Going back to school opportunity cost template
This is a long shot, but I am an excel amateur currently trying to build an opportunity cost spreadsheet to find out whether or not it would make sense to go back to school for an engineering degree to hopefully put myself in a career path with higher earnings and growth potential vs my current blue collar path. I wanted to check in here first to see if anyone has done something similar as all things I would like to include are making it a decently complicated spreadsheet (for me). It’s main purpose would be to determine at what wage would I have to make now at my current job to where going back to school would be a moot point, and if that wage is possible to achieve in my current career. There are other intangible benefits that would come with going to back to school/having a career with greater flexibility, but I’m not super concerned about attempting to add that at the moment.
I know enough about myself to know I’d have to commit to school full time to make this work, so I’d like to factor in the following:
- Loss in wages/401k match/healthcare benefits during years going back to school
- 401k compounding growth comparison that includes company match between current job and average wages of the higher paying career. This would be two different models where the higher paying job match would compound for a slightly shorter length of time to account for the time it took to go back to school
- Cost of schooling lump sum invested at compounding growth until retirement vs using it for school
- An employee stock purchase plan max contribution comparison over length of career
There‘s probably some factors I’m forgetting at the moment, but I think the idea is somewhat clear. Again, this is a long shot, but any help is appreciated as otherwise I will be at this for a bit lol.