Calculate Your Way to Success

There is a calculator for almost any objective you have in life. There are budgeting calculators, credit card calculators, debt calculators and home buying calculators. There are also loan calculators, mortgage calculators and savings calculators. But did you know that there are also transportation and work-related calculators?

Calculate your way to success: Should you quit your day job?

When you work outside the home expenses can increase along with your income. You may begin to wonder if childcare, clothing costs (including dry cleaning), transportation cost and parking fees are leaving you with only a pittance to show for that 40-hour work week.

If you have ever wondered about that or contemplated just how much you are contributing to the overall budget in your home by working, use the One Income Calculator available for free by Crown Financial Ministries. This nifty calculator lets you see if you are spinning your wheels and actually costing your family money by not being at home.

Calculate your way to success: Learn your real hourly wage

You've been offered a job making $20 per hour. It is the most you have ever made before per hour and you are excited about the pay raise. But hold on for a minute. Before you accept, you need to consider that the $20 per hour wage offer may really only be a $10 per hour wage payout if you look at other important factors.

Use the Real Hourly Wage Calculator by CFM to determine if you will have a higher-paying job or not. Plug in your anticipated take home pay total and a few more numbers--such as the number of minutes it will take you to prepare for work, commute to and from it, and how many miles you will put on your car round-trip--and you can see if you will really make that much an hour or much less. You can even use this calculator to see if your current wage is actually measuring up.

Calculate your way to success: Purchasing reality

Say you want a new item with a large price tag. You will likely contemplate how many paychecks you will have to receive until you can buy it unless you have money saved for such a purchase. But have you ever stopped to wonder how much the purchase will cost you in hours worked on your job? Dividing it by your hourly wage isn't really an accurate indicator.

Use the Real Hourly Wage Calculator, instead, and add in the item's purchase cost after you compute your real hourly wage. The calculator will tell you how many hours you have to work--at your real hourly wage--to be able to make that purchase. Once you see what the item is really costing you time wise--not just in dollars, you may decide to forgo the purchase altogether.

Using free online calculators helps take the guesswork out of becoming more successful in your professional life. Let calculators help you calculate your way to success by determining when working at home is cheaper than your day job, if taking the job with a higher salary is really more financially beneficial and if that new item you want is worth the hours you will have to work to buy it.

Resources: "One Income Calculator," and "Real Hourly Wage Calculator," Crown Financial Ministries.org