I did something like this once, but from a different angle. Since salaries usually trend up, it's interesting to look at each salary bump in terms of how much m

I did something like this once, but from a different angle. Since salaries usually trend up, it's interesting to look at each salary bump in terms of how much money it makes for you over your entire working lifetime. For example, if your first job pays $60k, and your working years are say 52 years total, the payout from sustained employment is $3.12 million dollars (52 years * $65k). If you then move onto another job 2 years later, and make $70k. The payout for that jump is $500k ($10k * 50 years). Or another way is to look at how much each pay bump has made for you till now (instead of over your entire potential working lifetime). This helped put into perspective for me how important certain pay increases were for me and how unimportant others were. For example, big pay increases that occurred recently haven't yet had time to really make me any significant money, but even modest ones from 20 years ago have. It also really puts into perspective how bad bonuses are vs wage increases. Even a large bonus pales in comparison to decades of small increases. It also gave me better information when I chose to take a job at lower pay, in terms of how much I was sacrificing, and when I eventually ended back up where I was, how much that choice was actually costing me over my lifetime.