Stock grants

[k3am]

If you get stock grants in your company, how long do you hold onto them? What % of your investments would you cap stock at the company you work for?

DH and I are disagreeing on this… but it’s his stock, so I need to think it through. Stock is in one of the big tech companies and consistently analyst rated as a strong buy.

[acr]

We sell right away (which is also the practice of the majority of my co-workers). I don't want to be too over indexed on one investment and seems risky to have "all the eggs in one basket".

FWIW - I work for a tech company too, but our stock has not performed all that well due to tech climate + it being traded on an international stock exchange with poor currency conversion to USD. 

[flygirl]

If I wouldn’t buy it to hold in my portfolio, I sell it. With that said, my companies stock has done well so I wait til it hits about a certain $ amount and then sell everything above that, then will repeat. I don’t want to be in a position some day where my company stock is not doing great, I get laid off and then take a loss on it (even if we buy at a discount) when I sell it to live.

(I do have some stock that I bought at the first company I ever worked at and I refuse to sell it.  It’s <10k though and was the first real “investment” I ever had and I didn’t make much back then so it reminds me that anything helps in terms of starting to save)

[goldengirlz]

Ugh, too much. I believe the rule of thumb is no more than 10% of your net worth in a single stock, but we’re probably more around 20%. H gets stuck on the fact that my tech stock (even in this market) is outperforming our other investments — plus, every time we sell, we pay taxes (this wouldn’t have been an issue if we had been selling all along, but we have our taxes calculated based on FIFO.)

What I’ve been trying to do is make calculated sales. So if we’re doing a home improvement project, I cash out RSUs and any new savings go back into our other investment account.

[mae0111]

I think I used to keep 5-10% in my brokerage. I used to participate in the ESPP in my 401K before I got stock as comp, and at one point I was way overweighted in company stock because the other fund choices in the 401K stunk. I worked for a big financial services company that put their own crappy, super expensive mutual funds in the 401K. Eventually they stopped the ESPP and my 401K grew, so the % shrunk.

With the brokerage, I'd try to sell a bit at a time while watching the price. There were some pretty significant fluctuations through different crises, so I'd stop selling when the price went way down unless I needed to harvest the loss. Otherwise I'd kind of sell here and there based on the price. My bonuses would vest quarterly so it always felt like I had more stock to sell. My goal was to keep it at around 5% of the portfolio.

[niq]

For RSUs, since the stock tends to go up, and sometimes goes up in between the vest date and the trading window opening, I usually hold until I at least get long-term capital gains treatment. Then I wait for a good quarter and sell. This is probably not what a financial advisor would say to do, but I think if your savings are on track and you're not going to be in a situation where you panic sell your RSUs, it can make some sense.

For ESPP, I sell as I can soon as it hits qualifying disposition, UNLESS the stock went down between the offer date (?) and the purchase date, in which case I sell immediately.

We don't really use RSUs in our annual budget. When I sell the money goes to Big Stuff (home reno, car, 529s) and then what's left goes to index funds.

I think in certain situations, "living off your RSUs" and then doing a megabackdoor roth can make sense.

[k3am]

Right now we're holding ~35% in his company stock and ~5% in mine (different sector). Like goldengirlz mentioned, his stock outperforms the market in general and most of our other investments. My stock on the other hand is currently in the gutter (yay, banking!) but consistently pays a small dividend, so I don't mind holding onto it.

I think it's time to sell some of his. He handles most of our investments/brokerage account and has a decent track record, but probably time to sit down with a financial advisor again. We do have some house projects on the horizon that I've been too hesitant to pull the trigger on, so hopefully this will spur us both into action.

[sandandsea]

Well we are bad and hold them forever but in The 20+ years we’ve done that it’s always been a good investment and we’ve never regretted holding it. We joke that every time we do sell that the price inevitably increases. It’s probably 40% of our total assets at the moment. We have really only sold for big things like paying down the mortgage, home improvements, or buying new cars and for annual charitable donations but otherwise hold it. We’ve also only ever sold stock we can get long term cap gain treatment on.

[k3am]

We talked to the financial advisor today.. suggestion is that we sell some of his stock at a loss to be tax efficient, reduce our exposure, and fund the kitchen renovation. Timeline on when/if this will happen is questionable.