I'm also not into trying to maximize every dollar and care a lot about other factors like WLB. But these days I'm feeling a lot of pressure due to inflation. Everything is going up and I feel like I need to switch jobs and increase salary just to keep up. Yesterday, I read a news article that Social Security benefits are increasing by 5.9% next year due to inflation. And that's from Social Security which historically was under-adjusting for inflation (usually like 1.5% per year). So if the stingy SS program is going 5.9%, what does that say about the actual inflation?
And I've never seen anything close to 5.9% for COL from any company. Most companies don't give that even for top performers. I don't think companies are prepared to give 5.9% COL, most companies are already so short sighted they would rather lose their entire engineering department instead of give raises to keep up with the market rate (even though they would be willing to pay that market rate when hiring a replacement). That kind of short sighted thinking simply does not allow a massive COL increase, no matter how much data is out there.
Inflation is not a universal metric, it's individual. Every person, every household has their own inflation rate depending on spending profile. I would not use government figures to make decisions about my financial affairs.
And I've never seen anything close to 5.9% for COL from any company. Most companies don't give that even for top performers. I don't think companies are prepared to give 5.9% COL, most companies are already so short sighted they would rather lose their entire engineering department instead of give raises to keep up with the market rate (even though they would be willing to pay that market rate when hiring a replacement). That kind of short sighted thinking simply does not allow a massive COL increase, no matter how much data is out there.