Seven guides and one dataset, all circling the same question: where did the rest of your paycheck go? Each piece is checked against the IRS, SSA or state documents it cites, and each links to the calculator that runs the math for you. Start with the deductions inventory if you are new to reading a stub, or jump straight to the guide that matches the line you are squinting at.
The full inventory of paycheck deductions, from the mandatory ones you cannot escape to the voluntary ones you signed up for at orientation and forgot about. Covers federal withholding, both FICA lines, state tax and the pre-tax benefits that quietly shrink your taxable income. A good first read if your stub has a code on it you cannot identify.
Read →Job offers quote gross; landlords collect from net. This guide walks the 20 to 35 percent gap between the two numbers, with the math shown separately for salaried and hourly workers. It ends with the conversion people actually want: what a given salary leaves per month in hand.
Read →A field guide to the least readable document you receive every two weeks. It goes column by column through earnings, taxes, benefits and year-to-date totals, and decodes the abbreviations payroll software loves. Worth a pass because most payroll errors are only ever caught by the person being paid.
Read →The federal line is the biggest and least predictable deduction on most stubs. This guide covers the 2026 brackets, why withholding rarely matches your actual tax bill, and how a W-4 adjustment fixes a chronic refund or a surprise balance due. Per-paycheck examples run at several salaries.
Read →Social Security and Medicare take 7.65 percent of nearly every paycheck in the country. This guide explains what that buys, where the 6.2 percent line stops at the $184,500 wage base, and what the extra 0.9 percent Medicare tax on high earners is. It also covers the part stubs never show: your employer pays the same 7.65 percent again on your behalf.
Read →The 2,080-hour year, explained: why that one number converts salary to hourly, when it misleads, and what to divide by instead if your real schedule is not 40 hours. Includes a quick-reference table and worked examples in both directions. Useful when weighing a salaried offer against contract work.
Read →One page covering gross versus net, every standard deduction category, pay frequencies and how to read the result, now with a line-by-line worked example taking a $65,000 salary from gross to net. Start here if you want the whole picture in one sitting.
Read →A reference table of 2026 take-home pay at common salaries for a single filer, with the exact IRS and SSA source documents named and a downloadable CSV. This is the dataset every calculator on the site is checked against. Use it to sanity-check your own stub, or ours.
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