans is saved toward the home. Sharing a place with friends leaves more to save.
- Public Service Loan Forgiveness uses the federal Repayment Assistance Plan for loans made from July 1, 2026: payments of 1% to 10% of your pay, and what's left forgiven after 10 years of payments while working for a government or nonprofit employer. A medical residency at a nonprofit hospital counts.
- From July 2026, federal loans for grad school stop at $20,500 a year and $100,000 in all ($50,000 a year and $200,000 for medicine, law, dentistry and other professional programs). Where a program's typical borrowing is higher, the rest is counted as a private loan at about 8% over 10 years, which can't be forgiven.
- Everything is in today's dollars. We assume home prices and pay rise together, so we don't guess at the future.
- Your choices stay on this device. Nothing you pick is sent anywhere.