The Ben Mulroney Show - What you NEED to know about your pay stub.

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

- Peter Tzanetakis National Payroll Institute Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Hey, thanks, son. What do I owe you? Don't worry about it. It's payday. Payday, huh? I bet you it went straight into your bank account and you didn't even check your pay stuff. My what? Your pay stuff. Back in my day, you had to wait for a physical check. Then you had to go to the bank. Deposit it, and wait for it to clear.

Your pay really meant something. Payroll is incredibly complex. It's art and the science. It literally keeps the economy moving. Parole professionals do a lot for us. You know, it's about time we do something for them. How about we ask our leaders to name a day in their honor, a national day to recognize payroll professionals?

I got it. This is perfect. Why don't we explain to people just how important the roles are the payroll professionals play in our lives. We can even ask them to sign a petition. We can even ask them to sign a petition to recognize the third Tuesday in September as the National Day to recognize payroll professionals. We'll rally support and bring the payroll party to the nation.

National payroll party? Precisely. Sounds like a plan, you know, just one thing. What's that? I'm choosing the music. What? And I'm sitting in the backseat. The whole way?

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All right. Well, for those of you out there who think that all we do is scream about doom and gloom and how the sky is falling in Canada is going to fall into the Mariana Trench. There's some good news out there. The National Payroll Institute's 2025 annual survey of working Canadians

reveals that, contrary to public narrative and popular opinion, there are reasons to believe that the financial health of working Canadians may finally be improving after years of decline. So, possibly good news. Let's learn more about this possibility of good news

on the horizon or maybe in our present with Peter Zanatakis, the president and CEO of the National Payroll Institute. Peter, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me on the program. So Hope Springs Eternal at your organization. Talk to me about why you are bullish on the future for working Canadians. Well, working Canadians fall into three clusters. They're either financially stressed, they're coping, or they're comfortable based on a host

of determinate factors such as debt management, having habits and savings. And this year's research indicated that the proportion of those who are financially stressed has actually decreased from an all-time high, down to 36% from 41% last year. Okay, so 41 was the high watermark or low water mark. And now, listen, 5% is not nothing. It's not. And that was following four consecutive years of increases. So it is a significant drop. And we found that one of the determinant factors is that people are actually saving more of their paycheck.

Do you think it's because of years and years of people being drumming the beat that our credit card debt was getting out of control, that we weren't saving, that we were investing in the wrong things. We were spending money on trips and we were spending money on big dinners and Uber Eats and we weren't doing what we should be doing, which is taking a little bit of each paycheck and squirling it away? Yeah, I mean, savings seems to be one of the ways in which, you know, Canadians are preparing for some future challenges, and, you know, especially the high cost of living. So people are pinched at home, and it seems to be like a defense mechanism, right? And it actually has made a material impact on the number of people who have moved out of being financially stressed, which is pretty good news. Well, and some of the indicators that come through in this study are about those small things, right? The paycheck-to-paycheck reality, that 26% of Canadians live paycheck to paycheck, but a lot of those shortfalls are small. What do you consider small?

How do you define a small shortfall? Well, when we ask the question, we're actually asking them, you know, would you be able to come up with $2,000 if an emergency came up? or would you be able to, you know, deal with your financial obligations if you actually missed a paycheck? So, you know, clearly by stowing away a bit more money, you're able to deal with those emergencies for sure. So staying on the theme of small changes making a difference, even modest amounts of money can significantly improve financial health, prevent high interest debt.

We're talking about savings. Absolutely. So we've actually seen an increase in the number of people who are actually saving $10,000 or more. But there's a range in there as well. And it's interesting that we've also looked at the different operations. And actually boomers are, sorry, Jen Zeds are actually holding their own in terms of that. So they're able to save, you know, that $10,000 mark and a significant performance. portion of them are saving more than what they were last year. Peter, last week we started this conversation about, I think about this time last week, and we had a number of people call in, and one person called in and said, it's been years since they've gotten a physical paycheck. But they remembered that in the past, that paycheck, the pay stub, would lay out all sorts of information that while they didn't actively need, it sort of helped them create

an image of their financial health in their head that, They had far more clarity than it does today because everything is direct deposited. What is the answer to countering that lack of information given we're living in a paperless world for so many people? So the information exists. You have to go out and find it. So whether... One person said the problem with that is you got to log onto a website and you have to have a password and a pin code and then you got to go on and on. It's not as readily available as it once was when it was literally handed to you on Friday. every other Friday in your office?

Well, that's true. And the reality is that most services these days have gone online. But if you actually did go into your statement, and most systems today, it's easy to get on to, and you actually see what, and there's a big difference between gross to net pay, right? You actually have to see, you know, what's being deducted by the government for different deductions, statutory deductions, there's insurance, there's, and maybe you're also contributing to your pension. Yeah.

Well, that was a question I had for you. That was a question I had for you because, like, correct me if I'm wrong, but the protocol is that once you've reached your maximum CPP contributions, you can redirect extra pay to savings or a pension plan, but you have to opt into that. Absolutely. And that's one of the issues, right? Because if it's not being reinforced by your employer to say, hey, you know what?

You have this extra room. You can actually put that either toward your pension or toward the savings plan. It's not being done automatically, and that's why it's really important for employers to really think about how you can get their employees to kind of remember that this is something, and it could be done through payroll as well. Yeah, and the logic of it is sound. I mean, if you've been investing every month in your CPP contributions and all of a sudden those contributions stop because you've reached your maximum allotted, then you have that money. You've grown accustomed to living in a world where part of your paycheck has been siphoned away. for contributions. So why not continue with that as opposed to all of a sudden just having extra money to spend? If you've gotten used to living on X, then keep living on X and that Y that used

to get squirled away for CPP can be directed to your long-term financial security. For sure. And if in the first six months, for example, you've been used to paying that amount, you can accumulate even $2,000 to $3,000 in the second half of the year depending on your income. And that has actually shown to be an important consideration in terms of your financial resiliency, being able to have that extra financial flexibility in case of an emergency, or even if you just want to use it to take a trip or do something with it. It's really important. Peter, I want to go, I want to end our conversation by going back to the beginning where we were talking about the optimism that for the first time people are feeling a little more positive about. about their financial future. It is by no means secure, and we don't have nearly enough people feeling that way yet.

But what are a couple of things, or rather, what's one thing that could help keep us on this positive path, and what is one concern that could derail it? Well, I think the concern, let's start with the concern. The concern is that people are bringing their financial problems to the workplace, right? and so employers have to deal with people spending time worrying about and dealing with their finances. So if we can make people more financially resilient, that will actually help improve productivity and less time spent at the workplace. I think in terms of what we've seen as a big impact is the savings part.

If we can focus our energy, even at the employer level, to really encourage people to save more, take advantage of payroll, ensure that they're putting away that minor amount, every paycheck, that will accumulate over time, and that is actually shown to have a material impact on your financial stress. Yeah, look, I want to live in a world where we can be optimistic, where we can believe yet again that tomorrow will be better than today. It's been a long time since we've felt that. And listen, feelings aren't facts, and you're coming to this show today armed with facts.

I'm very emboldened by the numbers. I imagine that like me, you know that it's built on very precarious sands right now, and we need to anchor this positive news in something far more stable than what it's in right now. But we've got to take the good news where we get it, right? Absolutely. And the fact that this is sort of information that's also rooted in some science and math, we're kind of making a pitch here to say that, you know what, there are things that working Canadians can do to improve their financial resiliency,

but it also starts with the behaviors, right? You have to have positive behaviors in order to, you know, make yourself more financially well-off. Peter Tannatakas, president and CEO of the National Payroll Institute. Thank you so much for bringing some good news to us near the end of the Ben Mulroney Show. Have a great day. Thank you. With a Subaru, a vehicle that's built to last come standard. Heated front seats, standard.

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