The Real Hourly Rate Kit
A calculator and short guide that shows what you actually earn per hour once meetings, scope creep and unbilled admin are counted — and what to change first.
Run the free calculator and you get a number. Most people get a shock, then carry on exactly as before, because a number on its own does not tell you which of your weeks to change.
This is the part that does.
What is in it
The five drains the calculator measures, taken one at a time. For each one: what actually causes it, the test that tells you which cause you have, and the fix for that cause specifically.
Unpaid hours have three causes — understaffing, bad estimation, and signalling — and they need opposite responses. There is a two-week test that tells you which one you are looking at.
Commuting is the line people accept without noticing. An hour each way is a quarter of your rate, gone, with no line in any document. The section covers what is actually negotiable, which is frequency rather than distance.
Admin is usually somebody else's job that migrated to you one piece at a time. Naming who would do it if you refused tells you whether it can migrate back.
Scope creep is the expensive one, because it is the only drain with no ceiling, and it grows fastest when you are good at your job. The fix is pricing rather than refusal, and there is a sentence for it.
Recovery time is the one people over-claim. The section covers how to count it honestly, which matters because an inflated number cannot be acted on.
Also in it
How to get the inputs right, including the three places people flatter themselves without meaning to. A reading of what each result band means — under 10%, 10 to 25%, 25 to 40%, and over 40%, which is more common than it sounds. And what to do with the number once you have it, which is mostly about comparisons rather than complaints.
Who it is for
Anyone deciding between two jobs, whether to ask for a raise, whether to go out on their own, or whether the side project is worth the evenings. Every one of those is a comparison between two numbers, and doing it on nominal rates gets you a confident wrong answer.
Who it is not for
If your calculator result came in under a 10% gap, you do not need this. Your question is the rate itself, and the guides on what to charge and raising it are free and will serve you better.