How to Read a Pay Stub

Series Summary

With record numbers of fraud and identity theft being reported every year, keeping on top of your personal finances is more important than ever before. But how many of us are really aware of our personal financial situation on a day-to-day basis? For those of us who are new to banking, or those of us who never really had the time or motivation to learn how to properly keep track of our spending, we offer these videos to answer questions you might have about maintaining your checking account.

In this free video series, watch as financial consultant Brett Skaggs teaches how to organize your income and assets. Learn how to read a pay stub, how to read a bank statement, how to find a job as a recent college grad, how to organize income and assets if you're self employed, how to balance multiple jobs, how to organize income from side jobs, how to live off investments, and how to live off inheritance. Start taking back control of your money with the help of these step by step tutorials from the experts at ExpertVillage.

Video Transcript

"Hello! My name is Brett Staggs and on behalf of Expert Village, I am here to show you how to organize your income and assets for first time home buyers. The first thing you want to do when buying a first home, is you need to determine your actual income. Now primarily people have just one full time job and you get two pay stubs each month normally and the first thing you want to do is look at your pay stub very closely. It can be kind of deceiving at times. When you are looking at your pay stub, the money that a bank will take into consideration is your gross income. This is your income before they take taxes out, before they take out health insurance and any sort of Federal tax. This is your bulk income and this is what banks will look at. A lot of times first time home buyers will look at their net, which is your income after taxes which is the actual money that gets deposited. But it is nice of the banks that they will look at your gross, they don't take into consideration all these deductions and that is the actual income they are going to use in determining our qualification for first home. "