I completed mine last August, and I haven't used it to strongarm my employer into giving me a raise (yet), nor have I started looking for other jobs (yet) becau

I completed mine last August, and I haven't used it to strongarm my employer into giving me a raise (yet), nor have I started looking for other jobs (yet) because I enjoy my current position; so it's provided me zero financial benefit thus far. That being said, I definitely think it was worth it. I enjoyed the time back in academia after a few years off after my Bachelor's extremely enjoyable, and I feel like I learned a lot and grew significantly as a learner during that period. I am reading CS research and fundamentals texts in my free time, and I feel as if I continue to benefit from those couple years every day. I also forged relationships that haven't yet "paid off" in any discrete sense but still bring me joy to reflect on. Certainly, I could have done all of these personally beneficial things without the degree, but I probably wouldn't have, and I highly doubt it would have been as fun. Granted, as an American, I now have a few extra tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt as a result, but that hasn't yet begun to destroy my life, so I'm mostly just hoping that either I'll be able to pay it off eventually without much hassle or the federal government will get its act together and wipe it away (fingers crossed).