Understanding Your Paycheck: Fill & Download for Free

Why is non-payment of rent taken so seriously by landlords?For exactly the same reason non-payment of your paycheck by your boss would be taken seriously by you.You have bills to pay. You are owed that money.Your landlord has bills to pay. He is owed that money.It’s not rocket science to understand.

I once worked with a woman who had formerly been on food stamps. I was asking questions about the system because I didn't quite understand how it works. She admitted that she had once been a recipient.You see, she had two young children at the time, one of them a baby, when her husband left. He was the only earner in the household because she had just recently given birth. She told me she received those benefits for a while and then immediately made an excuse.“Well I was only on it for a short time and I only bought food for my babies. I never took any of the food for myself.”She'd clearly been judged for it before.I told her: “Girl, this is what the system is for. You shouldn't feel ashamed. You paid into that system before you used it and you've been paying into it since, now for many years. You needed help. Don't feel bad taking it. And now part of your paycheck goes to helping others in that situation.”She looked surprised. Maybe nobody had ever tried to understand her situation before. She felt ashamed about it, maybe only because of the way others tried to make her feel. But she shouldn't have felt that way.Nobody should feel that way. You do what you have to to feed your family. That's why the system exists: people need it. Usually the most vulnerable people in our society.

In Sweden, we tend to feel that that money is well-spent.It’s more like a club fee that is paid to keep things pleasant and services well-greased, and we understand that it takes these payments in order to ensure society ticks over with all the bells and whistles we take for granted.These taxes pay for stuff that would be considered big ticket items in the rest of the world, like education for your children, and healthcare and elderly care anyone has access to, plus a wide array of great institutions and projects that do their part in making society better, many of which don’t even exist elsewhere.If one does the math, having one-third of your paycheck “disappear” in order to pay for all that and more is actually quite a deal. Of course if you don’t have children, and don’t go to university, and never lose your job, and never get sick, and die young, you might feel you just paid in and got nothing back.But the thing is, if you want to have children and send them to school and university, and have everyone health insured, and looked after when they’re old or disabled, and feel safe in case you lose your job or get sick, you can. The system has got you. No one needs to forego any of these things for lack of money.That’s a major factor in how good you may feel your life is.Do the math. If you can buy insurances and savings to pay for all of the above, without deductables, I doubt one-third of your paycheck would get you all that, in a place that isn’t set up like Sweden (or Norway, or Germany, or the Netherlands… pretty much all of Europe, actually). Especially if you don’t earn a lot.It works because everybody pays into it - like an insurance policy, but bigger.Try to work out the cost for this if you were to pay for it out of pocket, not universally tax funded: “Family of five, two or three kids to be put through school and university, perhaps one with a chronic condition or a disability, and four grandparents who may have their own issues, perhaps one parent unemployed” every now and then… nice to know you’re covered for all of these at all times simply by being alive and doing your stuff.