Planning Your
Salary Negotiating

Successful salary negotiating means developing a workable negotiation strategy.

Key to successful negotiation skills is determining a realistic salary range to negotiate within. Use the salary requirements calculator below to work out how much you need to earn to support you current lifestyle.

For each expense work out the amount of money you need and the amount of money you want. The total of these two amounts gives you the salary range within which you can plan your negotiation.

Once you have your totals, multiply them by 2 to include social security, state and federal income taxes and any unanticipated expenses. You can be more accurate by working out what your actual tax will be in that salary range. Not all of your expenses are monthly. Property taxes, insurance premiums, and holidays come once or twice a year but don't forget to include these occasional costs.

This calculation will determine what your minimum salary range must be to support your lifestyle. While it is essential that you know what this amount is before you start negotiating salary it is not advisable to bring up your personal monetary needs during the negotiation. This figure is a foundation for your own salary decisions.

You have now worked out your required salary range. Next in preparing for negotiations is to evaluate the job offer compensation package as a whole. Go to Negotiating a Job Offer to find out how to do this. Decide what aspects of the compensation package you can negotiate.

Use these negotiation resources to plan your salary negotiating:

How to develop a strategy for Job Offer Negotiations

Salary Negotiation Tips

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