CalcStack — free, instant, no signup. The interactive calculator loads automatically.
On $100k total comp with a 10% risk premium and $8k of switching costs, the walk-away number is $115,967 — not the $105k that "feels like a raise."
Negotiations are lost before they start — by people who never computed their floor. The walk-away number is the minimum year-one total comp below which staying is financially better than switching: current TOTAL compensation (base + bonus + 401(k) match + equity + health value, not just base) grown by the raise you'd get anyway, plus a risk premium for the unknown employer, plus switching costs (unvested match, forfeited bonus, deductible resets) amortized over expected tenure, minus a signing bonus spread the same way. On $100k comp with $8k of frictions and a 10% risk premium, the honest floor is $115,967 — the offer that "feels like a raise" at $105k is actually a pay cut you chose under adrenaline. This calculator builds the number before the call, so the conversation runs on arithmetic.
Candidates use it before the recruiter calls: on $100k total comp with a 10% risk premium and $8k of switching costs, the honest floor is $115,967 — the $105k offer that feels like a raise is a pay cut you chose under adrenaline.
Because base is often 70–80% of the real number, and anchoring on it is how people accept less while feeling like they got more. A $95k base with a 10% bonus target, 4% match, and $6k of RSUs is $115k of comp — an offer of $102k base "with potential" is a cut wearing a raise's clothes. The discipline: pull your actual statements (W-2 Box 1 plus employer benefits contributions is a good approximation), price each component, and negotiate against the total. Employers know the breakdown; candidates who don't negotiate one-handed.
Match it to what you're giving up, not to bravado. Leaving a stable team and a growing role for an unproven company: 8–15% is defensible — you're pricing probation periods, unknown management, last-in-first-out layoff exposure, and benefits you haven't read yet. A lateral move to a comparable company: 5–8%. And the honest exception: genuinely toxic situations can justify a NEGATIVE premium — paying to leave is sometimes the right trade for health and trajectory — but run the number knowingly, so the choice is deliberate rather than discovered later. What the premium should never be is zero: a switch with no premium is a bet you made for free.
No — and that's half the point of computing it. Floors anchor: the first number spoken bends the whole negotiation toward it, so a stated floor becomes the ceiling. The walk-away number's job is to make your SILENCE informed — to turn "I'll need to think about it" from a stall into an actual comparison, and to let you decline sub-floor offers in one sentence without agonizing. Share aspirations (the research-backed range above your floor), not floors. The negotiation hygiene that pairs with this calculator: let them number first, counter above your floor with justification tied to market data, and treat the signing bonus as amortized comp, not a gift — it usually carries a 12–24 month clawback that makes it a loan until the term runs.