equity compensation

TFP #057: Navigating Your E-Trade Account: A Guide For Procore Employees

I get a lot of questions about trying to understand your equity at E-Trade, which is fair. It’s very confusing. Words like potential value, current value, total value - it’s not super clear. And some views are helpful, and some aren’t.

So candidly, I don’t use the website until it’s time to sell or exercise. When I work with clients, I have them send me this CSV (you can get it by logging in to E-Trade, then select your Stock plan, go to "holdings", then "view by status", "download", "download expanded".)

Today I want to walk you through what I look for and the flow I go through. At a high level, this report tells me 3 really important things about your equity.

  1. What you have already

  2. What you are able to exercise

  3. What is unvested

TFP #055: 9 Ways To Manage Your Company Stock

There’s only 3 ways to approach your company stock:

  • Sell none of it

  • Sell some of it

  • Sell all of it

But there can be variations - particularly if you are looking to sell some.

Let’s run through 9 of the most common ways to manage your company stock, and we’ll include an example for each one.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you hold 10,000 shares of XYZ company, and XYZ company currently trades at $50 / share.

Which means you currently have $500,000 worth of XYZ stock.

TFP #047: It's Ok To Pay Taxes

Read Time: 4.5 Minutes

Welcome to the 47th edition of the Tech Financial Planning (TFP) newsletter

Everyone feels like they are paying too much in taxes.

A common pain point: 

“We are getting killed in taxes. 

We make $300k-$500k+ as a W2 household and we routinely pay 5 to 6 figures in taxes every year. 

What can we do?

Unfortunately, there’s no magic wand that you can waive to make your taxes go away.

Spoiler alert: sometimes it’s ok to bite the bullet and pay the taxes.

Because saving (or deferring) taxes almost always comes at some sort of cost.

It’s usually costs you one of two things

  1. Access

  2. Less money in your pocket today

TFP #034: Reflections On 3 Years In Business

Read Time: 8 minutes

Welcome to the 34th edition of the Tech Financial Planning (TFP) newsletter.

It’s crazy to think that Coastal Capital Advisors (CCA) has been a business for over 3 years now.

What started as an idea in late 2019 became us quitting our jobs and starting in April of 2020.

Chris quit his job in early 2020 with a 3 month old and I quit in March 2020 as Procore gave the work from home order as the pandemic started.

Not what I’d call an ideal time to start a business.

In many ways, it feels like we just started yesterday. 

But if CCA was a college student, we’d be entering our senior year - this blows my mind.

So I wanted to use this as a time to reflect on the last 3 years, and spend a little time looking forward.

TFP #031: A Framework For Your Equity Comp

Welcome to the 31st edition of the Tech Financial Planning (TFP) newsletter.

If you Google “what to do with my equity compensation” you get 823 million results!

How the heck are you supposed to make a good, wise, financial decision?

Particularly if you are new to equity comp or have more complex situations? 

In this newsletter we’ll break down a framework for making decisions for your equity comp and review 3 specific scenarios with some real life examples.

TFP #029: 6 Financial Planning Mistakes Tech Professionals Make

Read Time: 3 minutes

Welcome to the 29th edition of the Tech Financial Planning (TFP) newsletter.

Over the past 3 years I’ve met with hundreds of tech professionals, and I’ve seen 6 common financial planning mistakes.

These can cost thousands or even millions of dollars.

In this newsletter, we will explore 6 common financial planning mistakes tech professionals make and some possible ways to avoid them.

TFP #024: What Do I Need To Think About If I Get Laid Off?

Read Time: 1 minute

Welcome to the 24th edition of the Tech Financial Planning (TFP) newsletter.

2022 and 2023 have been brutal for tech employees - so far in 2023 there’s been nearly 150,000 people laid off.

Losing your job can be extremely stressful, both professionally, personally, and financially.

in this newsletter, we will share a checklist that covers key areas to consider if you or someone you care about loses their job.

TFP #010: 3 Steps To Fixing A New Client's Plan

Welcome to the 10th edition of the Tech Financial Planning (TFP) Newsletter.

Back in August, I had a 1:1 call with a new client who reached out because she just got a new job with a big increase in total compensation.

Emily (not her real name), is a product marketer at a large tech company and is set to earn just over $400,000 this year.

In this newsletter we will break down the 3 challenges Emily was facing and how we solved them together.