I am teh R0x0r!

[andrewducker]

Standard life has pay grades. Inside those pay grades people are assigned a percentage of the midpoint. Once a year (in November) people are moved up (and presumably down) the pay grade they are in. The pay grades themselves are also changed (to take inflation and national pay scales into account).

Graduate trainees are treated slightly differently - for the first two years we get 2 pay increases a year, one in November and one in May. This is onstensibly to bring us up to the level we suit faster, as we go through our quasi-apprenticeship. In actual fact I think it's to keep us happy so that we don't start looking elsewhere during the 2 year "you don't know anything yet" period.

Anyway, our May pay review came through today and it looks like everyone got a 4.55% pay rise. Which works out to about £50 a month after tax. Which will happily pay off my debts slight faster (or possibly a few more nights out :-> )

Any way round, I feel pretty happy about this...

Comments

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

You have debts (apart from the mortgage?) Tut tut :-)

[andrewducker]

God yes.

I've never clawed my way out of debt since I was a student. I was just starting too back in 2001 when I finally started making £16k and then I started supporting Erin, which stopped me having much spare money.

Not that I regret it in the slightest - I could theoretically stop going out to the cinema or buying books or eating nice food too.

But the debts are slowly being paid off, and every time I pay one of them off it becomes easier to pay the others off. I'm now down to Student Loan, Credit Card and Mortgage. Once the student loan is paid off (October, I think) the extra money from that will go into paying off the credit card and that should only take about 9 months to get out of the way. I fully intend to be debt free by next Summer.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Cool.

I am glad that I'm so debt-phobic (and naturally frugal). I left uni with no debt whatsoever and I've always been very glad of that (and that my folks paid my rent for termtime for 4 years). There were no student loans for most of my time and I got a total of £800 grant over my entire degree - and that all in the first year. I don't think I missed out on anything from lack of money, though.

Sensibly you should pay off whatever has the highest interest rate first, which I'd think would be the credit card, but maybe you HAVE to pay off the Student loan by October, I don't know.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, you have to pay off student loans once you earn more than a certain amount (I'm well over).

It's basically £50 a month that's coming out, but I think I'm down to about £400 left to pay off. I really ought to check, but the paperwork is still being sent to Stirling.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Ah, you may still be in a little slight amount of debt, but you have been able to live in Scotland all this time - sometimes I think it sounds a bargain (but I still like my life, especially now)

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

*nods* I've still got about 5.5k to pay off. Bleah.

Congrats on the payrise!

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

Hurrah and congratulations :)

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Yep, just something else to take the edge off buying my new car! Hurrah for SLAC.

If you think about it, 4.55% after six months, in today's climate, is pretty darned good.

Me satisfied.

[andrewducker]

Well, that's 9.3% a year, which is significantly higher than inflation.

Heck, it's almost as high as house-price inflation.

Re:

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Almost.

But yeah, it's pretty good. Bearing in mind we got 2% in November, just three weeks after we started, we're doing fine.

[spaj.livejournal.com]

grats. Nothing on the £10k I'm getting... but that's going to require some ballsy negotiations.

:)

Adam

[darkoshi]

do some places really decrease an employees pay due to poor performance (as opposed to company profits being down)? i think most pple would take that as an extreme affront and consider quitting because of it. which, i suppose, the company might want... but still, i haven't heard of that over here. you're more likely to be fired.

we're just having performance evaluations at my work. the one phrase in mine which quirked my amusement was to the effect of "in spite of her unique work habits, is effective and productive..." unique work habits? what's my supervisor trying to tell me there? i asked, and it seems he meant it as a compliment but just phrased it oddly.

[andrewducker]

Having unique work habits isn't a bad thing. I was notorious at my last company but one for having my machine set up in such a way that nobody else could use it. I was very productive like that though.