Open desk
Personal brand
A salary is a cash-flow. Over 20–30 working years that cash-flow is an asset. Degrees, languages, and proof raise the wage versus the job you would have had without them. The gap between what you earn and what you could earn is brand left on the table.
How it thinks
Human capital is a growing annuity: today’s take-home, raised each year, discounted back, and cut for gaps (unemployment, freelance idle time). Employee paths assume you work 95% of the years; freelance defaults lower.
Credentials do not add. An 18% degree plus an 8% language is not 26% — they overlap. We stack them, then compare that wage path to a baseline (the wage without the paper). The difference in present value is the credential premium. If you typed what the degree cost, we show how many times that spend comes back if the lift holds.
Potential is the wage you believe the market would pay if the brand were fully priced. Side income is the public brand: shorter, riskier, separate from the day job. Bear stalls raises and work; bull assumes a step-up.
Your path
The estimate
| Credential | Kind | Lift | Cost | Share of premium |
|---|
A worksheet, not a hiring price and not a DCF of a person you can sell. Tax, health, and luck move the number. Not advice to study or to quit.