Many people make numerous mistakes concerning salary. The major mistakes include:

 1. Avoid facing the salary question until the question about "your salary requirements " is raised by the employer.

 2. Fail to deal intelligently with salary questions and issues by not doing research on salary comparables, employ­ers, and compensation options.

 3. Don't know how much you're really worth.

 4. Specify a single salary figure when asked "What are your salary requirements? "

 5. Assume your "qualifications" and "performance" will automatically determine your salary level.

 6. Think salaries are predetermined by employers.

 7. Believe you are indispensable to an employer who will give you substantial raises rather than risk losing you to the competition.

 8. Under-value your worth.

 9. Over-value your worth - may even think you are irreplaceable to the employer.

 10. Think the employer is in the driver's seat when it comes to negotiating salary.

 11. Approach salary negotiations from a perspective of need or greed rather than as a process of assigning value to your qualifications and projected future performance.

 12. Personalize salary issues by believing a salary is as­signed to you rather than to your position. Focus primar­ily on yourself rather than on the position to which salary is normally assigned.

 13. Fail to compile your supporting facts for a negotiating position.

 14. Negotiate salary and benefits over the telephone or through e-mail.

 15. Prematurely discuss salary before acquiring information on the job or before communicating your qualifications to the employer.

 16. Don't know how to close and follow-up the salary negotiation interview.

 17. Forget to consider benefits, perks, stock options, and equity incentives as part of the compensation package.

 18. Put too much emphasis on standard benefits rather than concentrate on the gross salary figure.

 19. Project an image that is not commensurate with the salary being negotiated.

 20. Put too high a price tag on themselves without provid­ing supports to justify the salary figure, such as previous salary history or indicators of performance.

 21. State a specific salary expectation figure on either their resume or in their cover letter.

 22. Too quick to accept employers' first or second offers.

 23. Don't know how to use timing as part of establishing one's value in the eyes of employers.

 24. Fail to adequately assess the employer's needs and develop a strategy to meet those needs as well as relate this strategy to your salary requirements.

 25. Don't give yourself much room to negotiate.

 26. Fail to raise intelligent salary questions about the job and the employer.

 27. Don't know how to handle employers' salary questions or say the wrong things.

 28. Don't know when to leave a job or company for oppor­tunities elsewhere that will pay better.

 29. Try to play "hard to get" when you have little or nothing to leverage.

 30. Lie about your past salary history or alternative salary offers.

Whatever you do, make sure you know what both the position and you are worth. One of the best ways to kill your financial future is by being both unprepared and unrealistic about your future salary when asked about your 'salary requirements' or 'salary expectations'. You must be able to address the two key salary considerations of the employer - the value of the position both within and outside the organization and your salary history - as well as focus on what should become the most important ingredient in the salary calculation - your potential performance in adding value to the employer's organization and operations. 

Money – people who believe they are overpaid in comparison to others doing the same work are more productive than those who are equitably paid (ie paid the same as others doing the same job). Those who believe they are underpaid are less productive than those who are equitably paid. Moreover, both overpaid and underpaid employees report being more dissatisfied with their jobs than those who are equitably paid. However, this research was based on short term experiments and it is doubtful how far the effects would persist over time, partly because the workers who are overpaid would come to see themselves as worth more and those who are underpaid as worth less. Nevertheless real life perceptions of inequity do affect behavior.

Another study of 10,000 British workers found that, while income had little effect on job satisfaction, comparison income had a clear effect. The lower it was, the higher was job satisfaction. In other words, with income held constant, the less people expect, the greater their job satisfaction. An American study with 4,567 employees found the same. It was also found that pay satisfaction was greater if there were procedures for ensuring fair incomes.

Women are paid less than men and have often been found to be contented with lower earnings because they compared their pay with that of other women and felt entitled to less than men. However, when men do exactly the same work as men they start to compare their wages with those of men and are no longer contented with lower wages.

Other studies also show that pay is not a predictor of satisfaction at all, after the intrinsic rewards and the importance of jobs had been taken into account.