How do you actually know if a career change is worth it financially?

I’ve been thinking a lot about whether a career change is actually worth it financially.

There’s a lot of advice out there about following your passion or making a change, but I found it hard to really understand the full financial impact — especially long-term.

I actually did an MBA a few years ago, and if I’m being honest… I wish I had thought through the financial side more carefully. I’m still paying it off, and I don’t know that I would’ve made the same decision if I had really broken it down at the time.

So I started trying to model it for myself — comparing different paths, income changes, time, etc.

I ended up building a simple calculator that looks at things like:

- salary change

- hours worked

- stress trade-offs

- long-term income impact

It genuinely changed how I think about big decisions like this.

Curious how other people here approach it — do you go mostly on gut, or try to quantify things?

Happy to share it if anyone’s interested.