Exercise planner
Enter your grants and your view of the company. The planner compares five exercise strategies over several years, then simulates thousands of possible futures to show the range of outcomes. Everything runs in your browser.
What the planner does for you
What it does for you
- Compares five ways of timing your exercises over several years, from exercising everything now to waiting for the exit, and finds the best mix for your situation.
- Counts every tax effect along the way: the AMT in the year you exercise, the credit that comes back later, and the lower long-term rates when you sell.
- Keeps within the cash you can actually spare each year.
- Shows the risk, not just one guess: thousands of possible futures for the company reveal how often each strategy loses money and how bad the bad cases are.
How to use it
- Enter your salary, then add each of your option grants.
- Describe the company: today's 409A value and your honest guesses about failure, a modest exit and a large exit, and when it might happen.
- Set your plan: how many years to spread exercises over and the most cash you can spend each year.
- Read the Plan tab for the ranked strategies, Risk for the range of outcomes, and Compare for which strategy wins in which future. Save scenarios to compare assumptions.
Look for the next to any field, number or chart for an explanation. New to stock options or the AMT? Read the guide.
Five exercise strategies, ranked by how much they are worth on average.
Educational tool, not tax, legal or investment advice. Federal tax only. Check the numbers with a CPA before acting on them.