If my take home pay is $6000 how much do I "make"?

[Anonymous]

Just curious. Between my husband and I we usually have about $6000 a month in take home pay, after taxes and health care costs but before taking out any 401k or savings. I'm in the military so part of my paycheck is not taxed since it's a housing allowance. According to my pay stubs I only make about $60,000 a year, but I'm assuming in the private sector you have to make a lot more than that a year to have that take home pay.

Any ideas? I'd like to know what I'd need to make in a non-military job to get the same take home pay per month.

[Anonymous]

Find an online paycheck calculator (you put in the base salary and then it figures the net). Play around with different numbers until you find the right one. Obviously there's no guarantee that this is what you can make in private industry -- it will depend on your skill set and your experience.

[Anonymous]

My salary was in the 80s and I took home about 7K per month after retirement fund contribution, taxes, insurance, etc.

[Anonymous]

As a very broad estimate, I always assume that 35% of my paycheck will go to taxes. But pp is probably right -- there must be calculators for this kind of thing.

[Anonymous]

14:41 - Your numbers must be wrong. If you took home $7000 per month that is already $84k per year but you said that the 7k was after taxes, retirement, insurance, etc. Either your annual salary is higher than in the 80s or your monthly take home is lower.

[Anonymous]

Okay, out of curiosity I just checked my pay history. When I was making $82K, I took home $1865 every 2 weeks. This is after taxes, health insurance, 10% 401k contribution. My gross was $3200.

[Anonymous]

I took home around $6k/month when I was making around $120k/year. I made full contributions to 401(k) and health insurance was taken out, but otherwise didn't have much in the way of "discretionary" deductions above taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just curious. Between my husband and I we usually have about $6000 a month in take home pay, after taxes and health care costs but before taking out any 401k or savings. I'm in the military so part of my paycheck is not taxed since it's a housing allowance. According to my pay stubs I only make about $60,000 a year, but I'm assuming in the private sector you have to make a lot more than that a year to have that take home pay.

Any ideas? I'd like to know what I'd need to make in a non-military job to get the same take home pay per month.

OP, not sure if you've provided enough information. Do you want to know how much you would need to make to take home $6K a month on your salary alone, or your salary combined with DH's? It sounds like your gross salary is $60K, but you haven't said how much of that you take home. Is DH planning on switching jobs as well? Will you be able to continue getting health benefits from the military or through DH, or is that something you will need to deduct from your paycheck? Do you currently save for retirement and will you want to do so once you switch jobs? Are you planning on buying a home once you no longer get a housing allowance? (That will give you additional tax deductions.) Do you regularly take advantage of other military cost-saving benefits, like shopping at the PX? All of these things will factor into the picture.

ROUGHLY speaking, I would calculate 35% of the amount of your housing allowance, add that to $60K, and that's what you will probably need to make.

[Anonymous]

I make around $85K, and my take home is around $52K after taxes and making the max 401(k) contribution of $16,500; I don't pay for health insurance out of my paycheck, as we're on DH's plan. I'm also including flex spending in my calculation.

[Anonymous]

I think the idea of using a calculator is right. But if you are asking what kind of salary you need to make in order to leave the military, you need to look at other benefits, like your military retirement, which doesn't show up on your pay stub (I am guessing). There are few places where you can start drawing retirement at 20 years.

[Anonymous]

You also need to account for income tax withholding.

Also, since part of your pay is housing, this would be on top of your pay?

[Anonymous]

I know my salary is 45k.

His is a little blurrier though because he works for the IMF, who pays his taxes. He thinks his salary before taxes is about 70k.

So we make about 115k a year combined.
Pay health insurance and contribute about 5% to our retirement accounts. After health care, retirement and taxes, we take home about 6600 a month, 79k a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just curious. Between my husband and I we usually have about $6000 a month in take home pay, after taxes and health care costs but before taking out any 401k or savings. I'm in the military so part of my paycheck is not taxed since it's a housing allowance. According to my pay stubs I only make about $60,000 a year, but I'm assuming in the private sector you have to make a lot more than that a year to have that take home pay.

Any ideas? I'd like to know what I'd need to make in a non-military job to get the same take home pay per month.

One thing no one has pointed out -- you say you and your husband take home $6000/month. Well, what portion of that is from your salary alone?

[Anonymous]

salary is 92K and take home from that is $4400/month. However, I have a "cadillac" health insurance plan and max out my retirement contribution.

[Anonymous]

http://us.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/hourly.php
someone linked to this site on here before, and I love it.