will need to pay tax on profits. So if you need to 'take home'  $60,000 you need to work out the pre-tax amount. Don't worry about getting too detailed here. I'd just do something like this. If you pay tax at a rate of 30% then you will need to earn $60,000/0.7=$86,000. If the maths bogs you down, just divide your 'take home' by 0.7. That's a 30% tax rate and is a good enough 'guestimate'  for everyone to use. To add a little extra spice to this I suggest you have three money goals: a good one, a great one and an awesome one! Your good goal is the one you thought about in Step 3. Your great goal is a slightly bigger one - so I'd add 10% or 15% onto the Step 3 one Your awesome goal is one that's pretty big and a little cheeky. Probably 20% to 30% higher than the one in Step 3. I use Good, Great and Awesome goals for this reason: Once we set a goal we rarely over achieve it, if anything we tend to come in a little under. The "Good" goal is the real goal but if we only work to that we might not quite reach it. But if we aim for the "Great"  goal we should manage to get the "Good" one. I put the "Awesome" one in because you might want to stretch your goal a little. Working towards "Awesome" usually gets you to "Great"!