Two offers land in the same week. Company A pays $82,000. Company B pays $76,000. Easy call? Not until you price the rest of the page: Company B matches 5 percent into the 401(k), covers 90 percent of a family health premium, and grants 20 days of PTO against Company A's 3 percent match, 60 percent premium coverage, and 12 days. Run the arithmetic below and B's "lower" offer can come out thousands ahead. Benefits routinely represent a large share of total compensation — which means comparing offers on salary alone is reading a third of the contract.

The 401(k) match: the closest thing to free money on the page

A match is a direct employer contribution contingent on yours. On an $80,000 salary, a full 5 percent match is $4,000 a year; a 3 percent match is $2,400. The $1,600 gap compounds for decades in a tax-advantaged account. Price it at face value, then check two modifiers: the vesting schedule (matched dollars may only become fully yours after several years — leave early and unvested match evaporates) and the match formula (dollar-for-dollar versus 50 cents per dollar). How the account itself works is covered in the 401(k) basics guide.

Health insurance: compare your share, not the plan name

The sticker that matters is the premium share deducted from your paycheck, times pay periods, plus the deductible and out-of-pocket maximum you would realistically face. A plan that costs you $120 a month with a $1,500 deductible versus one costing $350 a month with a $4,000 deductible is a difference worth several thousand dollars a year for a family that actually uses care. Employer premium contributions are also untaxed compensation — dollars you receive without an income-tax haircut. If an employer offers a high-deductible plan with an HSA contribution, count that contribution as cash, and note the account's unusual tax treatment — contributions, growth, and qualified withdrawals all untaxed — detailed in the HSA triple advantage. Plan-shopping definitions live at HealthCare.gov.

Paid time off: your salary has an hourly price

PTO converts cleanly: divide salary by roughly 260 working days. At $80,000, a workday is about $308, so 20 days of PTO carries roughly $6,150 of value against $3,700 for 12 days — a $2,450 spread that never appears on a salary line. Add paid holidays, sick leave if separate, and parental leave policies, which can be worth months of pay at exactly the moment income matters most. Check accrual and rollover rules too: "unlimited" PTO typically has no cash-out value when you leave, while accrued days in many states must be paid out at departure.

The quieter lines

  • Disability and life insurance. Employer-paid long-term disability replacing 60 percent of income is coverage that costs real premium dollars to replicate individually.
  • FSA/commuter/dependent-care accounts. Pre-tax elections that discount predictable expenses; the mechanics of pre-tax versus post-tax lines are in the pay stub decoder.
  • Tuition assistance, professional development, wellness stipends. Count only what you would genuinely use.
  • Remote work. Price your actual commute: fuel or transit, parking, time. Three remote days a week can be worth well over $1,000 a year in hard costs alone, before valuing the hours.

For what employers must legally disclose about their plans — summary plan descriptions exist on request — the Department of Labor's benefits pages at dol.gov are the reference.

Bonuses and equity: enter the maybes at a discount

Variable compensation deserves a haircut, not a face-value entry. A "target bonus" of 10 percent is not salary; it is a probability-weighted maybe that depends on company performance, manager discretion, and first-year proration. Enter it at half weight unless the employer has a documented history of paying it in full. Equity in a private company is harder still — real value may exist, but illiquid shares with unknown timing belong in a footnote, not the total. Signing bonuses count fully, once, and frequently carry clawback clauses if you leave within a year; read that paragraph before spending the money.

The worksheet

Build a four-column table: benefit, Offer A dollars, Offer B dollars, notes. Fill in salary, match dollars, your premium share times 12 (as a negative), expected out-of-pocket care costs (negative), PTO days times your day rate, HSA or other employer contributions, and any stipends you would use. Sum each column. I did this once with two offers $9,000 apart in salary and watched the gap invert — the "richer" offer lost by $2,800 once the family premium share and a 6-year vesting cliff were priced in. The spreadsheet took forty minutes; the difference ran to thousands per year.

Two cautions. First, taxes complicate raw comparisons: benefit dollars are often untaxed while salary dollars are not, so a dollar of employer premium contribution or match is worth more than a dollar of gross pay. Second, salary remains the compounding base — raises, bonuses, and the next employer's offer all anchor to it, which argues for negotiating cash first and benefits second, a sequencing covered in the raise case file.

Your next step: pull your current benefits summary — or the offer letter sitting in your inbox — and price every line in annual dollars using the worksheet above. Total compensation is a number, not a vibe, and you cannot negotiate a number you have never calculated.