This One Mistake Costs Workers $1 Million

Negotiating your salary early and often can be the difference between being able to afford a house, send your kids to college, or retire comfortably, according to a new analysis by job search site Salary.com.

It works like this: Say two people are given a job offer of $45,000, which is close to the average for a new college graduate. One negotiates an initial $5,000 bump and a 4% raise every three years, but the other accepts the offer without negotiating and sees only the standard 1% pay increase each year. After a 45-year career, the difference in the their lifetime earnings is a whopping $1,037,773, finds Salary.com.

Despite the fact that they are leaving more than $1 million on the table, a recent CareerBuilder survey found that nearly half of workers (49%) don't negotiate their first job offers, and the Salary.com analysis finds that two-in-five workers (41%) don't negotiate in their current jobs.

See the infographic below for more details, and find tips for negotiating a higher salary here.