Canadian Personal Finance Blog

A good friend, who is known as “Mr. Rules”, but is also “Mr. Arithmetic” once pointed out the dangers of making off hand remarks about your pay cheque to folks.

About 4 or 5 years ago, we were having a beveredge, and I mentioned that this was my last pay cheque where I had to pay CPP and EI in full. He turned and said, “Do you realize you just told me how much you make in a year?”. I was surprised and then thought about it, and yes, I had.

How? Well first you need to know what the CPP and EI rates are on your gross salary, which you can find for 2007, on the link. From that we can surmise:

• The CPP rate is 4.6% up to a maximum of $2010 or so
• The EI rate is 1.80% up to a maximum of $584

So if this is September, and you know that I get paid every two weeks, so this should be around my 19th pay cheque (or we are 9/12 of the way through the year, either calculation can be used):

• If we assume I have finished paying EI, so I have reached the $584.00 maximum, let’s see if we can estimate my Salary (gross):
• EI Max = Number of Pay Cheques * Bi-Weekly Salary * 1.8 %
• -> $584 = 19 * Bi-Weekly Salary * 1.8%
• -> Bi- Weekly Salary = ($584) / (19 * 1.8%)
• Thus Bi-Weekly Salary = $1700 or Yearly Gross Salary of $44,000 or so

Cool eh? Fun with numbers, but also keep in mind what you are telling folks when you mention little tidbits like that too!