When someone shows me a job offer, they almost always point at the same line first. The salary. Sometimes it’s the only line they’ve read closely, and I understand why. It’s the number that shows up every two weeks, and it’s the easiest one to compare with what you make now.

But an offer is a package. The salary is the part built for the year you expect to have. Most of the rest is built for the year you don’t.

Your current pay is not your market rate

Base pay matters, so start there. The mistake is measuring it against your current paycheck. Your current salary reflects what one employer decided to pay you, sometimes years ago, sometimes under a title that never matched the work. It tells you something about that company. It tells you very little about your market value.

Price yourself against three things instead.

Your years of relevant experience, counted honestly. If you ran payroll for a restaurant group, managed the scheduling system, or trained every new hire at your last job, that is experience, even if your title said “office manager.” Hiring managers recognize transferable skills when you point them out. They rarely go looking for them on their own.

Your education, as it relates to the role. A degree or certification can move you into a different band, especially when the posting lists it as required. When the posting only lists it as preferred and you have it, that’s leverage.

The market outside your current job. Look at postings for similar roles, salary surveys for your area, and federal wage data for your occupation. If you’re in Nevada, you have an extra tool. Once you’ve completed an interview, the employer has to give you the pay range for the position, and they can’t ask what you earned at previous jobs. That protection covers your past benefits as well as your pay. Your last salary, and your last benefits package, are legally none of their business, so don’t hand them over as the anchor.

The salary is about seventy percent of the offer

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, benefits made up 30 percent of what private employers spent on compensation as of June 2026. For every dollar of wages, roughly 43 more cents went to benefits. That’s the part of the offer that rarely gets read.

The reason isn’t carelessness. Benefits ask you to picture things you’d rather not picture: a diagnosis, a car accident, a complicated pregnancy, a death in the family. It’s hard to sit with an exciting offer and think about the worst year of your life. So most people skim the benefits summary, confirm there’s health insurance, and sign.

Run the bad-year test

Here’s a way to make it concrete. Figure out what each offer costs you in two different years.

A normal year is your annual premium for the coverage level you actually need, whether that’s you alone or your family.

A bad year is that premium plus the plan’s out-of-pocket maximum. Not the deductible. The deductible is where your share starts to shrink. The out-of-pocket maximum is the most you’d pay for covered care in a year when everything goes wrong.

Here’s how that plays out with typical numbers. In KFF’s 2025 survey of employer health plans, the average worker paid about $1,440 a year toward single coverage. Out-of-pocket maximums vary far more. About 12 percent of covered workers have a limit of $2,000 or less, while 21 percent have one above $6,000.

So say both offers charge the average $120 a month. Offer A pays $82,000 with a $7,500 out-of-pocket max. Offer B pays $78,000 with a $2,000 max. In a normal year, A keeps its full $4,000 lead. In a bad year, the order flips. A’s plan can cost you $5,500 more, and you end up $1,500 behind where Offer B would have left you.

The “better” offer only wins if nothing happens.

Disability coverage is the benefit people skip

The Social Security Administration estimates that about one in four of today’s 20-year-olds will become disabled seriously enough to qualify for Social Security disability benefits before reaching age 67. That isn’t a rare event. It’s roughly one person on every four-person team.

Short-term disability generally covers the first weeks or months you can’t work. Long-term disability picks up after a waiting period, often 90 or 180 days, and replaces a percentage of your pay, frequently around 60 percent, usually up to a monthly cap. Nevada has no state disability program, so if the employer doesn’t offer it, your PTO and savings are what’s left.

Ask four questions:

1. Is it offered at all?
2. What percentage of pay does it replace, and up to what cap?
3. How long is the waiting period?
4. Who pays the premium?

That last one matters more than it sounds, because how the premium is paid can change whether the benefit is taxed when you receive it. Ask HR how it’s handled, and confirm with a tax professional what that means for you.

Life insurance should match who depends on you

Many employers provide life insurance at one or two times salary. If anyone relies on your income, that may not be enough, and supplemental coverage through work is often inexpensive. Ask whether it’s portable. Coverage tied to a job usually ends with the job, and buying it on your own later can cost more.

Large employers often go further

Large employers, including much of the Fortune 500, often build benefits well past the insurance basics. Flexible or unlimited paid time off. Fertility and family-building support, which has spread quickly: in Mercer’s 2025 survey, 77 percent of employers with 20,000 or more workers covered IVF, up from 42 percent in 2020. Discounts through partner companies on phone plans, gyms, travel, and cars. Help with student loans, including 401(k) matches on your loan payments, which federal law has allowed since 2024. Tuition assistance, backup child care, pet insurance, and stock purchase plans that let you buy company shares at a discount.

These can be worth real money, but weigh them honestly. Put a dollar figure on the ones you would actually use and leave out the ones you wouldn’t. Unlimited PTO is only generous if the culture lets people take it, so ask how much time the team actually took last year. And no perk makes up for a thin disability plan.

Put the whole offer on one page

Before you decide, line the offers up side by side: base pay, bad-year health cost, disability replacement, life coverage, retirement match, paid time off, and the perks you would actually use. Sometimes the higher salary still wins. That’s fine. The point is that it becomes a decision you made on purpose instead of one you made by reading a single line.

If you’re weighing an offer and want a second set of eyes on the whole package, it’s easier to ask these questions before you sign than after.

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