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Protect Your Paycheck by Understanding Your Pay Stub

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At the end of a week or 2 weeks, we get excited to receive our paychecks. Most of the time, we deposit our paychecks without question and without checking our pay stubs. If it hadn’t crossed your mind that the entries in the paycheck could get mistaken, then you will definitely receive it without question. Failure to check the correctness of your pay stub can lead to losses in your salary.

Understanding and checking your pay stub every time your receive one can help you determine whether you are receiving the right amount for your salary. It has been reported that half of the employees surveyed found mistakes on their paychecks. So, if you want to make sure that you are getting everything that you have worked for, you need to understand your paycheck so that you can keep more of your hard earned money.

Here are some tips to help you when examining your paycheck.

The first thing you should do is to scan each section. The sections in your pay stub include your employee information, the pay period, YTD or year-to-date, gross pay, and net pay. If you keep on checking that all these items are accurate, you will soon get used to checking your paycheck every time you receive one.

Not only the sections, but understand all the items in your pay stub. There are some things that are not in your pay stub. Some of them are here!

The pre-tax deductions are things that are taken out of your salary before you are taxed. Health insurance and retirement account money are some of these items. Not taxing these items can save you money.

Employer contributions are what your company pays for like part of your insurance or part of your retirement fund.

There are also other amounts like state taxes, federal taxes, FICA taxes, health insurance, health savings account deductions, and retirement account that are taken from your paycheck.

Make sure that all the numbers in your pay stub are correct. Human error is possible like entering your numbers wrongly. Printers don’t make the errors; it is the one who entered the numbers. Mistakes are made before they are printed. It is either you made a mistake when you input your hours or somebody else made an erroneous entry. This is something you can control. Always read more to check your pay stub for errors. Check the number of hours you have worked and the rate if they are right. The tax withholding amount should be correct so make sure to check this. Read more here.

Human errors do happen. And this is why you have to be careful to understand and check your pay stub. This will not take much of your time. If you check your pay stub all the time, then you are sure that you are not losing any money.