u r completely rite, I was trying to make bit expatiation so was later with
my post :-)

" wrote:

"Johan" wrote:
start wage 5000 current wage 10000
Start date 01/02/2004 (1st Feb) current date 03/03/2009 (3rd March)
length of service 5 years
What was the average annual % increase

=rate(5,0,-5000,10000)

(the xirr formula does not work)

XIRR would be overkill for this problem. But it certainly does work, if you
use it correctly. The key is for one value to be negative and the other to
be positive, just I did in the RATE formula about. If A1 is -5000, A2 is
10000, B1 is 1/2/2004, and B2 is 3/3/2009, then:

=xirr(A1:A2,B1:B2)

The small difference between RATE and XIRR results is because XIRR is "more
accurate" -- probably too accurate for your purposes.