Spiritual Financial Planninga NLE - The Bird System series
Degree vs. Deposit™
These days, a foreign master's runs close to ₹2 crore all-in — tuition, rent, flights, the whole arrangement. Priya's family had budgeted for it before anyone really sat with that number; a well-regarded program at home cost ₹15 lakh, and it barely came up in conversation. Of course she was going abroad — that was simply understood.
But nobody had asked the question that actually mattered: if that ₹1.85 crore gap were invested and drawn down as a steady, inflation-linked top-up to a domestic salary, how much would Priya need to earn — back home, in the same rupees, once the degree was done — just to break even? Not what she'd earn abroad. What the degree is worth once she's home.
Run the numbers, and the assumption stops being obvious. There's an exact number the foreign salary needs to clear. Anything less, and the degree was the more expensive choice — not just upfront, but for good.
Degree, or deposit
Job versus job, in the same rupees. What must a foreign degree earn its graduate, once they're back home, to justify itself against a domestic salary topped up by the invested gap?
The cost gap
₹
₹
Money freed up by choosing the alternative path: ₹0 — invested, then drawn down as a top-up until retirement.
The salaries to test
₹/month
₹/month
Assumptions over the career
30 years
8% per year
6% per year
12% per year
20% of salary
Wealth built by retirement, with no pay premium assumed
A different lens: both paths start on the domestic salary above, grow at the same increment rate, and save the same share of it. The only thing actually different is the ₹0 sitting invested from day one — this isolates exactly what that alone is worth.
Domestic path — wealth built
₹0
Foreign path — wealth built (same starting salary)
₹0
Foreign salary needs to clear
₹0/mo
₹0 exactly
SWP top-up starts at
₹0/mo
Grows with inflation. Reaches ₹0 exactly at retirement.
Domestic total career cash flow
₹0
The running tally
Domestic salary + SWP top-up (cumulative) Foreign-degree salary, back home (cumulative, at your assumed rate)
Running totals, not year-by-year income — how much each path has put in your hand, in total, by each point in your career.