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This is a large part of why I feel this way. I grew up near Ottawa, and had a lot of friends whose parents worked at Nortel. They were compensated with a lot o
by mabbo 4y ago
This is a large part of why I feel this way.
I grew up near Ottawa, and had a lot of friends whose parents worked at Nortel. They were compensated with a lot of stock, which they held onto (it keeps rising, after all). Their pension plan was mostly invested in the company stock too.
When the company fell apart (let's set aside whose fault that is- different topic), they lost their jobs, their savings, their pensions, in their 40s and early 50s mostly.
- duxup 4y agoYeah I knew some folks at the time (.com days) who had life changing type money in company stock and they were able to sell a good portion of it at will. They didn't sell... it did not work out for them. To this day I don't get why they didn't sell at least say $1million and stash it someplace. Sure let the rest ride if you want to do that but man save some. I never asked them about it after their company tanked, I imagine they don't want to think about it.
- bombcar 4y agoPeople can feel it’s “disloyal”. So keep some but don’t keep all!
- AYBABTME 4y agoIt boggles my mind when people vest RSUs and just leave them there, hold onto their employers' stock and don't sell & diversify. The RSU vesting day is equivalent to having bought the stock on that day, there's no tax advantage to holding onto it. Whether at SHOP or at AMZN/MSFT/GOOG, why keep all your eggs in the same basket? And yet the average person does exactly that.
- dehrmann 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect
- Macha 4y agoYeah, even if I think my company will do well, having a large part of my net worth tied up in stock of my employer always feels a bit of an "eggs in one basket" scenario - if something happens to majorly impact the stock value, there's a decent change it will consequently impact my job security.
- JAlexoid 4y agoLet alone, a lot of people seem to think that they get the lower capital gains tax on the RSUs... and most companies fail miserably to educate their employees. Not to mention the horror that is the tax code in US, causing you to underpay taxes... because the company that does RSUs doesn't communicate well with your regular payroll company.
- marcins 4y agoBecause up until about 6 months ago, the 3-4 year run to that point you were better off holding. I'm sure lots of people have had a very expensive (on paper) lesson this year about how much vested stock they should hold on to (if any).