“Lifestyle” Calculators Are the Coming Thing

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 mandates that all colleges accepting federal student loans post a net-price tuition calculator on their website. Yet recent years have seen the introduction of a different trend: state governments and nonprofits creating “lifestyle” calculators to help college-goers choose a career path and major. The basic premise of these tools is that users answer questions about their spending habits and see lists of jobs and salaries that might facilitate them. Yet how many of these websites are operating as intended? I recently spent an afternoon with five of them to find out.

If I want to buy a house and visit the occasional doctor, I had better be an IT manager or lawyer. Arkansas

Arkansas Next, an annual magazine produced by the Arkansas Business Publishing Group, maintains an online quiz titled “How Much Money Do You Need for Your Dream Life?” There, respondents make basic lifestyle choices and receive a point-total score linked to various occupational possibilities.

It is no small thing to show 18-year-olds that their choices now will determine the material quality of the rest of their lives. For instance, I told the quiz that I wanted to live with my parents, pay for a cell phone but no other utilities, eat my mother’s cooking, and make only “essential” healthcare and transportation purchases. The site’s career recommendations? Animal trainer, customer-service rep, nursing assistant, or editor at the Martin Center (just kidding).

Conversely, if I want to buy a house, stream Netflix, dine in restaurants, and visit the occasional doctor, I had better be an IT manager or lawyer.

One might wish that Arkansas’s quiz were a little less quirky. What is the difference between “luxury/designer clothes and shoes” and “cool shoes,” two actual options in the “Clothing” category? Nevertheless, it is no small thing to show 18-year-olds that their choices now will determine the material quality of the rest of their lives. Every young Arkansan should visit the site.

GRADE: B 

Tennessee

The Tennessee Higher Education Commission offers prospective college-goers a “Lifestyle Calculator” page, whereby users learn “the true cost of the lifestyle [they] want and how much [they’ll] need to earn to afford it.” Having first selected their county of residence, users choose from among pre-programmed food, transportation, healthcare, and leisure choices, going so far as to tell the site whether they wish, as future adults, to pair their “work clothes” with “accessories.”

A splendid tool on paper, Tennessee’s calculator nevertheless fails to distinguish between parts of the state with wildly different costs of living. For example, a 2026 high-school graduate selecting well-heeled Williamson County (suburban Nashville) as his place of residence is presented with monthly housing estimates of $1,200 (studio apartment), $1,310 (one-bedroom apartment), $1,865 (two-bedroom apartment), and $2,250 (house). But so is a graduate who tells the calculator that she wishes to live in Shelby County (Memphis), where actual housing costs are comparatively far lower.

Never mind whether these numbers are accurate for any Tennessee county; they are certainly not correct for all of them. Yet the credulous high-schooler steps away from the calculator convinced that he can live in one of the wealthiest counties in the nation—in a house, no less!—for $58,000 a year, as long as he goes easy on the restaurants and vacations. That is lamentably untrue. A well-meaning tool compromised by woeful inaccuracy, Tennessee’s calculator receives our lowest mark.

GRADE: D

Downtown Atlanta will require a significantly higher salary, and I will probably need roommates to boot. Georgia

The Georgia Student Finance Commission maintains a “Cost of Future Lifestyle” page that directs users to the financial-literacy nonprofit Jump$tart. Interested parties can use Jump$tart’s “Reality Check” tool to determine whether they will be able to “afford the adult life [they] imagine.”

Among “Reality Check’s” virtues is its clear-eyed awareness of disparate adult arrangements. Although its data are based on national averages, “Reality Check” helpfully distinguishes between “big city” and “town” expenses. If I’m willing to set up in, say, rural Calhoun County (pop. 5,600), I can live alone on $25-$30K a year. Downtown Atlanta will require a significantly higher salary, and I will probably need roommates to boot.

Among “Reality Check’s” other virtues is its clear-eyed awareness of disparate adult arrangements. Will the user pay for utilities himself or share them with a partner? Will she drive a new sedan or a used mid-size pickup? And what about those student-loan payments, which many visitors to the site will presumably have?

Sadly, the calculator’s merits don’t extend to its final page, which asks users to enter arbitrary dollar amounts for such fields as “Savings,” “Emergency Fund,” “Investments,” and “Travel.” With all due respect to the nation’s 18-year-olds, most lack a clue about any of this stuff. Other states’ calculators ask users to select from recommended drop-down options (e.g., save five percent of one’s income or only two). Georgia leaves the callow high-school graduate to figure it out for himself. That risks throwing off the final numbers to the point of absurdity.

GRADE: C+

Indiana

“IN Reality” is a lifestyle calculator jointly maintained by the Indiana Department of Workforce Development and the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. Its components include an (unrelated) “Reality Check” site, a salary-to-occupation comparison tool, and an “Occupation Direct” shortcut, to be described momentarily.

The first of these asks users to begin by selecting from among 35 Indiana cities and towns, sagely noting that “some places are more expensive to live [in] than others.” The next page, “Housing Options,” offers choices backed by HUD- and Zillow-driven cost estimates, along with reasonable photographic illustrations and a “Help Me Decide” button for those who need further aid.

Having selected a one-bedroom apartment in Indianapolis, as well as reasonable but not luxurious food, utilities, and clothing options, I find that I need to make something like $45,000 a year as an independent adult. A “Family Costs” button beckons if I wish to add children to the equation.

Entering that sum in the salary-to-occupation comparison tool, I receive a list of jobs likely to earn me the salary I need (e.g., civil-engineering technician, $45,050 per annum). This list can be inflated or diminished depending on the education level one chooses or one’s “occupation cluster” (e.g., “education and training”).

Finally, the user wishing to skip these steps can go straight to “Occupation Direct,” a portal that lists the average financial outcomes associated with numerous careers. Selecting “Finance,” then “Actuaries,” I learn that I can expect to make $6,636 a month after taxes if I pursue this path. All that’s missing is a link to the relevant Hoosier State undergraduate programs.

Indiana’s site is, quite frankly, the gold standard for lifestyle calculators. If a potential Hoosier State college student doesn’t give it a try, he is leaving a considerable amount of information (and likely money) on the table.

GRADE: A

North Carolina’s calculator allows one to choose one’s marital status and number of children from the beginning. North Carolina

The Tar Heel State offers its own “Reality Check” calculator. Like Indiana’s, it is unrelated to the tool powered by Jump$tart. Users select from a state map one of North Carolina’s counties or major cities, then choose from among numerous housing options (e.g., “own average home” or “rent upscale home”).

It turns out Mrs. Hillard needs to go into anesthesiology. Having selected Greenville and an affordable apartment, I can make do on $32,000 a year if I drive a low-cost car and eat “like the average person.” The story in Wake County is a different one. Here, too, prospective college-goers and career-starters need to know that.

North Carolina’s calculator differs from many others in that it allows one to choose one’s marital status and number of children from the beginning. If, married with two kids, I want to own an upscale home in Charlotte and drive and dress well, I will need nearly $170,000 a year in household income. That number only increases if the children “like to go out a lot and have lots of stuff,” as the calculator charmingly puts it. A sliding bar allows users to determine their individual share of household expenses. I plan to marry for money in this scenario, so let’s put my wife’s share at $150K. Whatever one chooses, a handy “Find Occupations” button lies in wait. It turns out Mrs. Hillard needs to go into anesthesiology.

As Indiana’s does, North Carolina’s calculator offers so amusing and user-friendly an experience that one can imagine high-school students messing around with it for fun. This strikes me as crucially important. Make the right tool, and the users one has in mind may actually pick it up.

GRADE: A

Though space limitations prevent a full tour, other states have some version of a lifestyle calculator, as well—among them California, Idaho, Ohio, and West Virginia. Not all of these are explicitly linked to students’ higher-ed choices, though some are.

For readers of a certain age, all of this will be more than a little reminiscent of the famous Cosby Show episode in which Heathcliff teaches Theo to budget. Alas, prices have risen since 1984. If the nation’s teenagers can be made to attend to that fact—and to the effect their own college choices will have on their futures—then real good will have been done. A gender-studies major with an antiracism certificate? Who can afford it?

Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.