Income
Wages, self-employment, and the arithmetic of earning.
Income is the top line of the household — the number every other number depends on. But few households can state their own income accurately across gross, taxable, and take-home, or explain what happens to the difference. This course closes that gap.
You will read your own pay stub line by line, understand the arithmetic of self-employment and partnership income, and produce a model of what an additional hour of work is actually worth to you after tax and opportunity cost.
- 01
Distinguish gross, taxable, and take-home income.
- 02
Read a pay stub and a 1099.
- 03
Model the marginal value of an additional working hour.
- — Course 102 — Personal Finance.
1 week · ~3 hours.
- IModule · ~1 hour.
How you get paid
The instruments of earning, from W-2 to K-1.
The instruments of earning — W-2, 1099, K-1 — have different arithmetic and different risks. Understanding the differences shapes the career.
What You Will Be Able To Do- — Distinguish W-2, 1099, and K-1 income at the tax and cash-flow level.
- — Explain what an employer pays that never appears on your stub.
- — Recognize when the same work is better structured under a different instrument.
Why hereHouseholds treating all income as identical make identical mistakes across all three regimes.
- IIModule · ~1 hour.
The pay stub
The document, line by line.
The pay stub is a legal document most workers glance at once and never again. This module dissects it line by line.
What You Will Be Able To Do- — Read every line of your own stub and account for it.
- — Compute gross-to-net under three different tax regimes.
- — Catch the two errors that most commonly appear on stubs.
Why hereThe document you get twice a month deserves to be understood once, for good.
- IIIModule · ~1 hour.
Increasing income
The disciplined path to a raise.
Raising income is a discipline, not luck. This module treats it as one — with market rate, negotiation, and second-income arithmetic.
What You Will Be Able To Do- — Estimate the market rate for your work defensibly.
- — Decide whether a second engagement is net positive after taxes and time.
- — Draft a written income architecture for the next three years.
Why hereCompounding starts with a bigger top line. This module gives Scholars the arithmetic to justify the ask.
Most negotiation and career advice fails because the person receiving it does not know what an incremental dollar is worth to them. Fix that first.