How to... compare salaries

Another how to article for thesalaryconverter.com

How to ... compare salaries

So you want to compare several different salaries. Let say you are looking at a number of jobs where the salaries are listed as £14,000 per annum, £250 per week, £1200 per month and £7.85 per hour.

Job Number	salary
1	£14000 per annum
2	£250 per week
3	£1200 per month
4	£7.85 per hour

You could sit down with a pen and paper, scratch your head any maybe find a way to compare them or you could let thesalaryconverter.com take the strain.

Step 1 is to decide what rate you feel most comfortable with, do you want everything converted into a per hour rate or an annual rate. Which is better for you, for most people they want to compare it to their existing salary so it would be whatever you know you current salary rate to be.

Let's say we have decided to convert everything to per hour rate.

So using the calculator we put in "14000" select "Annual" and press convert. Looking at the hourly rate it converts to £7.26.

Using the calculator again we put in "250" select "Weekly" and press convert. The hourly rate turns out to be £6.76.

Using the calculator for the third job we put in "1200" select "Monthly" and press convert. The hourly rate turns out to be £7.46.

We don't have to convert the last salary as it is already in per hour.

So we now have the following conversions:

Job Number	salary	Per hour conversion
1	£14000 per annum	£7.26
2	£250 per week	£6.76
3	£1200 per month	£7.46
4	£7.85 per hour	£7.85

It turns out that that the job number four is the best paid job but of course pay isn't may not be the only reason to take that job.

Try the online calculator for yourself.

The world at large and the humble red elastic band

The world at the moment is a world full of nightmares and bad news. The Chilean miners were the one ray of sunshine in what is going to be a dark winter ahead. Bomb threats and financial crisis, job and funding cuts.

Still in this new age of austerity I would like to talk about red elastic bands, specifically the ones that are left all over the UK by postpeople as they ping off a banded set of mail that is being delivered.

They are not hard to find and are free so very handy if you want an elastic band, but being so colourful they are slightly more exciting than an ordinary brown one. Thinking of those table top Christmas books that litter the book stores at this time of year I was thinking of bringing out a book entitled "101 uses for a postpersons bands". So far number one is to use it to hold down the flaps on an opened coffee bag as those sticky things never seem to work.

Of course if it were a paperclip I could trade it up for a house, for a postpersons band I think you would struggle to trade it up for a shed at least until I have found out the only 100 uses for it.

This random thought was bought to your by coffee from Java and some orange marmalade on oatmeal toast (girlfriends choice).

The Spending Review: A Personal Response

I am a public sector worker, I am not on the coalface but I hire the people that work on the coalface. I agree that cuts had to be made and they had to be deep. I agree that they had to cut the Public Sector borrowing requirement down to size but not eradicate it.

However, I have no doubt that the coalition has gone farther than it needed to, due to the Conservative ideology of smaller government.

I do believe that we needed to make an across the board cut of at least 10%. I don't believe any area should have been ring-fenced including however unpalatable the NHS and education. It is time to live within our means. A significant amount can be saved in the public sector through efficiency saving and getting rid of "nice-to-have" services that have built up in the last ten years without affecting core services. 10% is I believe a fair line in the sand.

I think the public sector pay freeze is right even though in real terms it means many poorly paid workers will find it much harder. Again given the extreme circumstances we find ourselves in I feel a pay freeze is preferable to loosing more jobs.

I think any additional spending should be frozen, what we don't have now we no longer need. A lot of commentators have compared the deficit to your own debt, when you have a debt you need to reduce it. I would compare the budget requirements to a household budget, when money is tight you don't spend it on new things or reduce spending on food to move to a bigger house. You make do with what you have got and so it is time to make do with what we have got. When the good times come again then we can look for new opportunities.

I would not reduce corporation tax, big business got us into this mess they can help us out of it. The argument that this is to stimulate growth is valid but public sector spending and public sectors workers also contribute to the economy.

I would not increase International development, again referring to the household budget, I like to give to charity but I don't give more than I can afford. As a country we may have a responsibility to the rest of the world and that is why I would not make any reduction in the budget for international development but it would be frozen.

I would not give a rise to the cabinet office for their "big society" work. "Big society" is a good idea but it doesn't not need that much money. I would prime the pump but not to the extent of £1.8 bn perhaps £0.5 bn would be more appropriate. Government cannot order you to volunteer but they can encourage you.

I would bring forward the pension age increase, it makes economic sense.

I would increase pension contributions, although I acknowledge it will be painful the current system is no longer viable for individuals, the country or the economy.

I would not freeze the science budget but as per all other areas cut it by the required 10%. Sorry scientists everyone needs to do more with less and no one can be protected under these circumstances.

I would get rid of trident, we have no need for a nuclear deterrent that we would never use saving us £20 bn that could be better spent elsewhere.

With some significant regret I would not expand the funding for energy and climate change projects. Again we cannot afford the "nice to do" stuff, when things improve they can go back on the agenda. For now the £2.9bn could be better spent elsewhere. I would if the figures allowed allocate £200m for the wind power projects and £50m for solar power and energy efficiency projects. This would help continue the push to a green and sustainable economy. In this area alone I feel we must move forward not back.

I would not scrap the index linking for rail travel, those without cars would be the hardest hit.

The NHS is tricky but I would enforce my golden rule of 10% cuts with a stipulation that savings must be made from efficiency saving and cutting red tape and not closing wards or hospitals. That may be very painful but I would also commit that when the good times come back the NHS would be the first in the queue and I would aim for funding increases to a level equivalent of 5% per year for each year they received no increase. Over the long term there would be no reduction in funding.

There are other areas I could go into but I think you can understand extrapolate my thoughts.

On one final note the average savings across the board for the government have been 19%. I have said across the board saving will be 10% with some significant extra savings made which should allow us to head towards the 19% target. In addition, I do not believe we need to totally eradicate the deficit. Some deficit is acceptable as long as it continues to reduce and does not get out of hand.

I recommend my plan to the house.

Watching the news: Another Auntie's Bloomer

A vaguely interesting article about people protesting against potential cuts in the Science sector.

However, for a bit of impossible science cue some random BBC sub-editor.

If you look at the caption to the second photograph:

Demonstrators were asked to wear science items such as a laboratory coat or telescope.

Can I just ask for my own piece of mind how do you wear a telescope, there doesn't seem to be any arm or leg holes. You cant really wear it as a hat, it keeps falling off. Perhaps people often wander the corridors at the BBC wearing a telescope.

Product Review :Powerpod Solar Phone Charger from Powerbee Ltd

Cross post from my renewables generation society blog.

This is a great little phone charger. I bought it in my continued quest to save energy.

Its about the size of an A6 sheet and you put in the light and it charges up. Then you can plug most mobile phones, digital cameras and any other small portable device in and it will happily charge it up.

The first thing to say is you don't need a lot of sun to charge it, so far it has charged on a non south facing windowsill on a grey autumn day, sitting on a shelf in the pool of light from a 50w halogen bulb and pretty much anywhere where there is a reasonable level of light. I suspect it will even charge at work under normal office lights, will have to check this out. Which basically means you should be able to get it to charge on the majority of days.

It worked for me straight out of the box, very easy to use, had the right adapter for my phone and charged it up easily just like it would if you plugged the phone into the mains.

On a cost benefit analysis it doesn't really stack up on pure energy savings alone. The considered opinion of the internet is that when charging a phone they suck up 4w of power, when already charged but still plugged into the phone 2w and when not plugged into a phone less than 0.1w.

In other words assuming that my phone is charged for 5 hours a week I would use just over 1kw over a year, so charging it by solar would save you approx 10-15p. So based on energy saving alone there is a payback time of 482 years.

However and this is a big one, your phone is solar powered so it is totally green, as it no longer uses electricity powered by fossil fuels. You can also take the charger with you and you don't need a plug, very useful if travelling. You can charge any device that uses 5, 5.5v or 9v and if you are using more than just a phone the cost savings improve.

If you currently have a car charger you can power your phone by attaching it the car window and you are not burning petrol to charge your phone.

Plus it is a very cool gadget.

I would definitely recommend it to everyone especially at the price of £24.11, you cant go wrong.

I give it the following scores:

Easy of use 5/5
Green Credentials 5/5
Cost / Benefit 3/5
Coolness 5/5
Overall 4.5/5

The last word on the matter is this text, I sent to my girlfriend:

This text was bought to you by the power of the sun. No fossil fuels were harmed in the making of this text.

thesalaryconverter.com: How to... work out your pro rata salary

I have been meaning to write some "how to" articles for thesalaryconverter.com one of my many projects.

There are some things the converter can do if you knows one or two tricks.

How to ... calculate a pro-rata salary

We have all seen jobs advertise at £23,000 per year pro rata to 22 hours. Which is great but it doesn't tell you what your actual salary is going to be and you need to work out whether that means you are better or worse off compared to your current salary.

Example

Take the pro rata salary and type in your salary as "23,000" but leave the hours as 37. Press the magic button and you get the conversions. Remember the hourly rate which is £11.92.

Go back to the main page and type in "11.92" set the period to hourly and type in the actual hours of your job which is "22".

Press the magic button and you can see that your annual salary will be £13,673.

If you knew you were earning £14,000 for a full time job you would now know you would only be slightly worse off if you took the new part time job.

Easy when you know how.