Postgrad vs Work & Invest Calculator

This calculator helps you decide between doing postgraduate study and simply continuing to work and invest your money, a common crossroads for New Zealanders a few years into their careers. Postgraduate study, a masters, postgraduate diploma or similar, has two costs: the tuition fee, and the income you give up if you study full-time instead of working. Against that, it can lift your salary for the rest of your career. The alternative is to keep earning and put the money you would have spent on study into investments, letting compound growth do the work. There is no universal right answer; it depends on the cost of the qualification, how much it lifts your pay, and what return you could earn investing instead. This tool lays the two options side by side. You enter the tuition, how long the study takes, the income you would give up while studying, the salary uplift you expect afterwards, the number of years to measure over, and an investment return rate. The calculator returns the net financial benefit of the postgrad over the period, its total cost including foregone income, the payback period, and what the tuition would grow to if you invested it instead at your chosen return. This shows whether the qualification clears the bar set by simply investing, and how long it takes to pay off. Use it to pressure-test a study decision, to time study for when it costs the least foregone income, or to negotiate employer funding that removes the tuition cost entirely. It does not discount future earnings for inflation and assumes a steady uplift, so treat it as a planning estimate to inform, not dictate, your choice.

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Foregone income is the salary missed while studying full-time. A positive net benefit favours study. An estimate; not inflation-adjusted.