Originally Posted by
morno
I see this “real terms” a lot. What exactly do you expect to be paid compared to the average person? I’m guessing your “real terms” would be around $350-400k a year now if you had your way.
Look I’m not one to refuse more and more money, but let’s be realistic, what we earnt pre-covid, was pretty good, and if you couldn’t live comfortably, maybe you should be taking a look at your situation.
Real terms refers to the buying power of your income.
At Air NZ we’ve negotiated CPI +1% as a mechanism for calculating annual increases. Meanwhile, house prices have increased on average 20-25% in the last year across the whole country. My Auckland property would be closer to 40%.
When I first started flying Jets on ~$80k as a 737 FO, I could afford to purchase a (modest) house in Auckland. Today? New hires earn about 50% more than I started on while house prices have tripled.
Those of us who have hung onto the first wife, with mortgages based on prices 10+ Years ago while resisting the urge to throw a Boat and BMW on top of it, are mostly immune to this cost of living Criss. Our 2% or so per year does an alright job of keeping up with inflation (although we’re still slowly going backwards). But for those just starting out? Even without COVID, the buying power of their salaries is vastly reduced in “real terms” compared to what we started on.
Families with 2 working parents used to be quite rare, then it became more common…now it’s almost required to pay the bills.