What's the benefit of a masters and 401k?

You're just at the beginning of your career, so in terms of money trade-offs I think *the* major factor you need to consider is job growth--both in terms of salary and also in terms of skillset. You have a $40k job with nice benefits but if you don't love the work and it's not a situation where you're being groomed to take on bigger & better things, then I think it's sensible to start thinking about moving on. Being the person in your office with the most advanced skills that everyone else comes to with questions is great if you're at the height of your career but maybe less great when you're just starting out and making $40k, as that implies there's not much room to grow. On the other hand, I'm not sure the position you've been offered is the one you should jump into. The money piece isn't what would make me, personally, hesitant--it's the "I'd be hired in a role that's primarily web development. They claim that they're a small company and I'd be able to work in different areas, but I can't tell if they're just blowing smoke." Do you want to do web development? If the answer is "no" then I'd probably pass; companies will definitely play up the flexibility and opportunity to move into different roles when they're trying to hire you but the fact is they need someone to do web development *right now*. In all likelihood you'd be looking at doing that for a big chunk of time (like at least a year or two), no matter how hard you try to move into different roles, because someone needs to do it and that is what you were hired for. Not promising if you really want to be doing cutting-edge programming in machine learning. Honestly, the choices you make that set you up to dramatically ramp up your pay over the next 10 or 15 years are going to make a much bigger difference in your ultimate retirement savings than comparing the $3,000 per year trade-off in 401k matching and potential tuition matching. Similarly, if a masters degree really will make a difference in the type of job you can get (I don't think this is true but it depends so much on exactly what type of work you want to do, and for whom) then don't let a couple grand in tuition reimbursement convince you to go to a lower-rated school; that's penny-wise and pound-foolish. I think you definitely need to be taking the long view here.

It is exceedingly uncommon - almost to the point of impossible - for you to end up in a worse financial state by taking a job that offers you more money. Please note that tax brackets in the United States are marginal. In particular, bumping up to a higher tax bracket only increases the tax on the money made above that tax bracket. For instance, the 25% tax bracket starts at $35,531. All money less than $35,531 is taxed at 10% or 15%, not 25%. Yes, you will be missing out on the 401(k) match. Yes, if you expect to be in the 25% income bracket, you will not have a Roth IRA tax advantage. However, do you really expect tax brackets to be exactly the same in 40 years as they are now? Other than that, however, I'm not sure why anything would be different. In particular, future social security income taxes (again assuming that the law doesn't change in 40 years) are only dependent on how much income you have when you retire which is a function of how much money you invest now - not the rate that the money you invest now is taxed at. A comment I have is that your future income earning potential is heavily biased by your past income. Many businesses will offer you a salary based on your past salaries increased by some amount. So, if you start with a lower salary, you will be penalizing yourself now, but also for the rest of your career. To be clear here, I don't think there is a single valid reason to take the lower paying job. I'm not going to advocate for taking the higher-paying job, because I'm discouraged by the company not providing explicit assurance you will not be doing web development for the entirety of your time there. However, if you want to accept a job offer right now, I'd have to point out that if you take the "worst outcome possible" and assume you will be doing web development at both companies, you might as well make 50-60% more money doing it.

Take the higher base salary. Building that salary history early in your career is really important. It sets the precendent for any employer after this one. Your benefits are actually not that hard to value. Your 401k match is valued at $3200, a bus pass annually is $1200, tuition benefit (if you take advantage of it) usually maxes out at $5000. Gym access, again if you use it, I would value at $600 and the health plan - hard to tell, but the difference between middling health plan and great health plan is say $3000-$5000. Best case scenario, if you max out all your benefits, they probably net you $15,000 for a grand total of position A of $55,000. If position B offers $70k, you are clearly ahead. You can take some more dull work for 18 months to 2 years for that price. Next go around, when you talk to other employers, you can then go for the $80k jobs with great benefits and you are sitting pretty for years. Not so if you are at $40k base. Also keep in mind that it is very very expensive over a 40 year working career to start out $30k in hole at base - this affects you each and every time you get a raise or bonus, which are based on percentage of current salary. Losing out on that $30k in base salary will cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars for the rest of your life. Take the bump and position yourself for the future.

What's the benefit of a masters in CS for someone like me? I read theoretical CS on the side, but I'm wary of the legwork of academia (finding an advisor, committing to a thesis/project, etc.) Finding more technically challenging work is more important than any chance of a pay raise, but I'd like to take the latter into account anyway. I realized I didn't address this in my earlier answer. My take? Not much value in the CS masters. My partner was in almost exactly your position, working as a software dev in a place that wasn't terribly challenging (although it was on the east coast so the salary was closer to $80k than to $40k) but had excellent benefits, vacation days, and tuition reimbursement. He also considered going back to get an advanced degree in CS, and was interested in machine learning. He ended up using his tuition benefit to get a masters at a decent school (as you say, not CMU but not a commuter school either). While I don't think he regrets doing it--if nothing else, it was something to keep his brain engaged while he felt his skills stagnating at his very well-paying but technically-unchallenging job--it didn't end up making any difference when we finally moved back west so he could get a job doing interesting work at a start-up. In fact, he's thrilled with his new position, even though it pays just slightly less than his old one. He was seriously considering a PhD program but got this job instead, and thinks he definitely made the right decision. If you rank programming positions on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being really unchallenging and 10 being really theoretical cutting-edge stuff, the benefits of moving from a "2" job to a "6" job is huge and doesn't require a masters--although it may require relocating, depending on where you live now. My partner doesn't even talk about going back to school anymore; I think he was considering it mostly because he felt bored and didn't see a path to advancing, which sounds like it may be where you are now. That's definitely not a good reason to go to school, even if it is free.

http://ask.metafilter.com/212054/Whats-the-benefit-of-a-masters-and-401k: " How does one calculate the financial benefit of a 401k?" It's a straightforward analysis. Your match provides an annual income of 3200. Tax advantage is harder, but a little known secret is that Traditional and Roth IRA math works out the same under certain simplifications. So we'll compare the Roth vs brokerage, as that's the simplest. In both cases, you pay taxes up front on contributions. The main difference is how earnings are treated; they're reduced by your tax rate. So if you invest at 8 percent in a brokerage, you only need to invest at 6 percent in a Roth for similar outcomes. That's kind of a big deal long term, to lose 2 percentage points of investing. I'm too lazy to do the math, but you can to a Present Value analysis to determine how much that costs you. Futzing around it looks like roughly 5k a year. So I don't think the 401k benefit is as dramatic as you think compared to that extra salary. http://ask.metafilter.com/212054/Whats-the-benefit-of-a-masters-and-401k: "What's the benefit of a masters in CS for someone like me? " I'm of the opinion that your MS is only as valuable as people find your thesis / project. If your project excites the right people, you'll have recruiters lined up. I'm also of the opinion that a good MS program will be crazy hard to do while working full time. Most eventually drop out. This isn't to say you should go sooner than later -- work experience will really help. Having time management skills and familiarity with tools used will be a dramatic leg up when you can spend time learning course concepts instead of fiddling with Eclipse. Also, I can't really tell if I would be happier with Position B -- the company's focus is on embedded Linux, but I'd be hired in a role that's primarily web development. Embedded really isn't all that interesting most of the time. Basically, embedded tech is 10-15 years behind the state of the art elsewhere. And I wouldn't count on being asked to do much on the embedded part unless you stake out a niche. Perhaps your "in" would be embedded web servers and pages. I say take the job and open a brokerage account. It pays better and, in worst case scenario, if the company is on the ropes you can find a new role in one of the many, many universities in the US. You just have to present yourself as someone with a fresh, outside perspective and a dash of entrepreneurial spirit to bust up the bureaucratic inertia.