I think this is mostly a US thing. Why use yearly salary? You’re not paid once a year, are you? Most likely once a month. Referencing monthly salary makes much more sense.
“I’m making 50k”. Great, now I have to guess - dollars? Monthly? Yearly? If yearly then what’s the monthly paycheck? Net? Gross?
Lol who would hear “I’m making 50k” and think it’s anything other than per year unless they just stepped out of a private jet…
I feel like this might be confusing only if you are under the age of 14 and have no idea how money or the world works…
Depends on the currency.
Did you just assume my ¥der?
That was funnier than it should have been
The exchange rate is pretty good right now.
Not in basically all of the English speaking world. USD, CAD, AUS, Pounds, Euros, NZD. 50k a month or week or whatever you for some reason think it might be other than a year would be an insane amount of money to make.
I bet you’re the kind of person that hates it when you ask the time and people respond by rounding it to the nearest 10 minutes…
Thanks, captain Obvious
I know people who make 50k per month and don’t have jets. I make 30k p/m but I’ll get there one day. It’s crazy how when I was broke making $20/hour in a cafe that I thought everyone or most people are broke but now I’m making modest money it’s crazy how many other entrepreneurs are in my circle now. Just wow.
Lol this piss take xD
People whose currency IS dealt in that scale.
For example, if you want to restrict it to English speakers, then anyone from Hong Kong would be flaunting a quite decent, but not millionaire, salary.
I mean, you just basically answered your own question. People get paid hourly, weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, and some even per sale (ie. Realtors) so the only way to have a constant measurement is yearly.
Why not monthly? It seems the smallest unit to encompass them all, and is fairly standard.
Monthly makes sense also since most bills are monthly.
Until you have people who get a yearly bonus. Or 13 or 14 monthly salaries a year, which is quite common in Germany (basically a bonus, but the employee is entitled to it).
Yes but a lot of work is seasonal and/or sporadic. Annual pay smoothes it out.
Most bills are monthly, most paychecks schedules are bi-weekly. To me this is the same issue as hot dogs and buns being sold in different quantities. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!?!?!?!?!
But most pays are fortnightly
Not here (the Netherlands), everything is monthly, both pay and bills.
Same in Hungary. Not a single person I know gets their salary weekly or biweekly. It’s absolutely not a thing.
Also, your bills are monthly. You mortgage is monthly. Your credit card bill is monthly. Preschool is paid monthly. Everything is monthly.
Because that’s the standard and that is the wage I negotiated and my bi-weekly checks are that number/26. I didn’t negotiate a per-payperiod rate.
It’s what my taxation is based on.
It’s what all my credit applications ask for.
Also, what you make and what you take home are really quite variable based on circumstance between 2 people making the same base wage. Retirement contributions, health care premiums, taxes, and other deductions vary from person to person.
For salaried employees it’s the standard metric by which wages are measured. You don’t need to guess anything. That’s the standard.
For hourly employees, that would be your hourly rate. Since hours can be variable and overtime is a thing your yearly rate would be variable too.
Seriously there’s nothing to guess.
Because that’s the standard
Where?
It’s not standard for me. We only talk about monthly numbers with my colleagues and friends.
For the US, but going by this thread it’s not limited to here.
Also, for what it’s worth, I would think if op was in a place that used monthly as the standard they wouldn’t have posted this complaint. If that’s not the case I’m confused by the point of this post?
AnD wHaTs ThE dEaL wItH aIrLiNe FoOd? Am I rIgHt?
Can’t speak for the US, but here in Germany there often aren’t 12 monthly salaries to a year. Many people get a Christmas bonus and/or a summer bonus, but just as many don’t. Personally, I get paid about 13 1/4 monthly salaries a year, so telling you my yearly salary would be more accurate than the monthly amount.
Same in Italy
Personally, I don’t get paid every month, I get paid every two weeks, which means that some months I get paid twice and some I get paid thrice. Stating an annual value corrects for weird shit like this, and it’s going to be consistent since it’s probably how it is being tracked in the employer’s accounting.
- PrettyBlackDress ( @PrettyBlackDress@lemdit.com ) English15•10 months ago
Yearly = professional job hourly = wage slave unskilled work
Or, hourly = extremely high paid contract work.
As a freelancer, I charge a high daily rate, even more complex measurements!
Yeah, I knew freelance folks who provided long term support with such complicated setups. The base daily rate plus hourly with a monthly retainer and weekly on call fees. Wild.
That’s reductive an wrong. There’s a lot of skilled labor that’s hourly.
As others have mentioned, a few possibilities (I’m in the US, not sure how specific this is):
- Payment isn’t always monthly, it is often every two weeks. So sometimes you get two paychecks in a month, sometimes you get three.
- Compensation isn’t just salary, even if you’re salaried. Bonuses, stock grants, etc. might be done yearly/every 6 mo./every quarter.
- Expenses aren’t always monthly. If you own a place, you probably pay property tax which isn’t due every month AFAIK. If you budget for vacations, holiday travel, etc., these are costs that vary wildly month to month, but have some stability on a yearly basis.
- ETA: taxes are based on annual income, too.
The tax point is probably the biggest one. People just want to know what tax bracket you fall into. And it corrects for seasonal variations.
I think it’s probably one of those things that is stupid until you reach a point of financial success or fall into groups that consider your financial wealth important. Why it’s a thing is probably because we pay our taxes once a year and that’s when it’s laid bare and you see how much you made. So after 10 or 20 years you kinda know what 50k a year is and if someone is talking about making that much you can understand the lack of money they have. If you friend tells you that, don’t ask them out to expensive things unless you’re going to pay the bill.
Where do they do it otherwise? In Australia it’s also yearly.
People might also get bonus so in some sense you get paid once a year.
In Czechia, it’s definitely normal to say salary per month.
Same in Poland, it’s definitely more common to discuss monthly salaries. I had to adjust when moved to Germany, as almost everyone uses yearly base. Though I would say it makes sense considering yearly bonuses etc.
South Africa do it monthly
Yearly, because over here some people get 12 salaries a year,some 13, some 14 and some even 15.
The yearly income covers that and also includes yearly or semi-yearli boni.
It’s not just a US thing. I’ve never actually thought of this until this post, but I’d think it’s because taxes are done annually.
Your employer says they’ll give you X amount a year, but you receive X-Y into your account. It’s easier to talk about X, then to worry about how Y fluctuates.
It also makes it feel as if you’re making more money. Raises for a year sounds better than when you divide by 12 and get the monthly.
maybe tax related since taxes are based on annual income. if you are not hourly/salaried and you are self employed/freelance/contract your income will vary from month to month. annually seems like it can be more accurate across all those groups
I can’t even compare wages with my partner if we have to go by monthly rate.
I get paid per month, but in May I get an 8% bonus, so my monthly payment is not the same throughout the year. Then my partner gets paid every 4 weeks, and receives bonuses based on company performance in those 4 weeks. So every payment is different.
Per annum is the only way we can compare our salaries. And that’s in the same country. Now try international, and it’ll really difficult otherwise soon.
I live in the Netherlands.
“I’m making 50k”. Great, now I have to guess - dollars? Monthly? Yearly? If yearly then what’s the monthly paycheck? Net? Gross?
I mean surely it’s obvious in that example, no?
dollars
If that’s the native currency wherever you are, then of course dollars
Monthly? Yearly?
$50k/month about be $600k/year. Pretty sure you’d be able to tell if the person you’re talking to made half a million dollars a year vs just above the poverty line (in the US at least) just from context, but when in doubt - it’s probably safe to assume that the person you’re talking to isnt in the top 1% of earners
If yearly then what’s the monthly paycheck?
Yearly divided by 12? If you’re in a hurry and want a rough estimate just chop a number off the right and that’ll get you to within ~10% of the correct value
Net? Gross?
I’ve literally never heard anyone give their salary as gross outside the context of financial planning, and even then they’ll always specify “after taxes” or something similar.
Other comments go into plenty of detail about why they se various conventions are what they are (yearly vs monthly, net vs gross, etc(
I’ve literally never heard anyone give their salary as gross outside the context of financial planning, and even then they’ll always specify “after taxes” or something similar.
You mean net here, not gross. Otherwise, agree.
Haha woops - mixed up the terms, thanks!