Know how to find out your annual income so you can manage your financial affairs

Whether you earn an hourly income, weekly, bi-weekly, or other such pay, it’s important to understand the different ways in which one can calculate their yearly total wages. Below, we’ll delve into sites which can assist you in the overall process, as well as formulas which can create a simplified way to convert your weekly or monthly pay into a total base salary.

Doing the Math Yourself For Hourly Wages

For those earning an hourly wage, you’ll need to take into account the total numbers of hours you will work in a year. To do this, simply:

• Multiply the total number of hours you work in a week by the total number of weeks in a year (52)

Let’s start by looking at an example of a simple calculation, using $13 an hour as base pay, 40 hour work weeks, and a total of 52 weeks worked by the employee:

• You would multiply 40 hours x 52 weeks = 2080

• This would give you 2080 for the total number of hours worked in a year

• Then, it’s simply 13 dollars per hour multiplied by the total number of hours worked in a year to find your base salary

• 13 x 2080 = 27,040

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Now, you will need to take into account unpaid (or paid) holiday time off, overtime pay over and above your typical 40-hour work week, and any bonuses accrued during the work year. Also understand that this is a base salary, which means taxes will be taken out of the total figure come April.

There are more complex calculations available to ascertain all the previously mentioned variables in a given work year. But, for the most part, you will look to the total number of hours worked per year and the hourly wage as a general guide on how to find out your annual income.

Now, What Happens If You Are Salaried?

Instead of an hourly wage, some workers receive checks weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, twice a month, and even yearly. To calculate your yearly totals, you would:

• Find out your specific pay period (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.)

• Multiply that number by your specific number of annual pay periods (for example, payment every two pay weeks comes out to 26 pay periods per year)

Let’s take a look at an example:

• Let’s say you are paid $520 per week

• It’s simply multiplying that number by the number of weeks in a year (52) to get a total of 27,040 per year

For a bi-weekly paycheck, you would multiply your total by 26. For the monthly variation, it would be multiplied by 12. The weekly, as shown above, would be multiplied by 52. For a semi-monthly paycheck, you would multiply your total by 24.

To Further Simplify the Overall Process

There are sites online, such as GotCredit.com or TEKsystems.com which will allow you to input hourly or salary wages in order to quickly get calculations for your yearly wages. With sites such as these, you can input certain extras, such as overtime pay (time in a half or double time) to figure out more exact numbers for your total yearly pay.

These can be good sites for those looking to simplify the overall process and get more exact answers. In the end, there are many different ways to calculate your yearly total wages. Some will give you a ballpark figure in which to work, while others will allow for all the different variables to be input, which in turn, will allow for a spot-on answer to the question of how to find out your annual income.

Resources:

GotCredit.com: Gross Income Calculator.

TEKsystems.com: Annual Salary Calculator.

Above photo attributed to 401(K) 2012