Solutions

Equity Compensation Planning

RSUs, options, and ESPP shares — a plan for turning paper compensation into actual wealth.

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Equity compensation is how modern companies pay their best people, and almost nobody is taught to manage it. Shares vest and pile up, options sit unexercised because the tax rules are opaque, and before long your net worth and your paycheck depend on the same company — the concentration every textbook warns against, arrived at by simply not deciding.

Your net worth and your paycheck end up depending on the same company — the concentration every textbook warns against, arrived at by simply not deciding.

We turn the grants into a plan: what to sell, what to hold, when, and what each choice costs in tax. RSUs, incentive and non-qualified options, and ESPP shares each have different rules, and the difference between deliberate and default handling is routinely measured in five figures a year.

Concentration creep

Nobody decides to bet their net worth on one company. Vesting decides it for them.

Year 1

First grants vest

Year 4

Refreshers stack on a rising price

Year 8

Company stock dominates the household

Each bar is company stock as a share of one hypothetical household's net worth. The fix isn't a dramatic exit — it's a standing schedule that sells as grants vest, so the decision is made once instead of deferred forever.

Hypothetical illustration of a common pattern — not any actual holding or a projection.

Vesting faster than the decisions?

Vested shares are accumulating because no one ever decided what to do with them
Company stock has quietly become a large share of your net worth
You have incentive stock options and the phrase "alternative minimum tax" has come up
A liquidity event — IPO, acquisition, tender offer — is on the horizon

From grants to a plan

Every grant type, handled by its rules.

Grant inventory

Type, vesting, expiration, and tax character — grant by grant.

A selling plan

Concentration managed on a schedule instead of on emotion.

Exercise strategy

Including AMT modeling for incentive options.

ESPP analysis

Often the best risk-adjusted deal in the package.

Tax-year coordination

Withholding gaps and brackets, managed with your CPA.

Liquidity events

IPO, acquisition, tender — planned before the window opens.

Eight years of not deciding

Hypothetical

A director eight years into a tech employer, holding every vested share since her first grant — not from conviction, but because selling never felt urgent and taxes made it feel expensive. Company stock had reached well past half of the household balance sheet. A standing quarterly sell plan brought it down without a single market-timing decision, and the AMT modeling turned two option grants from a guess into a calendar.

Hypothetical scenario for illustration. Not an actual client. Individual circumstances and results differ.

What's your company stock as a share of your net worth?

Get the concentration read or send us a note below

Holders ask

Shouldn't I hold the stock? I believe in the company.

You can believe in the company and still notice that your salary, bonus, unvested grants, and portfolio already depend on it. Diversifying vested shares isn't a vote against your employer — it's making sure one bad year there isn't a bad decade for you.

What's the biggest mistake you see?

Letting taxes make the decision. People hold concentrated positions for years to avoid a capital gains bill, then watch the position lose more than the tax would have cost. The tax matters; it's just rarely the thing that matters most.