Kept Hour
A salary is a costume. The hour is the truth.
Most “salary to hourly” tools divide by 2,080 and stop. That number flatters the job. Kept Hour uses the hours you actually give, then prices the commute and the meetings in the same unit: your evening.
The calculator stays free. The $39 sheet is a human check of the same numbers, not a locked file.
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Gross hourly is salary divided by real weekly hours times weeks worked. The flattering version uses 40 hours and 52 weeks. If you work 47 hours for 50 weeks, you already donated 350 hours before anyone mentions “culture.”
Kept hour is that gross rate times one minus your combined tax load. It is a planning rate, not a paycheck reconstruction. Payroll taxes, state tax, and retirement deferrals move it. The point is the shape: a raise that adds hours can lower the hour.
Commute is not free because it is unpaid. A 40-minute round trip, 5 days, 50 weeks, is 167 hours. At a $30 kept hour that is $5,000 of life, spent in a seat.
Meetings get the same treatment. Eight hours a week is 400 hours a year. If those hours produce no decision you can name, you can price them. That is the only argument that survives a calendar review.
A new job pays more and asks for 10 more hours. Run both. Keep the one with the higher kept hour, not the higher salary.
Paste your rate into the meeting calculator. Decline, shorten, or bill the hour you can now name.
Remote is not a perk if the kept hour does not move. Sometimes it does. Sometimes the city does.