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What is a raise worth over the next five years?
$300,
This week: write the target number down before the conversation, with one market data point beside it.
Your current annual salary before any proposed increase
The salary amount you want to negotiate for
How long you've been in your current position (strengthens negotiation)
15.4% increase
Additional career earnings
Written by Elizabeth Stein
Go in at $65,000 and ask for $75,000. That's a $10,000 increase, 15.38% of your current salary. Lifetime impact shows $300,000 (the $10,000 multiplied by 30 years, with no compounding). Because a 15.38% ask is above the 10% threshold, the increase percentage itself doesn't add to the confidence score. With three years at the company and market research checked, the score lands at 70 out of 100 from the tenure and research bonuses on top of the base 50.
Finance Quest is educational. It is not financial advice, and no calculator here knows your full situation.
It's tempting to ask for a number that sounds satisfying, an even 20%, a specific salary you've heard mentioned, rather than one grounded in what the role actually pays elsewhere. The confidence score here rewards smaller, better-supported asks, but the real work happens before you open this calculator: pulling actual comparable salary data for your role, level, and location. A 6% ask backed by three solid data points beats a 20% ask backed by a feeling, in almost every negotiation.
It depends entirely on how far your current salary sits from market rate. A cost-of-living or annual-review raise is often in the 3 to 7% range. A raise tied to new responsibilities, a promotion, or a discovered pay gap can reasonably be much higher. The right number comes from comparable salary data, not from a fixed rule.
No. It's a simple point count based on how your ask is shaped (its size, your tenure, whether you've done research), not a prediction about your manager, your company's budget, or how much room you have. Treat it as a prompt to check your ask against a few common negotiation factors, not as odds.
No. The score ignores outside offers. A competing offer is information the score cannot see, and it can change how a real negotiation goes.
Because it multiplies one year's raise by 30 with no adjustment for future raises, inflation, or job changes over that time. It's meant to make the point that a raise compounds in importance over a career, not to serve as an actual 30-year financial projection.