Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Best Ways to Get a Pay Raise

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If you’ve been employed with a company for a few years, two things have likely happened.  First, you generally have a good feel for the company culture and likely fit within that culture.  Second, you are likely good at your job.  You may have even added more tasks beyond the scope of your original work as people leave the company.  Because most companies now don’t rush to fill a vacancy, you may be doing the work that the person who left used to do in addition to your own job.  As you work harder and better, wanting more compensation is completely normal.  But before you ask the boss, first consider the best ways to get a pay raise.

Best Ways to Get a Pay Raise

When You Shouldn’t Ask for a Raise

Before you start the process of preparing for a raise, take a look at your work history and where the company is now.  When asking for a raise, timing is everything.  Now might not be the best time to ask if either of these things are currently happening:

Your Work Record Isn’t Stellar

Did you botch a big project?  Has your child had the flu and you’ve missed a number of days of work?  If you’ve had any life events that have disrupted your work, now might not be the best time to ask for a pay raise.  Work hard and focus on being the best employee for a few more months before you ask for a raise.

Is Your Company Having Financial Difficulty?

How is your company doing financially?  Have you noticed that the budgets are tighter?  Have a few people gotten laid off?  When employees are let go, you may have to pick up the slack.  If you’re doing more work than ever, you may feel you deserve a raise, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get one.

If the company is struggling financially, now is likely not the best time to ask.  You want to pick an optimal time when your work is good and the company is on solid financial footing.  If that is not the case now, then wait a few months.

The Best Ways to Get a Pay Raise

If your work history is solid and the company is fine financially, you’re ready to take these steps in preparation of asking for a raise.

Keep a List of Accomplishments

Best Ways to Get a Pay Raise
Photo by CoWomen on Unsplash

Before you ask for a raise, keep a list of all of your accomplishments.  What have you done within the last few years to help others and advance your company?  These accomplishments are easiest to remember if you keep track as they happen.  However, if you want to ask for a raise now, take at least a week to remember all of the things you’ve done since your last raise and to write them down.  This will be your best evidence that you do indeed deserve a raise.

Research How Much Others in Your Area Are Paid

How much are others in your area paid?  Is your salary equivalent?  Is your salary lower than the average for others doing the same type of job?  Researching how much others in your area are paid helps you see if you have a case to ask for a raise.  If you’re at the high end of the average, then maybe now isn’t the right time to ask.  If you’re at the low end, you know your request is valid.  Doing this research also gives you an idea of the amount you’d like to request for your raise.

Set an Appointment with the Boss

When it comes time to set the appointment with your boss, don’t just ask if you can chat for a minute.  Instead, ask if you can make an appointment to discuss your career.  This will let your boss know that the discussion may take more than a few minutes, and he or she can schedule enough time accordingly.

Praise the Company

Best Ways to Get a Pay Raise
Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

When you’re in the meeting, be sure to first praise the company.  Let you boss know what you like about the company and your job as well as how much you’ve grown since you’ve been employed there.

List your Accomplishments

One of the best ways to get a pay raise is to highlight for your boss the significant accomplishments you’ve made for the company.  While you don’t want to go through a laundry list of every little task you are responsible for, you do want to impress upon your boss how vital your role in the company is.

If you can prove to your boss that you’re essential to the company, you have a better chance of getting a raise.

If Your Pay Raise Request Is Denied

It happens.  Sometimes you come to the boss with evidence why you should get a raise, and you’re denied.  If that happens, you have two choices:

Accept It

You can just accept that you won’t be getting a pay raise this year.  Maybe you can ask again in another six to twelve months.  This is a good option if you really enjoy your job and think there’s a chance you’ll get a pay raise in the future.

Apply for Other Jobs

Even if you have no intention of leaving your current job, you can apply for other jobs and see what the market is like.  If you interview well, you may even get an offer from another company.  If the offer is higher than what you are currently getting at your job, you can use that offer as leverage to ask your boss for a raise.  However, if you go this far, be prepared to walk away from your job if your request is again denied.

Final Thoughts

Asking for a raise can feel intimidating, but you’re your own best advocate.  If you feel that you are an asset to the company and that you’re being undercompensated, use these best ways to get a pay raise to improve your chances of being successful.  Remember, if you don’t ask, you likely won’t get a raise.  Be confident in yourself and your skills and abilities and make the case that you deserve a raise.  Your boss may be appreciative and reward you with a raise.

 

Teen Employment: 4 Questions to Ask Before Your Teenager Takes a Part-Time Job

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Working part-time is a rite of passage for many teens.  Teen employment can lead to increased independence—new friends at work, extra spending money, money to save, etc.  However, teens should think carefully before applying for and taking a job.  Ideally, they won’t just by default apply to the local restaurant or fast food restaurant.  Instead, they should choose a job that matches their goals and aspirations, if possible.

Before the job search begins, you and your teen should consider these questions:

Teen Jobs Employment
Orig. img. credit: Innovate Impact Media on Flickr

What is your teen’s interest?  What is your child interested in and good at?  What kind of job could he do that he would enjoy and that wouldn’t feel like a grind after a few months?  If he loves animals, maybe he could consider working at a pet store or a dog groomers.

What career is your teen considering?  If your child is a junior or senior in high school, she likely has a career choice in mind.  If she’s choosing between several, now is the time to learn more and help her narrow down her choices.

When I was a senior, I worked at a vet clinic.  I had the opportunity to work with the animals and even observe surgeries.  I had been toying with the idea of being a veterinarian, but after a summer at the job, I decided I didn’t want to invest all of the time and money it took to become a vet.  The job just wasn’t one I’d enjoy that much.

Ideally, your child’s job can help them discern if this is the right career path for them.  If it’s not, you and your child have saved thousands on an education they might not have used in the future.

What is your teen’s temperament?  How does your child do under pressure?  Is he introverted or extroverted?  Jobs available to teens can vary widely.  Some jobs will have them interacting with the public regularly while others will not.  Choose the job that best fits his temperament.

However, sometimes a good job that doesn’t perfectly fit your child’s temperament can provide learning opportunities, so also consider that a stretch in comfort level isn’t all bad.

Will this job help your child get into college or get a job in his career field?  Ultimately, a job should not just give your teen some spending money but also help her get into college or into her career field.  The jobs that teens take should be stepping stones into the life that they see for themselves.

Also, don’t be afraid to end the job if it is distracting your child from his ultimate goals.  Too often, teens take what looks to be a good job only to be given more work hours than they can handle, which causes their schoolwork to suffer.  Getting experience in their chosen field IS important and can help them get a better job later in life, but they also must focus on their studies.

Did you have a job as a teen that helped open doors for you or helped you choose your career field, or did you simply work whatever job was available?

 

My Wife Quit Her Job

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Before you get all excited, this isn’t a story of financial bliss.  Less than 3 months after our second child, a daughter, was born and amid all this turmoil in the economy, my wife quit her job.  Why?  Suffice to say that she was extremely unhappy at the position and didn’t feel that she could return to it after her maternity leave.

The decision came much easier for her than it did for me.  I didn’t have to work there, so I didn’t have the same problems as she did.  But, most of all, my trepidation came from the fact that my salary alone could not support us.  We would need to find a new source of income, and quickly.

Decisions made, my wife sent her resignation letter to her employer.  And then they sent back a bill.  You see, my wife was on maternity leave which is covered under the Family Medical Leave Act.  In that law, there is a section that states that if the employee does not return from the FMLA leave, the employer can reclaim any expenses such as health insurance that they incurred while the employee was on leave.  It was not a small bill.  If I recall (who am I kidding.  I remember.) it was just over $1200.00.  As you can imagine, we were both devastated.  Not only were we jumping directly out of the pan and into the fire, but now they had turned up the flame.  We could pay it out of savings, but it would put a very serious dent in it.  And that was money that we were counting on to keep our bills paid until my wife started earning money again.

You’ll have to excuse me a bit, while I digress.  I want to explain how we planned on getting my wife making money again.  We have, for several years, been active sellers on eBay.  Never anything on any grand scale.  We’d hit a garage sale here, and an estate sale or auction there and see what kind of easter eggs we could find.  Having had that already in gear, we decided that ramping it up would be the easiest (and fastest) way to get some income coming back in.  So, we began the search for more product and more suppliers for the product.  End digression.  I think I’ll leave any other details of that operation to another post.

So, being the natural arguer that I am, I started doing a little bit of research on FMLA law.  I’m no lawyer, so basically all I did was confuse myself further.  My brother, on the other hand, is a lawyer.  Well, he will be sometime around May of next year.  But, he happens to be working at a law firm and has access to all the lawyers and their resources.  So, I asked him to look into it a little.  A few text messages back and forth.  An email or two. And a letter later.  The bill went away.  Turns out, that by requiring my wife to take all of her remaining sick/vacation time as well as using her short term disability insurance (both of which were enough time to cover the entire 12 weeks), they managed to make it so that they couldn’t reclaim that money.  Sucks for them.  Turns out very well for us.  Thank you brother.  And thank you law firm that he works for, for the pro bono work on the letter.

After that was taken care of, we could really concentrate on ramping up the eBay selling.  We spent several weeks working out and implementing a way to grow the business.  As it turns out, it grew a little bit slower than we had anticipated.  And it certainly wasn’t going to make enough money to cover our expenses.  At least, not right away.  It might in the future.  I, being the one that constantly worries (read stresses) about our finances, was beginning to think that it was about time for my wife to start looking for a part time job, if not a full time one.  Little did I know the hidden paths that God reveals to us.

I told you before that the company that my wife worked for before wasn’t the greatest place to work.  Truth is, it started out as a really nice place to work.  Somewhere in between, it went very downhill.  My wife’s best friend got fired, my Wife got passed over for promotions that she had been promised.  And overall, everyone was fed up with the place.  So, another of their ex-coworkers, who is also a friend, approached them with an offer.  They would start their own company, doing the exact same thing as their previous employer.  They all three loved what they were doing, just not the company, so it made a lot of sense.

That was about three months ago.  They have since formed a corporation, gotten all their paperwork and such in order and opened for business on the 1st of August.  So far, things are going very well.  They’ve had more business than they had anticipated and things seem to be growing well.  We’re all hopeful that it will continue to blossom and grow.  Maybe one day, I’ll get to be strictly self-employed.

Of course, some of you will remember that I told you earlier that this wasn’t a story of financial bliss.  It may become one, but it isn’t yet.  We are still struggling to make our financial ends meet and likely will until at least the end of the year.  My wife gets paid for the time she works at the company and will likely get a little bit of a shareholder bonus at the end of the year as well.  And hopefully, they’ll be able to add a few new products to their line by then as well.  Until then, however, we’re learning how to flex our frugal muscles and save as much as possible so that we can pay our bills.