When I went to quit my first real job, my boss offered me fifty percent more on the spot. That was the day I learned what my work was worth, and what I had been settling for. I have not made that mistake since: once a year I have the conversation, I do not back down until we have had it, and if the company has to grow before I can, I look around.
This is the first money principle for a reason. Nothing on the saving side of the chart moves the line as much as what comes in at the top. Cutting a subscription saves you ten euros a month. A ten percent raise, kept rather than spent, is a hundred or two hundred euros every month for the rest of your career, and it compounds.
Know your market rate, ask for it, and be ready to move. It is uncomfortable for one afternoon a year. The chart remembers it for forty.
Two people, twenty and forty years on
Ivo had the conversation once, got ten percent more from next year, and kept it. Ana never asked.