Two issues:

1. You're passing the jQuery wrapper of the element into parseInt, which isn't what you want, as parseInt will call toString on it and get back "[object Object]". You need to use val or text or something (depending on what the element is) to get the string you want.

2. You're not telling parseInt what radix (number base) it should use, which puts you at risk of odd input giving you odd results when parseInt guesses which radix to use.

Fix if the element is a form field:

//                               vvvvv-- use val to get the value
var test = parseInt($("#testid").val(), 10);
//                                    ^^^^-- tell parseInt to use decimal (base 10)

Fix if the element is something else and you want to use the text within it:

//                               vvvvvv-- use text to get the text
var test = parseInt($("#testid").text(), 10);
//                                     ^^^^-- tell parseInt to use decimal (base 10)

Calls to parseInt should always specify a base in the second argument:

parseInt("08", 10);

Earlier versions of JavaScript treat strings starting with 0 as octal (when no base is specified) and neither 08 nor 09 are valid octal numbers.

From the Mozilla documentation:

If radix is undefined or 0, JavaScript assumes the following:

• If the input string begins with "0x" or "0X", radix is 16 (hexadecimal).
• If the input string begins with "0", radix is eight (octal). This feature is non-standard, and some implementations deliberately do not support it (instead using the radix 10). For this reason always specify a radix when using parseInt.
• If the input string begins with any other value, the radix is 10 (decimal).

If the first character cannot be converted to a number, parseInt returns NaN.

And from the ECMAScript 3 standard:

When radix is 0 or undefined and the string's number begins with a 0 digit not followed by an x or X, then the implementation may, at its discretion, interpret the number either as being octal or as being decimal. Implementations are encouraged to interpret numbers in this case as being decimal.

The latest version of JavaScript (ECMAScript 5) abandons this behavior, but you should still specify the radix to satisfy older browsers.