Housing Worksheet

Every figure below is a gross weekly number, the same units your housing stipend is quoted in, and every figure out is gross too. This worksheet does no tax arithmetic of any kind — none of it is knowable from these inputs, since it depends on your tax home and your own circumstances, which is a question for your tax preparer. See the tax guide.

The formula

Written out, so this page is useful with JavaScript switched off. The boxes below just do this arithmetic for you:

Your numbers

Weekly housing stipend The housing line on your package, per week.

Contract length (weeks) Used to spread the deposit.

Rent (per month)

Utilities (per month) Short-term furnished lets usually include these; ordinary leases usually do not.

Furniture rental (per month)

Deposit (one-off) Spread across the contract weeks above.

Commute (per week)

Reading the answer

A positive margin is not automatically the right choice, and a negative one is not automatically wrong.

• A thin positive margin usually argues for agency housing. A small weekly surplus does not compensate you for carrying the lease, the deposit and the cancellation risk yourself.
• A clearly negative margin means the stipend is being topped up out of your wages. That can still be a deliberate choice — for a place you actually want to live in — but it should be a choice rather than a surprise.
• A comfortable positive margin is the case the stipend exists for, provided the lease length matches the contract.

The reasoning behind each of those is in furnished rental vs. taking the stipend. For how the housing line sits inside the wider package, see the pay guide, and for the tax-home question the tax guide. If this is your first contract, the new grad guide covers why handing the housing risk to the agency is a reasonable thing to do once.