Adulting is hard! Your pay stub gives you lots of information...your gross pay, your deductions and your net pay for the pay period and for the year to date. It appears you have pre-tax savings for dental and health care....make sure you use that money before it expires, which is sometimes the end of the year, sometimes a month into the next year. Those generally save you take home pay, since they lower your pay before taxes are calculated. Then you have the Federal withholding, Social security, Medicare, and GA withholding. You can't change social security or Medicare so only Federal withholding and GA withholding are slightly adjustable. The question becomes do you want more take home pay each check and perhaps owe a little when you file or do you want less take home pay and probably not owe when you file. To achieve the last option, many times you can have a few extra dollars withheld above the calculated withholding rate by filling in a new W-4. Take the amount you owed, divide it by the number of pay dates you get and add that to the W-4 form.
