Xatal

You know how when you find a $20 bill in your pocket that you didn’t know about, it puts you in a great mood? I love that feeling. Ever expect to have money, but then find out you don’t? I hate that.

I’ve found it’s a similar feeling when I try to estimate how much money I’ll make at my job. If I over-guess how much I made, I end up disappointed. If I guess it exactly right, I’m pretty neutral because it’s what I expected. But if I underestimate my money, I’m always pleasantly surprised.

I plan my life around what I expect to make, so when I actually make more, it’s a lot easier to keep it in my savings account rather than spending it.

Here’s how I underestimate what I make:

Underguess my real wages

When I first started working at my job, I made $6.75/hour, the minimum wage in California at the time. After taxes and Social Security were taken from my paycheck, my real wage was about $6/hour.

A couple years later, minimum wage has increased and I’ve earned a raise, bringing me to $8.50/hour. However, in my head I still assume that I make only $6/hour. I’ve never recalculated my real wage — and I try not to — but I do know it’s a good bit above $6.

Round down my hours

My job has pretty sporadic hours. Instead of working set shifts, I have a list of tasks that need to be done before I can go home. My hours can range from 3 in a day to 8, and more often than not I’ll end up not clocking out on a full hour.

So I round down how much I remember.

If I work three hours and fifteen minutes, I’ll remember that I worked three hours. If I worked four hours and forty-five minutes, I only remember four. This adds up pretty quickly, and by the end of each pay period I’ll have five to ten hours that I haven’t counted.

The end result:

Last paycheck, I counted that I had worked for 16 hours. 16 hours at $6/hour comes out to $96. Not a whole lot, but I’ll take what I can get now.

In reality, I worked 20 hours. At whatever my real wage is, I made $155. That’s $60 I didn’t think I would make.