Paid to Stay
Reading. The number holds you most. Decide what it is buying you.
This test sorts what is keeping you where you are. It is not financial advice; the runway arithmetic in the worksheet uses your numbers and should be checked with someone qualified. It does not know your health, your family or your contract, and it does not tell you to leave.
Your tightest hold is Money. The pay is the main reason you are still here, you have stayed for a bonus or a vesting date that keeps moving, and you would not choose this job on its merits alone. This test calls that Paid to Stay. It describes a trade you are making, not a flaw in you.
There is nothing wrong with staying for money. Money pays for a house, a school, a parent's care, a runway for the next thing. The trouble starts when the trade is not named. Then the number quietly sets the terms of your life, and every year the next bonus becomes the reason for one more year.
So name it. Write down what the money is buying you, in plain words, and what it is costing you: in hours, in energy, in the work you are not doing. Then put a date on the trade. A trade with a date is a decision. A trade without one is a habit.
Check one more thing. Is it really the money, or is the money the easiest reason to say out loud? If your Fear and options reading is close behind, the number can be standing in for something harder to admit.
What to do this week. Work out your number: the income you actually need, not the one you have. The gap between the two is the price of your freedom. Until you measure it, the handcuffs are as tight as you imagine them.
Then ask the question this test is built around. What would you lead if money were not the reason? The answer tells you what the money is keeping you from. If the answer points at a different job rather than a different life, the should I quit my job quiz separates the work, the boss and the deal.
What to do with this result
If you do not manage people
Your next one on one. Ask about the work, not the money: what would you want me to own next year that I do not own now? If the answer excites you, the money stops being the only reason. If it does not, you have learned that too.
The three columns. Leave, if the number is the only reason and you have measured what freedom would cost. Stay and act, if the money buys something you have named and a change in the work would make the rest worth it. Stay and wait, if the trade has a date, such as a vesting point, and you have written down what happens on that date.
If you want to know what you would lead with, the free leadership style quiz is the place to start.
If you manage people
Some of your people are paid to stay, and they will not say so in a one on one. Money keeps people in their seats. It does not keep them at their best. Your team could answer these twelve statements about their own jobs, and the question for you is whether the work would hold them if the pay did not.
Ask each person what they would want to own next year, and give at least one of them the answer. The 1:1 meeting builder structures that conversation, and the management style quiz shows which habit you lean on when people go quiet.
If you are leaving to start or run something
The runway rule, as arithmetic. Before you resign, divide the savings you are prepared to spend by your monthly costs, including the new costs the venture adds. That is your runway in months. Then write down how many months you expect before the new thing pays you. If the first number is smaller than the second, you know what has to change before the letter goes in. This is arithmetic with your own numbers, not financial advice; check it with someone qualified.
Your tightest hold is money, so the arithmetic matters most for you: it tells you what the new venture has to replace, and by when. If you want peers for the move, the CEO Mastermind is a peer group for CEOs, and the executive coaching cost index sets out what one to one coaching costs, with sources.
Next step
The other results
- Free to ChooseNothing holds you tight. Staying or going is a real choice.
- Waiting for a ReasonThe work stopped mattering. You are staying without a reason.
- Afraid to LeaveFear and thin options hold you most. Measure them before deciding.
About this result
This is one of 4 results from the Golden Handcuffs Test: is it the money, or the fear, a free tool that shows the score without an email. Aggregate figures are at the statistics page once 30 completions have been reached. More free tools are at the tools shelf.