Newbie question: when posting on DCUM, is ‘salary’ just paycheck $, or + employer benefits?

[Anonymous]

I am confused. When posting to DCUM, I onsidered my salary to be my annual paycheck smount ($164200 GS-15 Fed). But reading some of the posts on the “DCUM regular income” thread, I see some people are including benefits. So, am I supposed to be including the health ins supplement , TSP basic, TSP matching, and FERS retirement too, that the government pays for me? Because that would bring it up about $42K to $206000... or should only private industry benefits like stock options be included? It just occurred to me that when I was reading others people’s posts that I might not be using the right numbers for purposes of comparison. What number should I be using when I post my ‘salary’? Thanks for clarifying!

[Anonymous]

I just post my salary. I haven't even sat down to work out the monetary equivalent of my benefits, and I've worked at my job for 7 years.

[Anonymous]

I would include cash bonus and stock options but not the rest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would include cash bonus and stock options but not the rest.

. Maybe 401 K match too

[Anonymous]

Salary is your paycheck
401K match is a benefit
Bonus and stock options are forms of additional compensation, which could be guaranteed or not.
Added all together is your total compensation package, which is generally stated as a range to take into account the fact that some of parts of the are not guaranteed.

[Anonymous]

Your pretax pay.

[Anonymous]

Pretax salary. Most workers in the private sector don't even know the value of their full benefits packages, since only the public sector has to report that out.

[Anonymous]

I post our HHI salary only

[Anonymous]

This is OP, thanks!!