Your situation
Will a raise make me poorer?
Sometimes yes, and here is exactly when it happens.
The short answer
A raise can leave you poorer when it pushes you off a benefits cliff, where the benefits you lose are worth more than the extra pay. In Ohio, a $1,000 raise at $47,000 can cut real take-home by $19,076 a year. It is not most raises, but it is real, and it is worth checking before you say yes.
Most raises are worth taking. You pay a bit more tax, you may lose a little benefit help, and you keep the rest. That is how it is supposed to work, and usually it does.
But if a raise lands right where several of your benefits fall away at once, the math flips. The help you lose can be worth more than the pay you gain, so your family ends up with less money than before. This is not about earning too much. It is about a raise landing in exactly the wrong spot, on a cliff nobody told you was there.
A worked example
Here is a raise that costs money, for a family of 4 in Ohio:
Calculated live from published government rules for a family of 4 in Ohio, the same engine behind the calculator.
The fix is not to turn down every raise. It is to know where your cliff sits. A raise that lands just before the cliff can hurt, while a bigger raise that clears it pays off fully. Sometimes the answer is to ask for more, not less, so you land on the safe side.
Before you accept or turn down an offer, it is worth running your own numbers. The free tool shows whether a specific raise puts you above or below your cliff, and gives you a target income that clears it for good.
See the cliff where you live
The band where benefits fall away is different in every state. Pick yours to see the real number for a family like yours.
Questions people ask
- Should I turn down a raise to keep my benefits?
- Not automatically. Turning down a raise can trap you below the cliff for years. Often the better move is to know the income that clears the cliff and aim for it, so a bigger raise pays off fully instead of a smaller one leaving you stuck.
- How much of a raise gets wiped out by a cliff?
- At a cliff, more than the whole raise can be wiped out. For a family of 4 in Ohio, a $1,000 raise can leave the family about $19,076 a year worse off once lost benefits and higher costs are counted.
- How do I check if my raise is safe?
- Put your state, family size, current pay, and the offered pay into the free CliffCheck tool. It tells you whether that raise leaves you better or worse off, and the income that clears the cliff. Nothing you enter leaves your phone.