Ben wrote $640 on the whiteboard on the side of our fridge, underlined it twice and said, "Before it disappears." Then he went back to packing soccer snacks, because it was a Thursday and practice started at 5:30.
That $640 is what my promotion to senior project manager adds to our month. My salary went from $91,960 to $104,700 on September 1, about a 13.9% raise. After my 401(k), which stays at 8%, and after taxes, the difference in take-home pay comes to about $295 a paycheck, or roughly $640 a month.
I wrote about the promotion conversation earlier this month. This post is about what comes after, which in my experience is where raises usually go wrong.
When the first full paycheck at the new salary came in, I put the two pay stubs side by side. Gross pay was up $490. The 401(k) took $39 more of it, taxes and the rest took about $156 more, and $295 more landed in checking. Seeing it line by line made the number feel smaller and more real at the same time.
Where my last two raises went
When I switched from HR to project management in January 2024, my pay jumped $16,500. I'd love to tell you where it went. I can't, and that's the problem. Some went to groceries, some to takeout on office days, some to a streaming service I forgot we had. None of it was wild. All of it was gone within a year.
The 4.5% merit raise in February was smaller, about $200 a month after taxes, and it drifted into the grocery line and then into middle school. That one I can trace. I didn't plan it either.
From the HR side, I watched people at very different salaries feel exactly as broke as each other, because their spending caught up with each raise inside a year. The ones who still felt a raise two years later had decided where it was going before the first bigger paycheck.
The plan for the $640
| Where it goes | Per month |
|---|---|
| Car replacement fund | $250 |
| Emergency fund, toward four months | $100 |
| Sinking fund, from $385 to $435 | $50 |
| Harper's middle school and band | $40 |
| Giving, from $150 to $200 | $50 |
| On purpose, for us | $150 |
| Total | $640 |
- Car replacement. Ben's Accord is a 2016, and my RAV4 is a 2018 with a lot of I-565 on it. One of them will need replacing in the next few years, and I'd like that to be a transfer, not a loan conversation.
- The sinking fund. August's middle school costs came to about $410, and two older cars need a little more upkeep every year. $385 a month was built for last year's list. The new list needs $435.
- Middle school. Harper's clarinet rental is $32 a month, and band has small costs that pop up all year.
- On purpose. Some of this raise should feel like a raise. $90 covers one dinner out with Ben each month, and $60 is for something each of us picks. That's our lifestyle increase, and it has a ceiling.
Harper read the whiteboard and wanted to know why there wasn't a line with her name on it. I pointed at the clarinet. She was not moved.
What isn't changing
My 401(k) stays at 8%, which now means 8% of a bigger number, so another $1,019 a year goes in without me lifting a finger. The HSA stays at $250 a month. The mortgage is the mortgage. The $2,000 a year for professional development that came with the promotion is company money, so it never touches our checking account and isn't part of this plan.
We did talk about sending some of it to the mortgage. At about 3%, it didn't win the argument for us, and I'd rather have cash for the next car than a slightly smaller balance on the house. That's a choice about our rate and our cars, and it could look different in a different house.
I changed the automatic transfers the same night Ben wrote on the whiteboard, before the next paycheck could land in checking and start to feel normal. In January, when the new spreadsheet tabs go up, I'll check whether the $640 actually went where the whiteboard says it did.
This is our plan for our raise and our house, not financial advice. The part that's working for us is simply deciding before the money shows up.
