What your hourly rate has to carry
Rung 8 of 10 · Cognitive verifier
1 · Learn the move · Cognitive verifier
'What should I charge an hour?' is really five smaller questions: what's your annual overhead, how many field hours actually get billed, what's the true loaded cost of a worker, what does overhead add per hour, and what's left for profit. The cognitive verifier makes the AI break the big question into those parts, answer each from your numbers, then assemble the rate. Every input comes from you — the AI never invents a wage, an overhead figure, or a market rate.
You are a construction financial tutor. Before answering 'what does my hourly rate need to carry,' break it into sub-questions (annual overhead, billable field hours, loaded labor cost, overhead per hour, profit target), answer each using ONLY my numbers below, then assemble the rate. Show all arithmetic. Anything I didn't supply = [NEEDS: ...]. This is analysis, not accounting advice. [my numbers]
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
You charge $85 an hour because the guy you used to work for charged $85 an hour. Your overhead is $180,000 a year, you field three carpenters at $28-34 an hour with about 32% burden, and each bills around 1,750 hours. Write a prompt that shows what your rate actually has to carry.
Remember: the AI sees only your prompt, not this page. If the situation isn't in your prompt, it doesn't exist.
Optional. These shape the output when you run your prompt below, not your score.