Your RSUs are vesting. Now what?

The grant letter felt like a bonus. Then the shares started vesting on autopilot, and now there is a growing pile of company stock you have never made a single decision about. RSUs are one of the best problems to have, and one of the least understood.

Three things every RSU holder should know

1. Vesting is the taxable moment. When shares vest, their value is ordinary income on your W2, taxed like salary, whether or not you sell.
2. The default withholding is often not enough. Employers commonly withhold at a flat rate that can run below what high earners actually owe, which is how RSU households meet surprise tax bills in April.
3. Holding everything is a decision too. Letting vested shares pile up concentrates your paycheck and your savings in the same company. That is a risk choice, and it deserves to be made on purpose.

The autopilot problem

None of these are exotic problems. They are organization problems: nobody has looked at the vesting schedule next to the tax picture next to the rest of the plan. The shares vest, the withholding happens or does not, and the pile grows without a strategy attached to it.

What getting organized looks like

One sitting: your vesting schedule, what has already vested, what the tax picture looks like this year, and how the equity fits alongside everything else you are building. We bring in the tax and investment specialists we partner with for the pieces that need them, and we revisit it every year as grants and life change. Your equity compensation should be part of the plan, not a surprise attached to your paycheck.