I’ve been told that I have good luck when it comes to finding money. I think that I find money because I believe that I can find money. So I do.
But, the last time I found money instead of being excited, I actually went through a rabbit hole of different emotions because I realized that the $5 I found was more than what I would be receiving that day if you were to factor in my 3% annual raise.
Basically what I mean is this: if you were to divide the number of hours a week by the amount a month that I received in my raise that would average around .25 an hour.
It’s Hard To Stay Motivated on .25 an Hour
Wage Increases
I was making a decent annual wage, but it had flatlined during the Recession years and I hadn’t received a raise prior to that for a number of years due to wage freezes. In fact, I had given myself my own raise by lowering my monthly expenses.
One of the reasons that I felt demoralized by how I was working was that it was very difficult to increase my wage regardless of the number of hours of work that I did. In fact, the more hours of work that I did the lower my hourly wage became and if you factored in the commuting time I was not making a lot of money.
Why do we allow ourselves to be roped into situations where we aren’t being fairly compensated for the work that we do? It was difficult for me because I was working in higher education and my wage increases were actually mandated by the State of Colorado.
It was hardly surprising the my morale was so low. I needed to make more money in order to tackle my debt, pay off my student loans, and pay off my little place. I had a very limited amount of time to side hustle because I was tired.
I also worked in a field where you would typically not receive an annual bonus. In fact, in the 10 years I worked at my job, I (we) received one bonus.
That Time When I Found $5 And It Was More Than My
3% Annual Raise
Was the moment when I asked myself: how do I do better for myself? How do I keep myself motivated and I how do I make “real” money that will move me forward?
It’s tricky because the field that you work in may really limit your lifetime earning potential in ways that you don’t expect such as: low yearly raises, wage freezes, or raises tied to performance reviews that are tied to client or colleague feedback.
Those types of performance reviews keep people from being at ease in the work place because what if you accidentally piss someone off?
So, I felt very on edge in my job because I didn’t make enough in financial incentives to excite me the longer I worked in my position. For the amount of stress that I was dealing with, it just didn’t seem worth it.
In fact, I am continuously surprised by how excited people get when they receive a bullsh$t 3% raise. It’s as if we have all drunk special Kool-Aid that keeps us from understanding that those raises are crap. And depending on what your business is making you may be way underpaid and not even know it.
Especially if you take time to factor in what the yearly rate of inflation is. If the rate of inflation is hovering between 3%-4% then basically you have flatlined in income with a wage increase of 3%.
I should also say this-I did have great benefits, so that was partly how I could balance out the lower pay and I don’t regret at all working for the organization that I did. I have a number of wonderful friends, experiences, and a home because of where I worked.
But, I wanted more cash.
Just sayin’
How Do You Feel About 3% Raises?
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Yep… I’ve been there! It gets scary once you start factoring in time spent commuting and unpaid overtime. That hourly rate gets smaller and smaller… Makes you wonder if it’s all worth it.
I want more cash, too! Now that I work for myself, I at least feel as though I have some control over the situation. There’s a chance I’m just delusional but I’m confident my freelance income will at least meet my old salary, if not exceed it by the end of this year.
And the commute is a breeze!
Thanks for the post Michelle.
I just felt like as stressed out as I was and as hard as I was working that .25 was just not worth it. I want cash. So, I am going to see how I manage on my own and I love the fact that I’m not the only person who has felt this way. I just felt demoralized. And, on top of the commute I felt like my life was passing me by…and for what? I think the freelancing commute ROCKS!
I feel that way when a client tries to undercut me, especially when they tell me how easy an edit is even though they’ve never edited before in their life. We really need to value ourselves more.
I think that it’s really hard for people to understand why 3% raises are such crap because we have been sold the idea that they are great-they aren’t. If you really take time to figure out how much you’re really getting I think you wouldn’t be so excited about them. Also, being undercut is sh$t!
3% raises feel so small. If your value as an employee is increasing, why isn’t your salary? Sometimes it seems better raises happen every couple of years, but if things aren’t moving up it’s time for a change.
Jenna, 3% is a bullsh$t raise. It has become the national norm and we all seem to think that it’s ok to get. In my case, the organization was growing as were our revenues. In fact, business was booming. I had one year where I got around a 12% raise (I had worked hard and grew my job). Guess what years I was most productive? The 2 or 3 years following those raises. I don’t think you need a raise like that every year. But, if raises like that happened every 2-3 years in addition to the 3% raise and then you leave around 6 or 7 years into a job-that’s nice.
I have been there! I used to have a p/t job in addition to my day job and made around $11/hr, not to mention the 30 minute commute & tolls each way, just to work a 3 hour shift. Then I downloaded a couple mystery shop apps on my phone and realized I could make $11 in like 20 minutes without driving anywhere, lol. It totally changed my outlook to work smarter not harder and I stopped the part time gig.
I too want more money and the part time gig was definitely not the right solution!
I also stopped working part-time in the mall because I discovered that I could do things virtually and make a lot more money for a lot less hassle. Umm, I want that app!
Well, 3% raises are bs, but they’re better than 0% raises 🙂 At least they more or less keep pace with inflation, sigh. I agree with you though — it’s nothing to get excited about.
It’s not better than nothing and that’s what frustrates me. Those raises don’t keep up with inflation and I am tired of American citizens settling for less than what we have earned. Especially if we’re in a healthy and growing organization. Having traveled all over the world I can say that American workers WORK. I am not saying we should get killer raisers every year-that’s stupid. But, if I work somewhere for 6 years and get 3% raises the first two years, get a 12% raise the third, and so on until I quit normally around the 5th year my productivity shoots up. I actually experienced this at my job until they froze our raises during the Recession (which made sense) even though we were making bank. I broke down my raise and it was around .25 an hour. For the amount of stress, it just wasn’t worth it.
I have gotten a few 3% raises, but have never gotten a bonus. I like working for myself now, because I am starting to charge more and be the boss of my time and money. It’s hard to stay motivated when you feel undervalued.
I lost my motivation as I looked at the return vs. amount of time and energy expended.
A 3% raise does sound remarkably low, but what’s shocking is that some jobs out there don’t even offer a raise at all. The job I worked at during college never gave anyone a raise for the whole 3 years I worked there. Now that I look back I must have been desperate to stay there or just didn’t realize I was worth more than that. But I did learn a lot there and meet a ton of great life long friends but my motivation to succeed just wasn’t there because I wasn’t being paid well or even appreciated by my superiors. Fast forward to now, I’m at a better job that makes me feel great and after 6 short months I received a 10% raise. After I learned my lesson with my college job I’ll never let an employer underpay me like that ever again.
I worked in a college and that happened to our student assistants as well. What made it worse was we kept asking that our long-term students get a raise because they were (and still are) ROCK STARS! It wasn’t right as they were hustling and working their tails off. I won’t allow myself to be undervalued again-as long as I work hard and actively work to add value to my organization (and money) to its bottom line.
I just got a 5% raise and I was pretty excited about it because I didn’t get one at all the year before. In my part of the country, a 2-3% raise is pretty standard.
The 2-3% raise is standard across the U.S. if you look at the CEOs of these companies you will notice a much different incentive trend-think 10 times the amount that we’re getting. I think 5% is actually pretty decent because it is above the rate of inflation.
Wow, what timing. I just did the math today for my “true hourly wage,” taking into consideration taxes, time in the office, time preparing for work and my commute. I was not a happy camper when I saw that number. Especially factoring in the stress I regularly deal with. And I don’t have great benefits to justify it. I’m starting to work on a plan for the next step and I feel better already.
I think a lot of people would be a little pissed off if they really looked at what their raise came out to be on an hourly basis. And, honestly, even on a monthly basis the amount didn’t excite me (except for the year when I got the big raise). I did have decent benefits and that balanced it out for awhile but overtime it just stopped working for me.