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Course: Financial Literacy > Unit 11
Lesson 2: Compensation: More than payWhat is total compensation?
Your total paycheck is more than just the salary number—it's a mix of health perks, retirement funds, extra cash for good performance, and days off that all add up to what you really earn. Getting the full picture of these benefits helps you see the real deal of what your job is giving you. Created by Sal Khan.
Video transcript
- [Instructor] Let's say
that you've just gotten these two job offers and your goal is to figure
out which one gives you the most total compensation. So pause this video and see if you can figure
out the total compensation for job A and for job B. And then of course, we can compare them. Alright, now let's work
through this together. So I can just put a line here. Lemme do this in a color
we can actually see. So total compensation. Job A is pretty straightforward because they give you a
base salary and a bonus, and there's not really much
in the way of benefits here. So we just add 55,000 to $1,000 bonus. You are going to get $56,000, and essentially, that's all
in terms of taxable pay. Now, job B, there's no bonus, but there are definitely some benefits. We have the health insurance here, and then you have the 7% 401k match, which means that if you contribute about, up to 7% of your income, once again, that's gonna be tax deferred. You won't have to pay it now, and then later, when you
take it in retirement, then you'll pay taxes. But then you might be making less money and at least you've deferred those taxes. We could talk more about
the present value of money, but even more than just being
able to defer the taxes, the company is matching you. So for every, up to 7%, for
every dollar you put in, they're going to give you another dollar above and beyond this $45,000. So this is essentially
worth 7% of $45,000. If you take 7% times 45,000, let's see, that's going to be, that's going to be equal to 31, $3,150. And this is tax deferred as well. You're not going to be paying
taxes on it immediately, but in the future, it's
going to be in your 401k. You might have to pay taxes in the future, but it still, is going to be deferred. So if we were to just add up these things, even though this right
over here is tax deferred, and this right over here, you're not going to
have to pay taxes on it, but let's just add everything up. 8,000 plus 3,150 is 11,150, plus 45,000 is going to be 56,150. Did I do that right? Yes, I think that is right. So this is interesting. Even though job B has a lower salary and actually has no bonus
because of these benefits, and health insurance is actually
a pretty expensive benefit, you are now actually getting
a total compensation package that is higher in job B than in job A. And if health insurance
is something you need, you don't have any other source of it, this is especially useful because you are not going
to have to pay taxes on this $8,000. If a job just gave you
an $8,000 cash bonus, you will pay taxes on that. And then if you on top of that, had to then use that to
pay for health insurance, well then you're definitely better off with a scenario like this.