My Salary History (%)

Inspired by FMF

Year 1: I got my first job out of school. I made several mistakes. I first suggested a salary range and then I didn't negotiate above what was offered. Later I found out that I could have easily made 6% more starting.

Year 2: 8.5% increase, but since I made a mistake starting out, others in my job may have started here.

Year 3: Job change. 7% increase. Didn't negotiate this amount.

Year 4: Promotion, 13% increase. Year end raise, 8%.

Year 5: Market adjustment, 7%. Promotion, 15%. Year end raise, 5%.

Year 6: Promotion, 6%.

Year 6.5: Job change, 20%.

Year 5 was a big year for me. By this time, I had learned that I was paid much much less that I was worth. I asked my boss for more money and he said he would see what he could do. I would ask for the status of the request every so often. Finally about 6 months after my initial request, I got a 7% raise (during that time period I actually got my year end raise, but I was still below market even with that 8% increase).

This year, I was promoted, but I got a very small pay increase, once again putting my below market range for my position. I believe that is the major reason I was able to negotiate such a large salary increase in this tough economic times. There was also one extenuating circumstance that caused the company to give me a bonus, worth about 5%.

What I've learned from this - do good work, ensure you have a strong reputation, research what the market is paying, and don't be afraid to ask. If you don't ask, no one is going to hand things over to you.

I was promoted several times which contributed greatly to my salary growth. Without those promotions, there is no way I'd be making what I am today.

I Got the Promotion!

Back in February, I blogged about how to get a raise in a bad economy. I am happy to report that not only did I get a raise, I also got a promotion! Ok, so I actually found out about almost 2 months ago, but I've been super buys with work. While I was very happy to receive both, the raise was substantially less than what I was expecting. My raise was only 6%. While this wouldn't be bad in normal circumstances, this now puts me in the very middle of the pay grade for the position I had before my promotion. Dollar-wise, this is less than what I've received for all of my other promotions (I've moved up pretty quickly at my organization due to my hard work).

Well I'm taking it in stride since my company is going through a lot of organizational issues right now. Most likely we will be bought out within the next few months. In light of the different organizational announcements, I'm not sure if my promotion is a good thing, but I am sure that my lower than normal salary at my position will help me retain my job.

Overtime Can Make A Big Difference

Wow, I can't believe how much overtime some city employees earn in San Francisco! I saw this article earlier today in SFGate. Check out the chart near the bottom that shows the amount of overtime the top overtime earners are getting. I would love to be getting as much overtime as these guys! Can you believe, some people make only $39K base salary, but get $89K in overtime pay? If you live on just your base salary, you could be saving so much money! But since this is San Francisco, it would be pretty hard for anyone to live in San Francisco and manage to a base salary of $39K if they have a family. If they're single and willing to share housing, it can be done.

Yesterday I Ran Into My Boss's Boss . . .And I Sort of Asked For a Raise

I work as a consultant and as such, I'm mostly on client sites. I don't see my boss or his boss too often. On Thursday I ran into my boss's boss. He was my boss for about 2 years, and I only recently began reporting to someone else about 3 months ago. He asked me to come into his office to help train a new employee on how to do something. I gladly accepted and then asked if I could talk with him to get a bit of career advice.

I was trying to talk about what type of project I should be on next. We talked for a bit. Then I asked about a change in our performance evaluation process. We talked about that. Then I asked whether there will be mid year adjustments

He said no, unless it's a market adjustment. I told him that I thought I was in the right salary band, but on the lower end. When I was promoted earlier this year, I knew that I was on the lower end of the salary range, but that was okay with me since I was just promoted. But now that I've had a chance to grow in the role and become one of the high performers in this category of employee, I thought I should be in the higher end of the range. He agreed and said he would email HR to see where I fall in that range. He emphasized to me that he would tell HR that they really want to retain me.

From looking on GlassDoor, I think I should be getting $5K-$15K more. I am hoping that HR will get to the same numbers. If all goes well, I hope to see something in August or September. I hope my actual boss doesn't get mad . . . but he's on vacation at an inopportune time. :)

Actually this was kind of a spur of the moment conversation. Once I saw my boss's boss, I realized that this would be a good opportunity to talk about my career. The change in our performance review process gave me a neutral way to talk about it and my old boss helped me along in the conversation by talking about what a great performer that I am.

Is 6 Months Too Long to Wait For a Promotion That Is Not Guaranteed?

I've been thinking a lot about my career.

I am performing at the level to be promoted, but the only problem is that promotions aren't until next March. This might not seem too long to a lot of people, but for me it seems like a long time to wait for a pay increase. Also there's no guarantee of a promotion, but I'm pretty sure I would get one, as long as I continue to show my skills on challenging projects.

I have a goal of making $100K in salary before I hit 30. If I get promoted in March, I should definitely meet that goal. The question is should I leave now and get to the $100K salary by getting a new job? Last year I got 3 salary increases in one year while staying in the same job so only getting one this year is a tough adjustment. The three adjustments were for an annual increase, off-cycle increase since I was making less than market, and a promotion increase. Since I'm now performing at the next level, I think I am once again underpaid. Typically there's 2-4 years before getting promoted to the next level, so I wasn't underpaid when I was promoted, but since I've developed to perform at the next level, I do think that I'm underpaid.

Also I'm not sure how the career aligns with my plans to have a family. I work in consulting which requires the ability to travel . . .a lot. . .if put onto a traveling project. Alternately one can be put on a local project. Traveling a lot does not jive with my idea of how I want to raise a family.

I just don't know what to do.

Women Out Earning Men

I saw this link from MSN showing that less men are bothered by their wives earning more money. I see this phenomenon among many of my friends where the woman out earns the man (or the woman will soon out earn the man once she finishes her education).

Here's some interesting quotes from the article and my thoughts:

"Just 12 percent of men surveyed said they’d mind if their wife earned more than they do, and in general men seemed happy to share the breadwinner role." It seems silly to mind someone bringing home more money. C and I are always happier if the other person brings home more money, but we do joke about the times when we've each had breadwinner status.

"More than 40 percent of women say they do more than their share of housework — and 29 percent of men agree." I think I do more chores than C gives me credit for. Overall either he does more or we're equal. However now that I've become more concerned about living a purpose-filled life, I have started to do more housework.

"One quarter of men surveyed said that their wives aren’t working, but 40 percent of those men wish she did. Of the approximately 75 percent of men whose wives did work, only 5 percent wished she was at home." I want to have the opportunity to stay at home with my kids, when I have them. C thinks it would be more helpful for my personal development and for our family finances if I worked. We disagree on whether it would be better for the kids to have a mom with a successful career or a mom who stays home to take care of them.

"In fact, 35 percent of men and 40 percent of women surveyed said a key benefit of having a spouse make money is that it alleviates the pressure of being the only financial provider." This is part of C's worry. He also is worried that I will be bored at home and call him all the time. I agree that it's possible I'll be bored at home. When I work from home, I do call him a lot since I miss the social interaction I normally have with my co-workers.

I found this to be an interesting, although unsurprising article. I found the statistics most interesting since I like to compare my viewpoints with others.

Salary Openness

I am used to seeing salary secrecy practiced by almost everyone I know, including myself. I only know the salaries of my husband, my immediate family members, and a few friends. I will sometimes talk about my salary in general terms with my friends, but I don't openly discuss it, nor do I bring it up. Somehow I became pretty successful in my career and I think I'm probably making more than most of my good friends, so of course, I don't want to bring it up. I'm probably making less than my former co-workers since a lot of them ended up in I-banking, but I have a much better lifestyle than they do.

The other day I was exposed to a refreshing dose of honesty and openness regarding my plane-mate's salary. We were just about to land when I started chatting with the woman next to me. She told me quite a bit about her life, where she worked, what she did, where she was going, etc. Then she mentioned to me that she gets paid $11/hour plus tips, which was a lot better than the $3.17/hour plus tips that she received when she was living in a different state. I was pretty shocked at her salary openness, but it was pretty refreshing to find someone who was so open with her life.

I don't think it benefits anyone (except our employers) to keep our salaries a secret, yet we do so.

Here's my I keep my exact salary a secret:
1. I'm afraid to be judged (either positively or negatively) based on my salary
2. I'm pretty sure that my employment agreement forbids it

For more salary info of people on the web, check out this post from Madame X.

I just think there's this social stigma attached with discussing money and salary; I can't get myself over that hump. To try to help myself along, but keeping it vague, I'm close to the six figure mark, but I won't pass it this year unless I change jobs.

Switching from a Regular 401K to a Roth 401K

My company recently began to offer the Roth 401K as an retirement option in addition to the regular 401K. Today was payday for me, so I decided to check to see if all my direct deposits made it safely to my bank accounts (I am somewhat compulsive on certain items and I have my direct deposit going to 5 different accounts). I checked Bank of America, where I keep my ATM withdrawal money (I'm not happy with their interest rates or customer service, but they do have the best coverage in terms of locations and ATMs for those who travel around the U.S.). I was surprised to see that the money hadn't hit yet.

I decided to log online to check out my paychecks. When comparing my most recent paycheck to my last one, I realized that this was the first time my Roth 401K contribution was withdrawn. Then I realized that the Roth 401K contribution seemed a lot larger than my prior month's contribution. So I went and looked at my last paycheck from January and saw that this paycheck's contribution is almost 39% higher. !!! WTF!?!?!?! This resulted in a 21% less money going to my various savings/checking/investment accounts. I thought I had decided to contribute the same percent of my income to the Roth 401K as the regular 401K.

This is going to require further investigation, but it did make me think about one thing - should I just max out my 401K contributions now* and get a much larger paycheck later in the year? At my current rate of contribution, I'll probably max out in 6-8 months, depending on any raises I get this year.

*For some of you out there, this might not be a good idea due to the way certain companies calculate matching contributions. For me, it doesn't matter since the company match is calculated at the end of the program year and it's so small with a somewhat long vesting period that I'm not sure if I'm ever going to keep any of the match. If your company calculates the match on each paycheck's contribution, it makes sense to time out your contributions to get the full match.

How I Increased My Salary by 37% in One Year Without Changing Jobs

This year, I am very proud of the fact that I was able to increase my annual salary by over 37%. I blogged about my 18% raise earlier, but that was only a portion of my salary increase for 2007.

My company does its year end raises in the first quarter, so I didn't obtain my raise for my performance in 2006 until 2007. I had been unhappy about my salary at the company for some time and I let my bosses know about it. I was not happy with my year end raise for 2006. Although it was more than the 3-4% cost of living adjustments most people were getting, I knew that I was performing much better than average and that I was underpaid. When my boss told me about my pay increase, I thanked him for letting me know, but I also let him know that I was not happy about my current salary. As a high performer for my level, I expected to be paid as a high performer (rather than as an average or low performer).

I kept open communication with my bosses throughout the year. My work performance was fantastic throughout this time. One of my supervisors broached the idea of an out of cycle adjustment - basically a pay increase that was not tied to our annual reviews or promotions. Of course I embraced this idea with open arms, but this took a long time to happen. In fact, I think we first discussed an out of cycle adjustment in 2006, knowing that my year end salary increase would probably put me on par with or even still below my colleagues at my level, rather than near the top. In the end, it took almost a year for the adjustment to be presented and approved. By then, I wasn't expecting anything and I was hoping that my promotion would eradicate any salary inequities.

When I was promoted later that year, I got a good salary increase to go with it, at a higher than expected level.

Here's a summary of how I was able to increase over 37% from January to December. Remember it's a lot easier to get a large jump in salary when you start at a lower salary compared to your colleagues!

1. I started out underpaid and overperforming compared to those with the same job duties.
2. I got a year end adjustment for 2006 performance that was above what an average performer received, but it did not make up for my salary inequity.
3. I did not let my unhappiness with my salary affect my performance.
4. I kept up open communication with my supervisors, helping to lead to an out of cycle adjustment. I talked with my supervisor about what my options were for getting a fair salary in an very open and honest fashion. We even discussed that I might need to leave the company in order to get market value, but I never applied to any jobs last year since I was still very interested in further growth at my current job.
5. I helped the company increase revenue. This was key since there was a fair amount of revenue that could be directly attributable to me. This was rather unusual for someone at my level and it came right around when I was promoted, helping me to earn my atypically large salary bump with promotion. Anytime you can show your boss solid numbers of how you earned the company more revenue or reduced costs, I think that's merits for some sort of reward for you. Revenue is usually looked upon more favorable than cost reduction since you can only reduce costs so much.
6. I was patient and was working there with a lower than market salary for over a year. Sometimes this works to your advantage, sometimes this doesn't. In my case, it paid off with more money, a promotion, more responsibility, and more confidence.

I'm sure others have tips on how to increase your salary. Of course, for most people, finding a new job with a competitor is a sure way to increase your salary. How have you been able to increase your salary?

Salary

Madame X at My Open Wallet has an interesting post entitled "Okay, I'm Asking" where she posted her approximate salary and asks readers to do the same.

I told my husband about the post and he immediately thought that there was probably a selection bias of those who decided to respond. We determined that those who are doing better are probably the ones who posted.

She's gotten a lot of responses and it's interesting to see a more personal view of how people around the world make a living. I could go to salary.com and get the similar information, but then it would be missing the personal aspect of it.

What I did with my 18% raise

I recently received an raise that was higher than expected. I knew that I was being promoted. I had been expecting approximately an 11% raise based on what I knew of the pay scale at the higher level. I also had it in my mind that if I didn't receive a promotion and a raise similar to my expectations, I would be looking for a new job.

Lucky for me, my boss came through for me and was able to deliver the promotion as expected with even more money than I was expecting. How often does that happen?

Anyways, in order to celebrate my promotion and higher salary, I decided to re-allocate my automatic savings. The end result? I now get about $100 less per paycheck into my checking account to cover our living expenses. I have ALL of my raise and an additional $100 per paycheck going to my 401K, our emergency fund, and our house saving fund. I get a thrill as I see our house saving fund increase. I can't wait until we have enough saved to be homeowners!

Wealth is a Matter of Perspective

I was reading Boston Gal's blog and I saw this link to an article in the NY Times about Silicon Valley millionaires that don't feel rich. Wealth is all a matter of perspective. When everyone around you is poor, you feel rich in comparison. For these people, everyone around them is rich, so they feel poor, despite being among the richest people in America.

A while ago I read a study about two types of jobs about two job offers.

Job A pays $90K while all of your other co-workers are paid $80K.
Job B pays $100K while all of your other co-workers are paid $120K.

Which job would you rather have? This assumes that the work for both jobs is completely the same for you and for your co-workers. The study I read about said that most people would be happier with Job A, even though the net pay is less. I would have to agree that I would be happier with Job A. Looking at it from a broad view, Job B would be better for your bottom line. But psychologically, I would be upset at being paid less than my colleagues for doing the same work.

I think this is how the rich Silicon Valley millionaires feel - even though they're not doing exactly the same job. A lot of the wealth is based on timing and luck. Of course the Silicon Valley millionaires also feel the need to keep up with the rich Joneses which does not help their situation.

My Husband's Paycheck vs. Mine

My husband, C, took our conversation about adjusting our withholdings to heart and printed a copy of his most recent check for me yesterday. After I took a look at it, I realized that we both get exactly the same salary each paycheck, however, one of us gets paid twice a month and the other gets paid once every two weeks. This means one person makes 8% more than the other.

Now I want to compare his paycheck to mine to examine our deductions and find out how close we are to getting the same "take-home" pay after all of our deductions. I suspect that our tax withholdings will be a large part of any difference in our take home amounts.

C and I are both expecting pay raises fairly soon (September/October). After this next salary adjustment, we will see how the salary dynamic changes. I will probably get a larger increase since I am also expecting a promotion, but we you never know. C and I work in different industries for different types of companies and we're at different points in our career.

Did More Money Make Me Happier?

This morning I woke up and saw this article
on MSN. I've read the article before in the past, but this time I decided to think more about the article in the context of my own career.

Since I started my first full time job in 2004, I've changed jobs once and my salary has increased over 50% from my initial starting salary. I hope to be making over six figures before I turn 30 - this is an aggressive goal, but hopefully attainable given my current salary history (I'm currently 27).

More money has definitely allowed me to invest more in my future. Back when I started my first job, I had no emergency fund and was barely saving anything in my 401K or Roth IRA. Now I put the maximum in my 401K, can fully fund my Roth IRA, and have a healthy emergency fund. Getting married also increased my financial resources.

When I was making less, I was probably happier than I am now. Back then I was focused on saving anything I could and things seemed simpler. Now I'm focused on saving enough for a house down payment and maxing out my 401K. My financial concerns have changed, but they still exist despite the fact that I'm making more money.

My Raise - The Percentage

Ok, so since I only received one comment to this post, John gets to know my raise percentage increase. It was about 12.5%.

This is a mid-year raise since I was promoted. We do performance reviews twice a year - one at mid-year and once at the end of the year. I expect to get another raise at the end of the year, hopefully with a similar percentage, but I doubt it. Almost everyone gets a raise at the end of the year. I know of colleagues who have only received a 3% increase with promotion, but their original salaries were greater than mine.

My Raise

As I mentioned here, I am getting a raise and promotion, effective September 1, 2006. I just found out what the number is. Now to my loyal readers (if any of you are out there), would you rather know the dollar amount or the percentage of the increase? Please let me know by 9 a.m. August 31, 2006 Pacific time by commenting.

I think I am a bit underpaid. I detailed my lack of salary negotiation before starting my jobs as 2 of my largest financial mistakes. See my post here.

So while, I did get a pretty big percentage increase, I do not think the raise is that much dollar-wise.

Promotion and Salary/Raise Discussion

This calgirl is happy since she has been promised a promotion. After the formal review process, I received the highest possible rating out of 5 (I rated myself the second highest possible rating). The scale is basically: bad, fair, acceptable, good, excellent (I have renamed the ratings). I have been told that 70% of employees receive an acceptable rating and it's pretty rare to get an excellent rating, so I'm happy.

I also talked to my supervisors about my salary concerns, both my immediate supervisor who doesn't know my salary and our overall supervisor who has access to salary info. I expressed my concerns in a very diplomatic way. The overall supervisor admitted that based on the information I provided, my salary was on the lower end (it appears to be lower than some people who are a level below me). We talked about what happened when I was hired and he asked if I was given what I asked for or more than what I asked for. I was given what I asked for and he was surprised. He said they typically try to go a few thousand above what someone asks for so they come into the company happy. I was happy to come into the company at what I asked for at the time, but after further reflection, it was less than I should have asked for.

He said salary discussions have not happened yet, but with the promotion, it should be more than made up for. So I have high hopes for a large raise. The unfortunate thing is at a large company, sometimes someone will say that they will try to do something and then be unable to deliver on that promise based on pressure or restrictions from above.

With my fiance, I have determined that I would be satisfied, but not happy with a $5,000 raise, Happy with a $10,000 raise, and ecstatic with more than a $10,000 raise. Based on the salary information I have on other co-workers, I expect to receive a raise around $10,000, but I'm not counting on it until I get official notice. Anything less than $5,00 would upset me and potentially cause me to look for a new job.