Tracking my income growth since graduation
There’s something about the end of the year that makes you particularly reflective. We tend to do a yearly round up or set new year’s resolutions, hoping that the next year would finally be the year that we make it.
While I didn’t set any new targets for the year, I decided to still do something to take advantage of the do-something-to-feel-like-im-adulting-right feeling that I was having.
And being the slight psycho that I am (I might be the only person I know who enjoys tracking my net worth monthly), I decided to reorganise my personal finance sheet - by extending the number of tabs I have to include more aspects in life.
Please tell me I’m not the only one who feels like my life’s more put together after noting down life’s figures on an excel sheet? Haha.
Anyway, after drawing inspiration from a few finance YouTubers/bloggers, I decided to track the following in this holy personal finance sheet that I now proudly own:
- Financial portfolio (what I’ve always been tracking monthly, aka my net worth and where my savings/investments are at)
- Breakdown (graphs of my financial portfolio so that I can see my allocations visually)
- Insurance
- Salary tracking
- Monthly salary allocation
- Monthly expenses
It’s nowhere as comprehensive as what others have, but good enough for me to work with.
I can go into detail what each tab consists of, but this post is mainly to cover my findings of my salary growth since I graduated 6.5 years back.
I am ashamed to say that while I have always been big on personal finance, I have never truly looked into my yearly income and how it changes over the years.
So creating this tab actually took quite some time because I had to dig out past contracts and salary slips lol. Some numbers are also slightly off as I didn’t have monthly salary slips, but I based it on my monthly bank statements and they shouldn’t be too far off.
Ok to set some expectations, I am:
- In my late 20s
- Working for 6ish years (since 2016)
- Not a hustler (which means I’m a commoner and not one who chionged for promotions etc lol)
- Did a career switch and took a pay cut in between
How much did my income grow (or shrink) over the years?
I started off with my first job at $3,100. It was at a government agency, and I didn’t graduate with good results which probably caused my starting pay to be lower than my peers.
Stayed in the same job for almost 4 years, which explains the slow climb in pay.
I did a job switch in 2020, which essentially was a career switch. I took a pay cut, one greater than the graph above because I had to forgo my bonuses. This essentially brought me back a few years again in terms of my salary.
After slogging out for a year plus, I switched jobs and had a pay bump. And then did another switch which brings me to where I am today.
Am I satisfied with my income growth?
To be very honest, with my peers around me switching jobs and getting 20-30% salary bumps each time, I slowly fell into the insidious rat race as I unknowingly found myself comparing what I had with what they were getting.
This caused a feeling of lack which stayed on within me, as I felt like what I was earning was never enough.
It didn’t help whenever online articles showed how fast the incomes of fresh graduates climbed every year, and these people were receiving crazy annual packages as they land jobs in highly coveted fields. Truth to be told, there were times where I felt sorry for myself.
It was only after this very exercise of revisiting my previous salaries, digging through old contracts and salary slips which kinda grounded me again. It pulled me back to reality, reminding me of what I have been through to get to where I am today. Noting each month’s income down brought me down the memory lane of the numerous difficult decisions I had to make, including forsaking overseas opportunities and leaving a comfortable job to deal with uncertainties - and these are moments worth celebrating.
It’s quite interesting how I started this exercise with the sole purpose of kaypoh-ing my own income growth, but I ended up feeling so grateful and sentimental haha.
Final thoughts
Firstly, I recommend doing this because it’s so fun! And refreshing haha. I also recommend starting this earlier so that you don’t have to go through the logistical/administrative nightmare like I did.
Also, I think it’s so easy to tag our self-worth to how much we’re earning. To our positions at work. I remember not caring about anything when I first started work. I didn’t feel small when I earned $3k. Weirdly, I feel more inadequate with my current income. Comparison is indeed the thief of joy, and so I’m going to actively remind myself of my identity and value - which definitely extends way beyond who I am at work.
May we never forget how far we’ve come. Here’s to celebrating our own progress and growth. :-)
Your comparison if any should be against your own life goals. That said your needs and goals might change with age or life stages. It might come to a point whereby you feel you will need more income to sustain a lifestyle beyond that of funding your own needs, as in the case when you start your own family, or when if it so happens that your parents need your support financially. Additional income does come with each job transition and the key is to build on your experiences and find organizations that can allow you to grow in line with your value system and career preference. Change is the only constant and keep an open mind to finding the truth behind what you or anyone else might be telling you. Go out and live a life of fulfillment now.
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