Originally Posted by Wasatch Phantom

Bar,

You (as usual) bring up an interesting point...

Our pal Sailing likes to tell us how we are all doing better financially than we think (and much better than SWA). His accounting methodology requires one to add DAL's retirement contributions to one's W-2 earnings.

As someone who came to DAL during the years of the 60% FAE retirement, my methodology is different. I take my W-2 earnings and subtract from that my contributions to my 401K.

Numbers are illustrative: My best year was 2004 and my W-2 (as a First Officer no less) was just north of $215K. Last year (2012) my gross was just over $195K, but I contributed the max to my retirement ($22.5K). My math shows earnings of $172.5K but Sailing would say it should be $221K.

That's roughly a $50K difference. Maybe that's chump change to him but I can tell you I have a whole lot less discretionary income than I did eight years ago.