Switching careers
You're a well-paid consultant considering a retrain into nursing. The "stay" branch keeps the salary but carries a wellbeing score dragged down by stress and thin autonomy. The "retrain" branch dips your net worth for a few years — tuition, lower starting pay — then recovers, while its wellbeing climbs. Mentat shows the crossover: the richer path on money, the richer path on life, and where your own weighting tips the balance.
Relocating to a new city
A move from a low-cost city to a high-paying coastal job looks obvious on salary alone. Branch it: higher income on one path, but higher rent, higher taxes, and — if it matters to you — a wellbeing hit from distance and a longer commute. The "stay" branch keeps less income but more time and proximity. The decision tree puts the trade in plain view instead of leaving it to a relocation-bonus spreadsheet.
Buying versus renting
Buy or keep renting? Model both as branches off today. The buy branch carries the down payment as a one-time cost, the mortgage as a cashflow that self-terminates when the balance hits zero, and a wellbeing score for stability. The rent branch keeps capital liquid and mobile. Run them out twenty years on the same engine and compare the net worth curves — and how each one feels to live.
Going back to school
A graduate degree is a classic chance-weighted fork: tuition and lost income now, against a probability-weighted bump later that may or may not land. Add the "it pays off" and "it doesn't" chance outcomes with honest odds, and Mentat weighs the whole subtree — so the decision rests on the expected picture across both axes, not the brochure's best case.
Starting a family
Some of the most consequential forks barely show up in financial tools at all. Mentat lets you carry a wellbeing dimension through them honestly: the costs and career effects on one axis, the meaning and relationships you'd weight heavily on the other. It never tells you what to choose — it just refuses to pretend the money side is the whole story.