In America, I have noticed that income is generally described on a per-year basis: i.e., the average American earns $38,000 a year, or something like that.
But living abroad, I noticed it was much more commonly described in per-month terms; the average person earns so much per month.
Do you usually think of income and salary on a month or year basis? (Asking especially for Dopers outside of the United States, although all opinions welcome.)
For what it’s worth, I’ve written and analyzed market research studies conducted among U.S. residents for over 30 years. Respondents are very commonly asked about their total household income in these studies, and such questions are pretty much always framed in an annual basis.
About the only time I see any discussion about income in the U.S. that’s not on an annual basis is when the topic is about hourly wages (particularly around laws on minimum wage).
In truth, I think about it per check. Which for me is biweekly.
If you were to ask me how much I make per year, I’d have to go look it up. Asking me how much I make per month has no good answer, because how much I make per month varies, both in terms of actual take home pay (some months are three-check months) and in terms of average pay (different numbers of days per month means different amounts of pay earned).
Because I used to get paid on the 1st and 15th of every month, I developed the style of a montly method. Once at the end of each year I sit down and do the annual planning. That plan goes into autopilot for each month after that.
It’s just a personal style, because it lets me tighten down the budget in a more timely fashion.
That’s interesting I have no idea how much I make per paycheck. I think in annual gross and then do some vague estimating (30% tax rate) to get to my monthly total. I’m paid every two week and I only know tomorrow is payday because I got an email today that my pay stub was ready for viewing.
The program I use to do my budget is all about exact amounts going in and out of every account. So I get the privilege of manually typing it in every check (because it seems to constantly fluctuate a little nowadays, probably trying to compensate for shifting tax laws).
Which is not to say that I have the amount memorized - like I said, it shifts at least a few pennies every time. But when I think about my income, I always think of it in terms of money in hand, and how much money will be in hand in the immediate future. How much I’ll have earned by six months from now is six months from now’s problem - or rather I’ll deal with it biweekly as the theoretical money becomes real.
Gross, by month. But I’m fuzzy on that because it’s direct deposit, I sometimes fiddle with my withholdings, and I don’t really look at my bank account much.
ETA gross is also exclusive of annual tax adjustment, which can swing the monthly totals one way or another.
Because of this conversation I just went back at looked and over my last 6 checks my pay changed $0.01 off of he baseline once.
I don’t really use a budget. I make sure I spend way less than I earn so that after the bills and savings is accounted for each month the rest of the spending is more along the lines of “hmmm . . . do I have enough in the bank? If so will spending money on X make me nervous with the remaining balance of free money? If not have fun.” Where as I figure out what % of withholding my wife needs to do with her 401K by trying to max it out by October each year so we get a christmas bonus. Our charitable contributions goal and savings goals are based on percent of the gross but typically we hit them by blowing the extra pay period in 3 period months or annual bonuses so they really are more annual than monthly.
US here. I think of my gross and net income solely in approximate annual terms.
My monthly gross pay fluctuates between a base figure at minimum up to base + 50% maximum and anywhere in between. The fluctuations are more or less at random and the average is probably around base + 10%. The monthly pay is divided between 2 checks each month that do not divide that month’s particular total anywhere near equally. By the end of the year with 24 checks under my belt the biggest is about 2.5x the smallest. That flaky pay system would make any kind of monthly-based thinking kinda challenging.
As a practical matter it just means leaving an extra paycheck or two’s worth of money rotting in the checking account so I’m covered in case I hit a run of short checks and high unplanned expenses at the same time. That seems simpler than sweating transferring money between checking, savings, investments, etc. to keep every nickel in the right bucket twice a month.
Like someone else said, I get paid biweekly, so the number of paychecks per month varies. If someone needed to know how much I make per month, I’d probably just take my annual salary and divide by 12 to get my average pay per month.
'Murrikan here. I was a freelancer most of my career and invoiced a variety of clients once a month. My monthly income was not consistent. The only way I knew how I was doing was to compare annuals.
US, and by year. I’ve done salary administration, and the numbers we used were per year numbers both for raises and total salary. And when someone is given the results, it is in terms of new yearly salary and raise.
My wife is a freelancer, so it is check by check.
My answer to the question is “no”. As in, neither. As in, I don’t think about how much I make. How much money I make has very little influence on how much I spend. I have a set spending pattern, and anything I make in addition to that I save. My plan is to retire as soon as feasible. It may not be for 20 years, but anything I can do to speed up the process is fine with me, because basically the only thing I don’t like about how I’m living my life is having to get up and go to work. Thus, I think of money based on how much I have saved, not on how much I make gross or net.
My expenses vary from weekly to fortnightly to monthly, quarterly, and yearly. I budget for them monthly. I get paid fortnightly. If I told someone what I get paid, I would tell them the annual salary. I am also aware of how much it is each payday and how that converts to a monthly amount (a little bit more than x2).
So you don’t have annual subscriptions or any weekly payments? You only have monthly? And if so, is a bill for February the same as the same bill for May?