Pay stub.
In plain English
The stub is the receipt for your pay. The standard anatomy: earnings (hours, rate, or salary for the pay period), pre-tax deductions (401(k), health premiums, HSA), taxes (federal withholding, FICA, state where applicable), post-tax deductions, and net pay. The year-to-date column is the quietly powerful part: it's a running audit of the whole year, and it's where errors (a missed 401(k) change, a wrong state, a benefits double-charge) show up first.
01Why it matters
Almost nobody reads their stub, which is why payroll errors run for months. A five-minute read of one stub, once, teaches more about your real finances than most articles, and a glance at the year-to-date line each quarter catches mistakes while they're small.
02The math, step by step
An employee bumps their 401(k) from 4% to 8% in March. June's stub still shows 4%: the change never processed. Caught in June via the stub, it's an email to HR. Caught in December via the W-2, it's a lost year of contributions and match.
Illustrative example. The amounts here are hypothetical, chosen to show how the math works, not real quoted rates or figures.
03What this is NOT
The stub's numbers won't match the W-2 exactly: the W-2's Box 1 is gross pay minus pre-tax deductions, which is why it's lower than your salary and why January's "my W-2 is wrong" emails to HR usually aren't.
Plain-English answers from our glossary. Receipts included. Never advice.
Educational tool. Answers come only from ClearMoneySchool's published glossary and are not advice. Why we never give advice