CFO Corner Week 30: The Question Almost Nobody Asks About Their Own Salary
- liveyourmoneystyle
- 21 hours ago
- 3 min read
Most of us would never buy a car without checking what it's worth. But we'll walk into a performance review — where our income for the next year gets decided — with zero idea what our role is actually worth on the market. This week's CFO Corner closes that gap.
The Reframe Researching your salary isn't about "knowing your worth" in some vague, motivational-poster way. It's a data-gathering task — the same instinct as comparing insurance quotes or checking a price before a big purchase. And if you've ever caught yourself wondering whether you should ask for more, that's usually a sign there's already a real case underneath it.
Busting the Myths About Salary
"There's no way to know what other people make." Untrue — salary databases and a few honest conversations get you real, legitimate data.
"Salary data has to be exact to be useful." Also untrue — you're looking for a range, not a single number, and ranges are plenty useful for a conversation.
"Keeping a brag list is bragging." It's documentation. Your manager is juggling a whole team's worth of work — they're not going to remember every win you had in March, and that's not on them. Writing it down does their job easier and does your career justice.
The Core Tactic: Two Moves
Pull market data. Gather 2–3 data points from sources like Glassdoor, Salary.com, PayScale, or Indeed — and go beyond the databases if you can: ask a trusted peer, check internal pay bands with HR, or scan current job postings for your title. Match on level, years of experience, and industry, not just job title and city — two "marketing coordinators" can have very different jobs at very different pay.
Start or refresh a brag list. For each entry, log what you did, what changed because of it, and a number if you have one. "Rebuilt the onboarding email sequence — open rate went from 22% to 34%" is a brag list entry. "Worked hard on onboarding" is not.
A Worked Example A marketing coordinator making $58,000/year, three years in, checks three sources: Glassdoor ($55K–$72K), Salary.com ($54K–$69K), and PayScale filtered for experience ($57K–$70K). Overlaying all three gives a real range of roughly $57K–$69K — and she's sitting near the bottom of it. That overlap zone, built from multiple independent sources, is far more useful than any single site's number.
Reality Check This research doesn't guarantee a raise. Salary data varies by company size, industry, and how loosely a title maps to actual responsibilities. A brag list doesn't override a tight budget year either. What this work does is move the conversation from feelings to evidence — that's the win.
What's In Your Control You control how much data you gather. You control whether your wins are written down or just fading from memory. And you control the timing — doing this quietly in July and August instead of scrambling the week before review season.
Your Homework This Week
Pick 2–3 salary sources and pull the range for your exact title, level, and location.
Start your brag list with at least three entries from the last six months (or add what's missing if you already have one).
Set a recurring reminder — every other Friday — to add one line to your brag list.
Budget Blueprint Builder — Our one-hour workshop with an Excel and Google Sheets template built for exactly this kind of mid-year reset. $47. Linked Here!