How long did it take for you to double your starting salary?

Well, I’m a Graphic Designer and an Adjunct College Instructor and I have a BFA.
as we learned design the “old fashioned way”, I am self-taught on computer

Graphic Design (1994 to present): I doubled my annual salary in 6 years and tripled it in 7 more years.

Teaching (2000 to present): I doubled my hourly rate in 4 years and tripled it in 3 more years.

Been flat on both jobs for about 2 years. Also, which was full-time and which was part-time has flip flopped over the years.

why do you want to know this?

Can’t say I ever did double my starting salary. Museum curators don’t make big bucks.

However, if you go back to my very first job in my field of Biology, then it was about 7 years. I started at minimum wage in 1969 at $1.30 (full-time teachers made between $5000 and $6000 per year back then, and I was a part-time assistant). Then I moved up to $2.65 an hour as a 39-hour-per-week agricultural inspector in 1978. The next year I kept the same salary but added on 1 hour a week, to make 40 hours, and got insurance, vacation, pension, and sick leave benefits. When I retired eventually from my curatorial position, my hourly rate had gone up to $21.65 an hour, with full benefits.

If you want to get rich, do not go into whole-animal biology or museum curatorship.

I did have fun, though, and I sometimes got paid to go camping, to the beach, and to go to various scenic tropical locales.

3 Years (January 09). From next month I will be working for another company, doing the same thing I am doing right now, for about 1.5 times my actual salary.
I have a master’s degree in finance. I work in finance.

If I would have started working ten years ago in the same field by this time I would have multiplied by 5–7 times my starting salary.

Tough times.

Well I got lucky, but after I got out of college I worked for about a year and a half at my first real job as a loan officer. I tripled that salary when I went to the job I have now.

I have two business degrees from baylor university. I had roughly 1 1/2 years to 2 years experience as a loan officer before I became a risk analyst.

It took me 4 years to double my starting salary and I went from an office junior (AKA general dogsbody!) to a secretary.

It took me 4 years, but I kept getting bonuses due to results. It would normally have taken me well over 10 years.

I just had a 5% pay reduction due to the economy. At this rate, I won’t be doubling anytime soon.

Never. My annual income has actually gone down by increments over the past ten years. My first job out of college, I was an office supervisor. I only made about $35K a year, but the benefits were good. When my daughter was born, I left that job to work closer to home and took a paycut—not a big one, considering how much we saved on gas and childcare (I was a teacher at her daycare center). When my son was born, I kept the same job. Technically my salary didn’t change, but since the daycare tuition for both kids came right out of my paycheck it sure seemed like a big hit. After baby number three, I stopped working and now make a big fat zilch!

Luckily for us, my husband’s business has done well. He actually doubled his income each year for the first five years or so after starting his business. After that, each year he does steadily better. Even this year, with the bad economy, he’s doing well, which is surprising considering he provides a luxury service.

Bachelor’s Science in Business Admin, emphasis in Marketing. Started an entry-level sales job out at $32k and in a year and a half started another job in same field at $90k. This is in Mississippi.

Not long. A few years. It wouldn’t have taken much. This was more than thirty years ago, and my starting salary was meager even by those standards.

The interesting part is that my pay has doubled during the past ten years, when my career was already mature. Next big change is probably when it goes to zero. That’s high-tech for you.