TLDR
Your equity compensation — RSU grants, ESPP purchases, and stock options — lives in a separate portal from your other accounts. Getting everything in one dashboard requires either a wealth aggregator with equity portal connections, a manual system, or a combination. This guide covers the practical approach to each.
- RSU (Restricted Stock Unit)
- Equity granted by your employer that converts to shares on a vesting schedule. Until vesting, you do not own the shares and cannot sell them. Vested RSUs typically land in a brokerage account managed by your equity portal (E*Trade at Work, Fidelity NetBenefits, or similar).
DEFINITION
- ISO (Incentive Stock Option)
- Stock options typically granted at earlier-stage companies. ISOs give you the right to purchase company stock at a fixed strike price for a period of time. Favorable tax treatment is available if you hold the resulting shares for qualifying periods. AMT exposure can be significant depending on the spread between strike price and fair market value.
DEFINITION
- ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan)
- A benefit allowing employees to purchase company stock at a discount (usually 15% below the lower of the price at the start or end of the purchase period). Purchases happen through payroll deductions and occur in six-month windows. The resulting shares typically land in a separate brokerage account.
DEFINITION
- Equity Portal
- The platform your employer uses to administer equity grants: E*Trade at Work, Fidelity NetBenefits, Morgan Stanley at Work, or Schwab Stock Plan Services. These platforms show your grants, vesting schedules, and ESPP details but do not connect to your other financial accounts.
DEFINITION
- Vesting Cliff
- The date when the first portion of an equity grant becomes yours. Many RSU grants have a one-year cliff before any shares vest, followed by quarterly or monthly vesting for the remainder of the grant.
DEFINITION
The Fragmentation Problem for Tech Professionals
If you work at a tech company with equity compensation, your financial life is distributed across more systems than most consumer finance tools are designed to handle.
Your checking and savings are at a bank. Your 401(k) is at Vanguard, Fidelity, or whatever your employer chose. Your IRA is somewhere you opened independently. Your taxable brokerage is at Schwab, Fidelity, or TD Ameritrade. And your equity compensation — RSU grants, ESPP shares, stock options — is at your employer’s designated equity portal: Fidelity NetBenefits, E*Trade at Work, Morgan Stanley at Work, or Schwab Stock Plan.
These systems do not talk to each other. Each requires a separate login, a separate password, and a separate mental model for interpreting what you see. Most people review each one in isolation and never combine the numbers into a single total.
The result is that most tech professionals do not actually know their net worth. They have a rough estimate that excludes unvested equity, or they do an annual manual calculation that is outdated within weeks.
Building a Complete View
There are three approaches to getting everything in one place, in order of increasing manual effort.
Approach 1: Use a wealth aggregator with equity portal connections. The cleanest solution. A tool that connects to Fidelity NetBenefits, E*Trade at Work, or other equity portals alongside your standard accounts gives you one dashboard with live data from all sources. Thalvi is building this. Where automatic equity portal connection exists, this approach requires no ongoing manual work — the dashboard updates as vests and purchases occur.
Approach 2: Hybrid system. Use a standard wealth aggregator (Empower, Kubera, Monarch) for your traditional accounts and maintain a separate equity tracking spreadsheet for unvested grants. Connect the two by adding a manual “equity comp” balance to your wealth aggregator that you update quarterly. Less convenient but workable, and uses tools available today.
Approach 3: Full spreadsheet. Build a master net worth spreadsheet that includes all account balances (updated manually) and a detailed equity comp section with grant dates, vesting schedules, unvested counts, and current values. Complete control, no automation, maximum maintenance burden.
What to Track for Each Equity Type
RSUs: Grant date, total granted shares, vesting schedule (cliff date and frequency after cliff), vested shares to date, unvested shares remaining, current stock price, unvested value at current prices, upcoming vest dates.
ESPP: Enrollment periods, payroll contribution amount, offering period start/end dates, discount rate (typically 15%), purchase price, shares purchased per period, cost basis for tax tracking, holding period start date for qualifying disposition calculations.
ISOs: Grant date, total options, strike price, vesting schedule, vested vs unvested options, current stock price, intrinsic value (current price minus strike), expiration date, exercise decisions and tax scenarios.
Frequency of Updates
For an equity portal–connected wealth aggregator: the dashboard updates automatically. You review rather than update.
For a hybrid or spreadsheet system: update at each vest event (typically quarterly), at each ESPP purchase close (typically semi-annual), and when you receive new grants. Also update the stock price component whenever you are making significant financial decisions — the unvested value changes continuously with stock price movement.
The Tax Dimension
Equity compensation creates tax events that a net worth dashboard may not capture:
RSU vest is a taxable event — the shares’ fair market value at vest is ordinary income, regardless of whether you sell.
ESPP purchases may have complex tax treatment depending on how long you hold the shares after purchase.
ISO exercise can trigger AMT depending on the spread between strike price and fair market value.
A complete equity tracking system notes these tax events and their timing, not just the economic values. For tax planning purposes, you want to know not just what your equity is worth but when tax events occur and how much they might cost.
Getting Started
Start with your equity portal. Log in to each equity portal (Fidelity NetBenefits, E*Trade at Work, or wherever your employer administers grants) and locate the section showing your active grants, vesting schedule, and unvested share count. This data is the foundation of your equity tracking.
From there, connect to a wealth aggregator that handles equity portals, or set up the hybrid tracking structure described above. The goal is a single number you can look at monthly — total net worth including equity comp, with equity comp properly labeled as conditional.
Q&A
How do I see all my accounts in one place when I have equity compensation?
The cleanest approach is a wealth aggregator that connects to your equity portal alongside your standard accounts. Where equity portal connections are not available, the fallback is manually entering your unvested equity values into a combined net worth spreadsheet and updating them at each vest event. Some investors use Empower or Kubera for standard accounts and maintain a separate equity tracking system, accepting the fragmentation.
Q&A
How do I calculate my net worth including unvested RSUs?
Net worth including unvested equity = (liquid assets + vested investment accounts + retirement accounts + other assets) + (unvested RSU share count × current stock price). The unvested RSU component should be labeled separately as conditional on continued employment. To find your unvested share count, log into your equity portal and check the unvested shares in your grant details.
Q&A
Why does my wealth tracker show a lower net worth than I expect?
Most wealth trackers show only what you currently own: brokerage balances, 401(k) values, bank accounts. They do not show unvested RSU grants, future ESPP purchases, or unexercised options. If you have been at a tech company for two years on a four-year RSU schedule, roughly half your grant value is likely unvested — not appearing in your standard wealth tracker.
Q&A
Should ISOs appear in my net worth calculation?
Unexercised ISOs are not in your net worth yet — you have the right to purchase shares at the strike price, but you have not purchased them. The intrinsic value of in-the-money ISOs (current stock price minus strike price, times share count) is relevant context for financial planning, but it is conditional on you exercising the options before they expire. Track them as a separate 'option value' line item, not as part of core net worth.
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