Do you like talking about your financial mistakes? Do you get excited to share how you screwed up? Probably not.
I’ll go first!
When I was in one of my first “real” salary negotiations, I chickened out, and asked for about $5,000 less in salary than I had intended. I was more than a few years into working; had a shiny Ivy league graduate degree; and a whole lot of hustle in me. I was ready to go for it! Except, I choked.
I was shifting into a new position in a new field, and I was super nervous. I had intended to say $87,000, but what came out was $83,000. To some of you that’s a huge number, to others it will be small. I’m giving real numbers, because it’s time to stop being coy about salaries. A salary is a number, and in my case, it was in line with the market, field, my credentials and ability to perform.
Later, I talked to a consultant affiliated with my new employer, and he said that this employer was expecting to pay up to $90,000 for me.
OUCH!
I left $7,000 a year on the table.
But it wasn’t the math error that made my stomach clench up. It was the knowledge that I had undervalued myself. I listened to a voice in my head that said, “Who are you to ask for $87 – $90,000?” Worse, I had listened to that voice previously, and had left money on the table in my prior salary negotiation. And, in my next salary negotiation, I again, asked for less! Here it was: I was building a pattern of low-balling myself. That made me feel mad and helpless at the same time. Why would I hold myself back?
The problem was that the financial mistake was both on the surface, and much deeper. The deeper mistake was that I wasn’t valuing myself. I was playing small, because I was seeking my value from someone else’s decision on my salary. My salary was a number. It didn’t reflect my exact worth or value. Sure, it was related, but not the exact same thing.
When we delve into financial mistakes, we need to be ready to go deep, and figure out what the underlying mistake was. Who was involved? What was actually happening? If you want to stop a pattern of behavior, you need to know what is driving that pattern.
When I decided to really value myself, I forgave myself for not valuing myself, and resolved to do what was needed to stop this mistake. I didn’t spend time giving myself pep talks (OK, maybe a few), I spent time working on the numbers to figure out a number I was completely confident in. I also made a decision that if the employer didn’t agree to that number, then that was not the employer for me. “No” to a salary number wasn’t “no” to my worth, it was simply “no” to the number that I had decided upon. I ended up with a fantastic consulting rate a number of years later.
Try digging a bit deeper on your finances, and be ready to unearth some amazing areas for growth!
If you’re interested in some support around your finances, mistakes, and getting to the bottom of things, check out my short course Beyond Financial Mistakes.