How To Negotiate Salary with Your Employer

Your salary is one of the biggest contributing factors to your ability to grow wealth. It’s also an important factor should you seek an accredited investor certificate through the income method.

Your best chance to increase your base salary is when first negotiating with your employer. Take this opportunity to tout your accomplishments, research salaries for comparable roles, and not settle for less than you’re worth.

Here are a few strategies you can use to negotiate salary with your employer and increase your income.

Stay Positive and Confident

If you want your negotiation to go smoothly (and get what you deserve) it’s critical to approach the conversation positively and graciously. You will be much more likely to earn a higher salary if you are in good standing with your boss or hiring manager. Enter the conversation by expressing your gratitude and excitement for the role, and state your salary expectations with confidence. Maintain that tone throughout negotiations to achieve results. 

Do Your Research

Before entering salary negotiations, make sure you know what the average salary is for someone in this position. There are plenty of sites that offer insights into average salaries, benefits, and even what it’s like to work at a specific company, which can be useful if you’re considering a role at a new company. Knowing what other companies are paying people in similar roles can not only give you a good ballpark for what salary you might be able to attain, but also give you leverage to negotiate. If your present company can’t offer you a competitive salary, it may make sense to seek out the companies that can.

Unfortunately, some roles have a salary cap. If this is the case for your role, you may need to consider changing career paths or attaining additional training to reach higher salary potential.

Remember, any research you do isn’t necessarily specific to your company and your unique experience. You may have additional degrees or special qualifications that will enable you to attain a salary that is higher than the stated average.

Know Your Value

Another important task to accomplish before you approach your employer or future employer is to list out your accomplishments, particularly those that relate to the bottom line. How have you helped the company increase revenue, reach more customers, or attain new clients? What skill sets do you have that will contribute to the future success of the company? While some of this may be on your resume, it’s always good to make a new list that is specific to the position or discussion at hand. This will refresh your memory of your accomplishments, which can instill confidence and give you additional points to bring home when you enter negotiations.

Use Your Salary to Become an Accredited Investor

Verified investing is another incredible way to grow your wealth over time, but to meet the income requirements, you need to have income exceeding $200,000 USD in each of the two most recent years and a reasonable expectation of the same income level in the current year.

If you don’t currently make over $200,000 USD or $300,000 USD jointly with a spouse, use the above strategies to help you reach this salary tier so you can achieve accredited investor status sooner.