Pay Stub Template

Can You Show Me How to Read My Pay Stub?

One of the first questions teenagers ask besides where can they cash their first paycheck is “Can you show me how to read my pay stub?” While many high schools have classes that teach money management and important skills such as how to open a checking account and how to balance a checking account every month, very few bother to take the time to teach anything about the information that is contained on a pay stub.

While teenagers are the most common group to ask “Can you show me how to read my paystub?” you will find that workers coming in from out of the country ask the same question. For those of you who have never seen the typical US pay stub here is a breakdown of the information that is contained on your paycheck so that you can have a better understanding of what it all means. The majority of the information is very important and you need to know what it all means.

At the top you should see the name and address of the company you are working for as well as your own. This can be very important as you will need this information to be present if you ever need your paystubs as proof of income. After this will be a section that shows you how many hours you have worked in the pay period. This will be broken down into regular hours and overtime hours along with the hourly rate you receive for each and a total for each. These figures when added together are your gross pay.

Your gross pay is how much you made before deductions, not the amount that will be in your paycheck. The next section is reserved for deductions, if you have a 401K retirement program or health insurance these will be shown as pretax deductions. After this will be your federal income tax deductions, FICA (social security), FICA Medicare taxes, state and local taxes. Once these figures have all been subtracted from your gross pay and any other miscellaneous deduction such as uniform fees taken out, the final total will be your net pay, which is the amount that will be on your paycheck.

This should answer the question “Can you show me how to read my pay stub?”, if you have any other entries on your pay stud, something that many companies do, you will need to go talk to your employer or your Human Resources officer to have them explain the specifics of your pay stub.