How Could the House and Biden Tax Proposals Affect You? What Should You Do Before Year’s End?
Flow Financial Planning
by Meg
2y ago
Have you been hearing a lot about the tax proposals coming out of Washington D.C.? First it was President Biden’s back in April. In early September, it was the House Ways and Means Committee’s. And currently, as of the time of publishing, the tax proposal situation in Congress is anybody’s guess. These tax proposals include some really big changes. Like, M.A.J.O.R. When I think about our community of women in their early to mid career in tech, I realize that, thankfully, many of these changes won’t affect you. You can ignore them. But there are some proposed changes that might affect you. And ..read more
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Angel investing. You really really want to. But should you?
Flow Financial Planning
by Meg
2y ago
You got that itch to invest in some early stage companies. Maybe a former colleague founded a company and you know they’re Super Smart and their idea is So Good. Or you just love the cause that this one company is supporting. But also, $25,000 (or more) is a lot of money to just hand over to this One Company that is, let’s review, in a very early stage. How do you evaluate this choice? I know many of our clients have at least expressed interest. A handful have actually made investments. And most of them <cough> yes, I’m lookin’ at you <cough> have even sought out our thoughts on t ..read more
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What Is a Backdoor Roth IRA (Contribution)? Should I Do it? How Do I Do It?
Flow Financial Planning
by Meg
2y ago
If I had to wager, backdoor Roth IRA contributions are in the top 3 of #personalfinance Slack channel topics. [Note: The recent House Ways and Means Committee proposal for tax law changes might affect your ability to make backdoor Roth IRA contributions in the near future. We haven’t evaluated the proposal yet, and the timing is uncanny, but you should be aware.] Which is kinda funny considering that the $6k involves is a relatively small amount of money for many people working in tech. It’s definitely in the “icing on the cake, not the cake itself” category. You’ve probably heard of backdoor ..read more
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I Just Received My Open Enrollment Benefits Booklet. Am I Actually Supposed to Read This Thing?
Flow Financial Planning
by Meg
2y ago
Amazon recently announced their move from a less-common springtime open enrollment schedule to a more traditional fall one—a change that elicited some (Zoom- and Slack-based) water-cooler chatter from the team here at Flow. Why did this seemingly, uh, mind-numbing topic inspire conversation? We’ll cop to being total nerds about this stuff, to be sure, but also: I’d argue that open enrollment—and, with it, that lengthy benefits booklet you receive each year—is a far more scintillating subject than it may appear at first blush. Yes, this is a hill I’m willing to die on! [Meg’s Note: This post w ..read more
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Meg’s Musings: Your Spending Doesn’t Affect Just You.
Flow Financial Planning
by Meg
2y ago
Ramit Sethi’s work on the psychology of money, especially around spending, is wonderful and desperately needed. To put it simply: He encourages people to spend more money on the things they love. A lot of people need this advice. Observing the joy and relief that people experience when they finally break through their “invisible scripts” (in my profession, we often call them “money scripts”), especially in his recently launched podcast, is pretty cool. I see similar work being done in the life-planning movement. The training I received as a Registered Life Planner® taught me how to help our c ..read more
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Should I withhold 22% or 37% on my RSUs when my company goes public?
Flow Financial Planning
by Meg
2y ago
As so many of my blog posts seem to, this one starts with “Congratulations! Your company is going IPO! Now you have…all these decisions to make.” And one of those decisions, which you have to make it before you have any clue how well the company stock is going to do, is: Do you want to withhold 22% or 37% of your RSU shares for federal taxes when they vest on IPO Day? In already public companies, I’ve never seen a company do anything other than the statutory 22% withholding when RSUs vest. Which means that once your company is public, you’ll need to stay on top of your tax bill throughout the ..read more
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Maybe want to have kids some day? Start thinking about your fertility now. No, it’s not too early.
Flow Financial Planning
by Meg
2y ago
Infertility impacts 1 in 8 women in the United States, and treating infertility can quickly become costly. Since Flow Financial Planning primarily works with early-to-mid-career women who are often grappling with big career, family, and financial decisions during their (possibly last) fertile years, any plan feels incomplete without addressing the biology and finances of fertility. [Meg’s Note: This post was written by guest bloggers Erin Coffman and Rebecca Rosenfelt. Erin and Rebecca are data scientists professionally—they met while working together at Airbnb—and also have personal experien ..read more
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Your Company Is Going Public. The Power of a Good Question. Or 5.
Flow Financial Planning
by Meg
2y ago
Much of the work of personal finance isn’t objective. There isn’t An Answer. Because it’s “personal” just as much as it is “finance.” Accordingly, much of the work we do with our clients isn’t us saying, “Do this! Stop doing that! Aaagh noooo!” Again, because we don’t know what The Right Answer is. Instead, our work heavily relies on asking our clients questions that help them see their situation from new perspectives. And oftentimes one of those perspectives will create an “ah ha!” moment for them, and they can then more easily arrive at a decision that feels right for them. Nowhere is this ..read more
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Have NSOs stock options in a public company? How “leverage” helps you decide when to exercise them.
Flow Financial Planning
by Meg
3y ago
If there’s one topic that our clients have no idea how to figure out, it’s the question of when to exercise their stock options. (Also, “What do you mean, the tax code works like that?”) Stock options supposedly are your ticket to riches…but how do you actually do that? How do you decide when to exercise them and sell them and turn them into grocery money? In this article about what to do with your options if you worked for Airbnb prior to IPO, I introduce the idea of leverage. Leverage is what makes options so durn valuable, and potentially much more valuable than other forms of equity compe ..read more
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This time with feeling: Keep your investing simple to get better returns.
Flow Financial Planning
by Meg
3y ago
My blog posts about investing are usually just so damn boring. But this time, this time, I …shoot, no, it’s just more of the same. At least this time I have research to make me sound more legit. You might or might not have heard of Morningstar. It’s a giant, well-respected investment-research firm. Every year they put out a fascinating (no, really?) study—called “Mind the Gap”—that compares, over the last 10 years, the performance of investments, aka “time-weighted” returns, versus what the human investors actually got out of those investments, aka “asset-weighted” or “dollar-weighted” (obvi ..read more
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