Government fees vary by route and are published in the USCIS fee schedule. The costs that most often disrupt a plan are the professional ones: credential assessment, licensing and examination fees.
The regulator's invoices arrive before the government's
Hypothetical example: Rather than quoting figures that change, treat cost as a sequencing question. A port presentation and an employer-filed petition carry different government charges, and the current amounts belong to the USCIS fee schedule rather than to any summary. Around those sit the expenses a household controls less well: an equivalency assessment of a foreign degree, a state licensing application, an examination sitting with limited dates, and any professional advice obtained along the way.
Those tend to fall due earlier than the immigration fees and are usually non-refundable if the plan changes. A Selwyn applicant should therefore map spending onto the same timeline as the steps, marking the point at which each payment becomes committed. That makes it visible when a decision to proceed has effectively already been made, and it prevents the household from discovering the total only after the first irreversible payment.