Hourly to Salary: What Your Wage Is Per Paycheck
Job listings say “$20 an hour,” but your rent, car payment, and grocery bill don’t care about hourly rates. They care about what lands in your account every payday. Converting an hourly wage to a yearly salary, a monthly figure, and — most useful of all — a per-paycheck number is the first step to a budget that actually fits your life. Here is the simple math, a quick chart, and how to get from gross pay to the take-home number you should budget with.
The Basic Hourly to Salary Formula
A full-time schedule is usually figured as 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, which is 2,080 hours a year. Multiply your hourly wage by 2,080 and you have your gross annual salary. From there, divide by 12 for a monthly figure, or multiply your hourly rate by 80 to get one bi-weekly paycheck (two 40-hour weeks).
- Yearly: hourly wage × 2,080
- Monthly: yearly ÷ 12
- Bi-weekly paycheck: hourly wage × 80
- Weekly paycheck: hourly wage × 40
Hourly to Salary Chart ($15–$30 an Hour)
These are gross (before-tax) amounts for a 40-hour week with 52 paid weeks a year.
| Hourly | Yearly | Monthly | Bi-weekly |
|---|---|---|---|
| $15/hr | $31,200 | $2,600 | $1,200 |
| $18/hr | $37,440 | $3,120 | $1,440 |
| $20/hr | $41,600 | $3,467 | $1,600 |
| $22/hr | $45,760 | $3,813 | $1,760 |
| $25/hr | $52,000 | $4,333 | $2,000 |
| $30/hr | $62,400 | $5,200 | $2,400 |
The Quick Mental Math Trick
Double your hourly wage and add “thousand” to get a close estimate of your yearly salary. $20 an hour is roughly $40,000 a year (the exact figure is $41,600). $25 an hour is roughly $50,000. It works in reverse too: divide a salary in thousands by two to estimate the hourly rate, so a $60,000 offer works out to about $30 an hour. The shortcut runs slightly low, which makes it a safe number to plan around when you are comparing job offers on the spot.
Why Your Paycheck Is Smaller Than the Chart
Everything above is gross pay. Before the money reaches you, your employer withholds Social Security and Medicare (7.65% combined), federal income tax, state and local income tax where they apply, and any benefits you chose, like health insurance or 401k contributions. That is why a $1,600 bi-weekly gross check might deposit somewhere around $1,250–$1,350. The exact amount depends on your state, your W-4, and your benefit elections, so use the chart for comparing jobs and use your real deposit for budgeting. Our guide to net vs. gross income walks through the difference, and how to read your pay stub shows where each deduction appears.
💡 Budget with your net, not your rate. Pull up your last two pay stubs and write down the actual deposit amount. That number, not your hourly wage, is what your paycheck budget should be built on.
Adjust for Your Real Schedule
The 2,080-hour assumption only holds if you work 40 hours every week and get paid for holidays and vacation. Adjust if your situation is different:
- Unpaid time off: two unpaid weeks drops you to 2,000 hours, so multiply by 2,000 instead.
- Part-time or variable hours: multiply your hourly wage by your average weekly hours, then by 52. If your hours swing a lot, budget on your lowest typical week and treat anything extra as a bonus. Our irregular income guide covers this in more detail.
- Overtime: leave it out of your base salary math entirely. Overtime is temporary, so plan for it separately with our guide on how to budget overtime pay.
Bi-Weekly Pay Means 26 Paychecks, Not 24
If you are paid every other week, you get 26 paychecks a year, not 24. Dividing your salary by 12 and then by 2 understates each check and hides the fact that two months a year bring a third paycheck. Budgeting by paycheck instead of by month keeps the math honest: plan each check’s bills, savings, and spending on its own, and treat those three-paycheck months as a chance to catch up on goals. Our bi-weekly budget guide shows how to set that up step by step.
Put Your Number to Work
Once you know your real per-paycheck take-home pay, everything else in your budget gets easier: you can tell whether that apartment is affordable, how much you can send to savings each payday, and how fast a debt can realistically be paid off. Start with your net deposit, assign every dollar of it a job before the next payday, and revisit the math whenever your rate, hours, or benefits change.
💵 Plan each paycheck in Payday Planner — enter your real take-home pay once and see exactly where each check goes. Free, no bank connection required.