Day rate vs salary: the break-even

£400 a day, or £70,000 a year?

Bill 220 days at £400 and you invoice £88,000; after £6,000 of costs that's £82,000 of profit, with your own pension and six unpaid weeks off. Set it beside a £70,000 salary with a normal pension. They look close. They aren't:

On the fair measure — net position, which counts the employer pension the salary adds and the commute it costs — the contract is £4,231 a year ahead. Run the salary backwards and the break-even is £77,172: that's the salaried package a £400-a-day contract is really worth. A £70,000 offer isn't matching it; it's a pay cut wearing a bigger number.

Rough conversions, both ways

Billing 220 days a year with £6,000 of costs, here's the salary that leaves you the same spendable take-home:

These match on take-home alone. A salaried job usually adds an employer pension on top, so it can draw level at a slightly lower headline — the employer is chipping into the pot — which is why the worked example above puts a £400-a-day contract level with about £77,000 once a normal pension is counted. Either way the lesson holds: a day rate has to clear a salary by a good margin before it's genuinely more money, because so much of what a salary pays is invisible.

The break-even is your negotiation number — but it isn't the whole verdict

Whichever way you're moving, the break-even is the figure to anchor on: the day rate that matches a salary you'd leave, or the salary that matches a contract you'd give up. Quote it and you're negotiating from arithmetic, not nerves. But money is only half of it. Contracting trades security for control — irregular income, no sick pay, your own pipeline to fill, against your own hours and no boss. Greener scores that life side beside the money and weighs the two by what matters to you, so "more money" and "the right move" can come apart — and it tells you, in plain words, when they do.