Achieving take home wage

[OneSparklyGoldBear]

Got a job offer for 96k salary. I get other allowances worth another 8k-9k on top. Company will put in pension contribution of 10%.
I want to take home net monthly pay of £5700 post taxes and NI from both salary and allowances.

What amount should I salary sacrifice into pension to keep me below dread 100k but also get me that net monthly income.

Around 6k per year, assuming you’re in England/Wales you need your annual taxable salary to be around £99,999 to take home £5.7k and be below 100k. In Scotland it isn’t possible as £99,999 equates to £5.4K take home.

Thanks yes England/Wales.

So I need to sacrifice 6% of my salary into pension?

Why not use an online calculator? There are LOADS

I use calculate my salary to check the salary I’ll more or less take home.

I just can't seem to work it. Any help with my question please?

It’s quite difficult because for initial we don’t know your tax code for example.

1257L

What about for 5.6k?

Pop everything you've given on this thread into chat gpt and it'll give you a great answer - I've done it for you and it's really helpful - but a very long answer which wouldn't be interesting for anyone else ha

Look at thesalarycalculator website - I was playing around this for exactly the same reason the other day. You can put in your salary, tax codes and then play about with the pension amount to see what will get your the result you want.

I can only take home 5.4k to stay under and even then it is touch and go.

Or you could use one of the many salary calculators (I use listentotaxman but there's others) and avoid all the AI generated nonsense.

OP just needs to play around with the pension % and enter any other relevant factors that she hasn't mentioned so makes her OP impossible to answer (student loans, is she in Scotland, any other taxable benefits like a company car) and that will answer the question about how much she needs to put into her pension to stay below £100k to avoid the tax trap and hopefully achieve her target take home pay which, like a PP says, may not be possible but she can work out the highest possible take home pay and possibly make savings elsewhere to balance her budget - if she needs £5.7k pm, I imagine there's quite a lot of give in her expenditure that can be trimmed without a noticeable change in lifestyle.

What do you think the “AI generated nonsense” is using? Using chat gpt to give an initial answer and then verify with a calculator is likely a faster route, especially if someone doesn’t fully understand.

Whilst it's a good start and gives some good ideas, you really have to check the detail yourself as it's not particularly accurate when things change, like new tax year changes to allowances/rates, etc.

I've been using it for the last few months, and it's good for generalities, but poor on the fine detail, so it's not reliable enough for the detail of decision making.

One recent example is that it didn't recognise the reduction in the NIC threshold from £9100 to £5000 effective tomorrow, even when in my initial question, I specified the 25/26 tax year - it still talked about the NIC threshold "expected to be" £9100 for the 25/26 tax year - and that's six months after Robber Reeves announced the change!

Very worrying that people are making decisions based on it if they're not checking alternative sources to check the detail!

Why are you assuming they’re not checking the detail? I always verify what ChatGPT tells me, it’s just quicker to verify than it is to work it out from scratch.

But really, what is the point of using ChatGPT if you have to wade through a load of waffle and check what it tells you?

People have linked to several salary calculators where all you have to do is put a couple of numbers in boxes and it tells you the answer correctly. What else is needed?

How do you mean?

There is a salary calculator on line that lets you work that out for yourself - if you can earn that much you should be able to use it to explore scenarios

You can’t possibly survive on only 5.4k a month though

Because once you’ve got the answer, you can then just run it through the salary calculator manually, if it’s correct, no wading necessary, if it isn’t, then sure go back to the drawing board.

Plus if you’re getting a load of waffle you’re just not giving it the right prompts. It’s all about how you use it.

The thing for the OP is it’s not a straightforward salary check because she needs to try out different scenarios to get to the end result she wants (otherwise I’d just say go straight to a salary calculator) so this is where ChatGPT can help to fast track the answer, but yes I’d always verify it.

The salary calculator hardly takes much time to run through scenarios though! Especially if Ai is wrong you have to do it all anyway

It takes longer than ChatGPT? As I say if you just want a quick answer and a quick verification on a salary calculator it’s a valid option, if OP doesn’t want to, then fine…not getting into an argument about it. I use it a lot, I find it a really useful tool. If you’re not very good at using it, then no, it won’t make life quicker, it’s all about how you do the prompts.

But the change in the LEL to £6,500 has no direct impact on take home, it is an employer tax.

You don't know what you don't know. If you have to check the detail, you may as well check the detail in the first place. ChatGPT is a good starting point, like I say, but anyone relying on what it tells you is a fool.

It IS a tax for contractors, freelancers and umbrella firm users where the employers NIC is also taken from their day rate, along with income tax, employee nic, employer pension and employee pension, employers apprenticeship levy, etc. So it IS relevant for workers who are paid in that way.