Some of the most common questions I seem to get from prospective hires, is in regards to salary, financial prep before joining, and what true take home pay actually looks like. After I was hired, but before I started, I did a little dive into the way salary is calculated in the Foreign Service (FS), which you can find here, but now that I have my legs under me and have been working at post for a year, thought it was time to dive in deeper with firm numbers.

For a lot of folks on the outside looking in, if you look at the job opening and Foreign Service pay scales, you think you are taking a pretty hefty pay cut. This is especially true for seasoned providers, particularly physicians. While on the surface this is true, it doesn’t really paint the full picture of what your potential take home earnings can be, but for the sake of being devil’s advocate, let’s assume for now that the pay scales are firm and that is what you will make every paycheck. Below is a 2023 FS pay scale. Medical Providers start at Class 3, Physician start at Class 1. Your step within class is based on years of experience or comparative salary before you onboard. As a point of reference, I was started at Step 14 in class 3. Most of my peers started around there too.

Financial Prep:

One of the most difficult parts about preparing for the Foreign Service is the unknown. Will an invite come? Will my spouse be able to work? Will my future post have any salary differentials? Will I be able to make ends meet with that salary? What will my salary actually be?

At face value, I think the best way to financially prepare for joining the FS is to assume worst case scenarios. Assume that the lowest possible salary on the pay scale is all you’re taking home, and assume if you are married, your spouse won’t be working. From there, look at your current financial situation, monthly expenses, and figure out if you can actually maintain your lifestyle on that single salary.

For some folks, it might be easy, for other’s a real struggle. Prior to joining the FS, I was taking home about $10k per month after taxes and my wife was bringing home $7200 after taxes. We didn’t have student loan debt, about $35k in credit card debt, a mortgage of $3000 per month, and we both had a taste for luxury cars, so a monthly car payment of $2500 for two vehicles. We also paid $1200 a month for child care. Our income more than met our needs with firm monthly expenses of about $7000, but going from $17k of take home pay per month, to roughly $8k per month on a single salary wasn’t going to cut it, and we needed to take action.

There is a common saying when it comes to trying to join the FS, “live life like it will never happen”. I agree with this, with the exception that if you are on the register and have a decent OA score, live life like it will never happen, but financially be ready if it does. For my family, this meant doing something we should have done anyway, dumping our credit card debt. The second I applied for the FS, we immediately started prioritizing our credit card debt, and within 9 months it was gone.

From there, the remainder of our debt was cars and our mortgage, and these things are fairly easy to unload if given enough foresight. When I got my offer to join in January 2022, within a month I had unloaded one of my cars (RIP Crimson Fury), and a month before PCSing to Nouakchott, we got rid of the second. Both cars were electric which would not have done well on the Mauritanian power grid. The only thing remaining was our mortgage. Ultimately, we decided to keep the house, secured renters within our network of friends, and then refinanced to a 15 year mortgage literally 4 weeks before I started A100. This essentially meant that when we PCS’d to Nouakchott, our only firm monthly commitment was our mortgage, which with the 15 year mortgage slightly increased to $3300 a month, meant we would have no problem keeping afloat while living abroad on the governments dime.

Going relatively scorched earth really helped set a financial foundation to prepare us for the wild salary swings that can occur during this career.

Actual Salary:

The reality after orientation for most Medical providers is you are going to be sent to a post that offers a decent hardship differential, and many also offer a tax free cost of living allowance. I realize some folks might think talking salary is taboo, but I think it’s important in medicine, and with government salaries being public domain, I could care less if this ruffles some feathers. I want to say that the average hardship differential of all the 2022 MP classes was around 20-25%, so we aren’t going to the Brussels and Paris’ of the world right out of the gate.

When I onboarded in 2022 my base salary was $131k. My first assignment to Mauritania carries with it a 35% hardship differential. This means that the first week I got to post, I started the differential, upgrading my salary to $177k. Immediately, I was already starting to tickle my previous salary. When I first moved to Mauritania, our post also had a cost of living differential of 10%, which is calculated on family size, but roughly boiled down to an extra $5500 per year, tax free.

So, shortly after getting to post, my take home per month essentially started to match my previous take home of 10k per month. Although the actual salary was slightly less, because I no longer was working in New Mexico, I saved 5% of my annual income avoiding their state income tax (Texas, my domicile state has no income tax). Government healthcare plans, including life insurance are also far more affordable. In the private sector I paid nearly $1k a month for all my benefits. Working for the government, it’s closer to $375 a month, and that is with the most comprehensive health insurance plan on offer (which is far superior to my private sector plan). So while the actual gross income might be a bit less, what lands in my pocket is the same.

From my time of arrival, differentials and benefits have only increased. In 2023, President Biden signed a 4.6% salary increase for all federal employees, bumping my base to over 137k, which then plays a role in my differential calculation. Our cost of living allowance also increased to 25% AND Med providers after their first year also get a 10% retention bonus, paid out evenly over the year. What this means is my base salary is now $186k, my tax free cost of living allowance is $14k, and I also get an annual MED retention of over $13k. My take home pay per pay check now is scratching $6k every 2 weeks, and at this point I am actually taking home more money than I was in the private sector. When Angeli started working for the government at the embassy, her take home per month is a hair over $4k, so all in all, we have basically hit our previous level of household income but our actual costs are much less (cars/daycare/eating out), so we have ultimately been able to save a small fortune since joining.

Some of this needs to be attached with the caveat that every post comes with its own differential and cost of living allowance, so what you are making now in a high differential post, could be much less in a future post. My next assignment in Peshawar will actually make me even more money with double the differential of Mauritania, but after that I am likely going to end up choosing an assignment with great schools in a low differential country, and the pay will be much less. There again are also no guarantees Angeli will find work in a future assignment, so although her added income has been great, we certainly don’t rely on it to make ends meet, and if anything it helps fund added vacations and more savings for the kids.

I will say that in the end, if you want to chase the money and pursue assignments that pay well with high differentials, the competition is far less than folks pursuing the garden spots of western Europe, and even in entry level it isn’t hard to keep yourself in the green if that’s what you are shooting for.

Unrealized Benefits:

One thing that is mentioned a bit to potential applicants, but not fully realized, are the peripheral benefits of joining the FS that aren’t really up front in ones consciousness. For one, when you live abroad working for the U.S. government, your housing and utilities are 100% covered. If you don’t have a mortgage or rent back home, these costs represent for most American’s 30-40% of their take home income, that just magically vanishes. So even if your salary goes down, not dumping a huge chunk of your income into your living situation is a huge perk. Even with Angeli and I keeping our house in Texas, the rent combined with not paying utilities on the house means thousands of dollars of savings for us each month.

Another is childcare. To be blunt, childcare in most corners of the world is a lot cheaper than in the U.S. In Mauritania, I have a fulltime nanny, housekeeper, and gardener, and for all 3 employees, it costs me $750 a month total (which is very high end of the salary spectrum here). In the U.S. I was paying $1200 a month for part time child care for both of my kids. So not only do I have more child coverage, but my house cleaning and laundry is also done, and my yard is kept clean.

Free travel is another huge perk of the job. In Mauritania, for a 2 year tour I get three government funded R&R trips, with a cost construct cap of $4000 per person. Prior to joining the FS, I worked to travel, and that continues to hold true more than ever, except I really don’t have to fund the transport aspect of that travel anymore. When we went on our Disney trip last March, those plane tickets were 100% funded by the government. When we did our cruise and trip to Spain/British Isles last month, again, 100% covered travel. At Christmas time when we go and visit the Philippines with a stop over in Turkey, again, 100% of the travel is covered. We still have to pay for hotels and meals, but the most expensive part of journey is paid for by Uncle Sam. A lot of these trips I would take and have taken in the past, so the fact that the airfare is now free is a huge perk and just money I get to keep in my pocket.

Home leave is also another fantastic perk. At the end of each assignment abroad, you are congressionally mandated to take 20 “home leave” business days off AT A MINIMUM. What it really boils down to is a month off between assignments where you get to relax back in the U.S., see friends and family, and still get a paycheck. I guess if you have nowhere to go, it can be a burden, but I personally love this benefit and it really is a value add to the job IMHO.

Finally, FS employees are automatically enrolled in a pension system as as well a 401k type system, that essentially lets you retire with a guaranteed income for life after 20 years of service. If and when I make it the full 20 years, I can retire at 57 years old and have a monthly salary (calculating for raises and inflation) of nearly $9k a month, which doesn’t factor in the 401k savings or other investments I have. A true pension is basically a benefit of a bygone era, yet somehow it exists in the Foreign Service, and is truly an incredible luxury of the job.

Closing Thoughts:

When I joined the Foreign Service, I knew there would be quite a few benefits, but now that I am living it, I am sort of surprised by how quickly I was able to match my intake from the private sector, while also realizing and taking in a full suite of benefits that in most cases equal more money in my pocket, or down the road greater financial security.

Some uncertainty remains throughout your career, especially when differentials vary wildly from post to post, and spousal employment is a crap shoot, but in the end if you want to chase the money you can, if you want to pursue balance with spousal employment you can, if you want to try and post up in expensive 0 differential posts you can, or you can try and balance all of the above from post to post. Flexibility is probably the important trait to have when pursuing this lifestyle. If you prepare for the worst case scenario, then you likely will be pleasantly surprised by what actually happens. I know I have been. –Nick