how to politely ask for a raise

[John Formsma]

On Feb 5, 2008 8:11 PM, Brian Doepke <bdoepke at verizon.net> wrote:

>  I have been tuning for a church twice a month for a year+1/2 without even
> a slight increase in fees.  I don't want to lose this client.  They like my
> work, we have a good communication and rapport....but I feel a slight
> increase is warranted with increased advertising costs, travel expenses and
> so on.
>
> How would you handle this?   Or...would you just leave the situation as it
> is?
>

Good advice from others.  I went up this year.  I either let them look at
the total on the invoice, or have mentioned something when writing it out.
 Something like "I had to increase my rates this year..." with or without an
explanation should work.  Every other service and goods are up, so we must
follow suit.  I haven't found UPS absorbing a loss of profit from increased
costs -- they pass it on to me.

It's just more expensive to live with the value of the dollar decreasing all
the time.  Because inflation decreases the value of the dollar, we really
must increase our rates every year.  If inflation is around 4%, then you are
losing 4% of your buying power by the end of the year.  To put that in
numbers, let's say you make $1000 per week right now.  In December, you will
still make $1000 per week, but your buying power will have gone down to $960
per week.  So we have to take that into consideration when choosing our
rates.  (I don't know exactly what the rate of inflation is -- just using
the 4% as an example.)

-- 
JF
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