Stacy L ChinFounder, KeepYourEquity · I get the government to write you checks

Can I pay myself a $500k Salary?

18 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:48

In this instructional video, Stacy Chin explains that while a principal investigator can request a $500,000 salary on a federal grant or contract, approval hinges on rigorous justification rather than personal desire. She outlines a step‑by‑step approach: first, consult U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data to locate the appropriate occupational category and use the median‑to‑75th‑percentile range as a benchmark; second, compute the salary cost as hourly rate multiplied by the number of hours and the effort percentage allocated to the project. Chin warns that overly high salary requests trigger reviewer scrutiny, potential budget cuts, and loss of credibility. To succeed, a proposal must either provide a strong, documented justification for the elevated salary or incorporate cost‑sharing to offset the excess. The overall message is that federal grant salaries are paid based on defensible, data‑driven calculations, not on what the applicant wishes to earn.

Chapters

Can I pay myself a $500K salary from a federal grant or contract? I've seen this mistake kill so many proposals, so let's break it down. Short answer: you can ask for it, but you're probably not getting approved. Because here's how salaries work: it's not based on what you want, it's based on what you can justify. So this is what you do: go to the BLS data, that's the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Find your role, find your rate, and then anchor it to the median to 75th percentile. Step 2: don't just plug in a number. It's your hourly rate times the time, times the effort. And if you go too high, you open a can of worms. Reviewers will question it, budgets will get cut, and then you lose credibility. So if you want to propose a high salary, you either need really strong justification or just cost share the rest. Because in federal grants and contracts, you don't get paid for what you want, you get paid for what you can defend. And that's why I told my client the other day when he asked me,