This is one screen of StormArc's Stage-1 module — “I just got my first job; how do I get smart with my money?” — running on the real stormarc engine (v0, 31/31 golden tests) with verified 2026 tax law. Sam is a fictional demo persona; every number below was computed, not typed.
Every dollar between gross and net is named below — nothing is a mystery deduction. Bars are proportional to gross.
| Line | Annual | Per check | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employer 401(k) match Free money on top of salary — never shows up in take-home, but it's real compensation. |
+2,600.00 | +108.33 | |||||||
| Traditional 401(k) — 4% Skips income tax now (not FICA); still yours, just future-you's. |
−2,600.00 | −108.33 | |||||||
| Health premium (pre-tax) §125 premiums skip income tax and FICA — insurance bought with untaxed dollars. |
−1,440.00 | −60.00 | |||||||
| Federal income tax
Brackets tax only the dollars inside them, on $44,860 taxable.
Show the bracket walk
|
−5,135.20 | −213.97 | |||||||
| Social Security 6.2% up to the $184,500 cap. 401(k) money does not escape this one. |
−3,940.72 | −164.20 | |||||||
| Medicare 1.45% of every wage dollar, no cap. |
−921.62 | −38.40 | |||||||
| Kansas state income tax
KS taxes federal AGI minus its own $3,605 deduction and $9,160 exemption.
Show the bracket walk
|
−2,601.88 | −108.41 | |||||||
| Net take-home What actually hits the bank. Every dollar of the gap is accounted for above. |
48,360.58 | 2,015.02 |
You accepted a $65,000 job. Then the first deposit hit and it was… about $2,000 per paycheck. Nobody stole anything. Both numbers are real — they're just answers to different questions.
Gross is what your employer pays for you. Net is what lands in your account. The gap isn't one mystery deduction; it's five specific ones, and you can name every dollar.
Three things worth noticing in the table above:
Your pay stub lists all of this already. Most people never read it. Reading yours once, line by line, puts you ahead of most of the people who trained you.
Takeaway: the gap between gross and net isn't a shock — it's five knowable lines, and one of them is you paying yourself.
Someone in your life has said it: "Careful — that raise could bump you into a higher bracket and you'll actually take home less." It sounds street-smart. It's wrong, and the math takes one minute.
Brackets work like a staircase, not a cliff. Moving into the 22% bracket doesn't tax all your income at 22% — only the dollars above the line.
At $65,000, taxable income (after the $16,100 standard deduction) is $48,900 — all of it lands in the 10% and 12% steps. Federal tax: $5,620. Get a raise to $70,000 and taxable income is $53,900, crossing into the 22% bracket at $50,400:
| First $12,400 at 10% | same as before |
| Next $38,000 at 12% | same as before |
| Last $3,500 at 22% | the only new thing |
New federal tax: $6,570. You paid $950 more on $5,000 more income — you keep $4,050 of the raise. A raise cannot make you poorer. (The rare real cliffs live in benefit programs, not income-tax brackets.)
Marginal rate = tax on your next dollar (the decision-making number). Effective rate = your average ($6,570 ÷ $70,000 = 9.4% — just the receipt). Every future choice — Roth vs. traditional, chasing a deduction, whether overtime is "worth it" (it is) — turns on the marginal rate.
One more thing worth clocking at 22: your 12% marginal rate is close to the lowest it will ever be while you're working. That fact quietly decides the Roth question.
Takeaway: brackets are a staircase — a raise only ever taxes the new dollars at the new rate, so more gross is always more net.
Sam takes home $4,030/mo; $2,800 goes to living expenses and $290 to required debt minimums, leaving $940/mo to point somewhere on purpose.
Seven rungs, filled top to bottom, each with its reasoning shown. This is a recommendation with its work attached — you decide, you implement.
Already captured: Sam defers 4.0%, which claims the full 4.0% match — $2,600/yr of free money is coming in.
Every extra dollar at the credit card (24% APR, $3,000 balance) earns a guaranteed 24% — tax-free and risk-free. No investment reliably beats that. Highest APR first (avalanche): it's the cheapest math, and minimums on everything else are already covered in the budget.
One month of essentials is $2,800; Sam has $500. Until that floor exists, any surprise — a tire, an ER copay — lands on a credit card and becomes rung-2 debt.
At $63,700 MAGI Sam is likely in the lowest tax bracket of his career — Roth means paying today's LOW rate once, then decades of growth and every retirement withdrawal tax-free. $1,250/mo would fill the remaining $7,500 of 2026 room.
Job-loss insurance you sell yourself: 6 months of essentials is $16,800. It's what makes every later investment safe to leave alone in a bad year.
$23,200 of unused 2026 401(k) space remains ($24,500 limit). Tax-advantaged room expires every December 31 — use it or lose it.
Nothing reaches this rung this month — the earlier rungs consumed the surplus, which is exactly what the waterfall is for.
Recommend-only: nothing here moves money — you decide and you implement. Dollar limits and phase-outs are 2026 law from the engine's verified constants file.
"What should I do with extra money?" feels like it needs a financial advisor. It doesn't. There's a well-worn order of operations, and it exists for one reason: each step's math beats the step below it. Fill from the top.
Why this exact order? Read the returns downhill: ~100% match → 24% guaranteed → the option that protects both → tax-free growth → safety completion → tax-deferred growth → taxed growth. Every step dominates its successor. That's the whole theory.
Worked example: $500/month extra at a $65k job. Step 1: $217/mo captures the full 4% match. The remaining $283/mo kills a $3,000 card at 24% (~12 months), then builds the $2,800 starter fund (~10 months), then flows into the Roth. Under two years from "no plan" to "funding a Roth IRA monthly" — on $500 a month.
Honest footnotes: some people build the starter fund before attacking debt (steps 2↔3) for sleep-at-night reasons — defensible. A genuinely low-rate debt (under ~5%) can wait at step 7's priority. The skeleton holds either way.
Takeaway: one decided order, filled top to bottom, replaces a decade of "what should I do with this?" — this is the map for the next ten years.
Written alongside the engine — every lesson attaches to a live number on this dashboard.