Issue 1 — Finance Fridays — Negotiating Job Offers, Investing Principles and Being in the Top 10%

Published in

Reality Cheque

5 min readMar 23, 2024

Dear FCA and ASA, I will never offer finance advice. This is for entertainment purposes only. You can go now.

💡 How to negotiate a job offer

Most people’s main source of income is their primary job. And the fastest way to increase your income is by moving jobs. Getting a job offer is a whole different discussion but how do you actually negotiate the highest possible salary without scaring off the employer?

Lucky for you, I deep dived (aka Google’d heavily) into job offer negotiations and this is what I found worth sharing. Once they say they are ready to make an offer, do these things:

Begin the conversation by establishing how enthusiastic you are about working there
Give them a heads up that you will be negotiating your salary so you are both prepared
Internalise the fact that they have decided to offer you a contract. They clearly want you. The recruiter, employer and manager don’t want this process to drag any longer than it has to. So don’t be scared you will lose the offer over asking for a little more.
After you make your counter offer, STOP TALKING.
Ask for higher than you want since negotiations often wind up as a compromise.
Use time as leverage. Say “if you meet me at X amount, I’m prepared to say yes right now.”

If you have time before the negotiations, write down these things and memorise them before the next call:

I think I’m worth this because…
[List out at least 3 reasons why you would be valuable to the company]
And the exact numbers you want to use during the negotiation and responses for each range the hiring manager will offer you.

So if I wanted £58k, these are examples of how to respond to their initial offer:

If they offer below £55K (Too low)

Your response: “This being advertised as a manager role, I was expecting at least 55K, are we able to go up to 57K since I feel I do cover most of the job criteria”

If they offer between £55–57K (Slightly lower)

Your response: “I believe my experience with both A, B and C alongside working on X project means I can hit the ground running. Would we be able to go up to 58k?

If they offer £58K or more (What you wanted)

Your response: “This is a great offer! If you’re willing to be flexible then with my certification in X and being that my experience covers both main and preferred requirements on the job specification, I think I’m probably valued at 60k. What do you think?”

Bonus Content

How about negotiating a pay rise?

Not everyone has the luxury of getting job offers but you may be entitled to a pay rise.

My one best piece of advice is to write out a screenplay of your conversation with your manager asking questions similar to these below:

How do you feel you’ve performed this time round?
How do you feel you can improve?
Is there anything else you want to discuss?
Fair enough. What do you think are your major accomplishments?
Do you feel this is enough to warrant a promotion?
How much are you looking for?
How did you come to that amount?
You’re aware that we’re about to get an end-of-year bonus, why do you need a pay rise as well?
How do you feel about your unfinished projects?
Do you think you can be more effective in delivering business value?
What happens if you were to get your pay rise or promotion?

After writing out your responses to these type of questions, you’ll feel prepared to face whatever reaction your boss will have towards you asking for a pay rise or promotion.

🧐 Do you deserve to be in the top 10% when it comes to net income?

Most of us want to be richer and even have an income in mind that you would consider “comfortable”. But few ever consider where that places them statistically amongst the wider population.

Instead of feeling entitled to earning in the upper percentile of the country. Ask yourself are you either:

Smarter
Provide more value
More hard-working than 90% of the country?

If this spurs feelings of doubt, use this as inspiration to:

Work in industries that are require high barrier to entry (where the smartest people are located)
Learn skills that allow you to provide services or products that are considered valuable (what people will pay for without question)

🎒Bill Ackman’s Investing Principles

This video outlined why you shouldn’t be picking individual stocks but also mentioned Bill Ackman’s Principles for investing in case you still want to select a few stocks. Apparently it has been engraved in a stone tablet that sits on everyone’s desk around his office.

The business must be simple and predictable
The company must be free cash flow generative
It must have a dominant market position
There must be big barriers of entry for competitors (MOAT)
There must be a high return on capital
The company must have limited exposure to extrinsic risks they can’t control
The business must have a strong balance sheet and not need access to outside capital to survive
The company must have an excellent management team and good governance

This list feels like a common sense guide to investing but does make for a useful reminder when certain stocks shoot up in a short space of time due to market hype or a specific event. Essentially don’t buy into the hype, buy into the fundamentals.

✅ Always Be On the Lookout

Search for your ideal next job role once a week.

Why?

You need to remind yourself what you are working towards by reading the job description of the next level up in your career trajectory. If your day-to-day work doesn’t reflect the experience and skills needed to move up, then you need a conversation with your line manager.

✍🏿Quote of the Week

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

― James Clear, Atomic Habits