Raise Negotiation Calculator

This calculator shows how a single percentage raise compounds into a much larger number over an entire career, not just this year's paycheck. It projects two parallel salary tracks out to your stated retirement horizon — one starting from your new (raised) salary, one from your current salary — both growing at the same assumed annual raise rate, and sums the year-by-year difference between the two cumulative totals into a single Lifetime Earnings Impact figure. Because both tracks grow at the identical rate, the gap is really your one-time raise percentage compounding across every future paycheck, which is why even a modest raise request can produce a surprisingly large lifetime number over 20-30 working years — that's the core argument the calculator is built to make.

It also estimates a first-year 401(k) match effect by taking the dollar size of the raise, applying your stated match limit as a percentage cap, and multiplying by your employer's match rate — treat this as a rough approximation of how much of your raise could translate into extra employer retirement dollars, not an exact accounting of your plan's actual match mechanics, since it doesn't check whether you're already contributing enough to hit the cap. The five-year figure uses a growing-annuity formula on the annual raise amount rather than being read off the lifetime chart, so it will not simply equal five years' worth of the annual increase — it already bakes in the assumed annual raise rate compounding on top of the base increase. All of this assumes your raise rate holds steady for the entire projection window, which real careers rarely do exactly — layoffs, job changes, and uneven raise cycles will all move the real number away from this smooth projection.