Your Tesla Benefits & Career: Financial Planning for Employees and Executives

Do you work at Tesla? Get the resources you need and expert insights from financial professionals who specialize in helping Tesla employees make the most of their compensation package and benefits.

Whether you’re a new Tesla employee or you’ve moved up the ranks into a management or executive leadership role over a multi-year career, it’s important to make smart money moves with your income and employee benefits. For example:

✅ Do you know the right moves to make to get the greatest value from the Tesla benefits available to you?

✅If you’re thinking about leaving Tesla for another job or planning to retire from the company in a few years, are you taking the right steps today to ensure you will receive all of the compensation and benefits that you’ve earned?

Get the Most Value from Your Tesla Benefits and Compensation Package

Throughout the year, Tesla provides its employees and executives with updates about their benefits ranging from health insurance and health savings plans to retirement plans like a 401(k), deferred compensation plans, and stock options. While the company offers many useful resources and access to knowledgeable staff who can assist with questions, you’ll also find financial professionals not affiliated with Tesla who specialize in helping Tesla employees make the most of their income and benefits.

Whether you work with Elon in the Tesla headquarters in Austin, Texas, another office location or gigafactory around the country, or remotely from home, you may have questions about your compensation package and benefits better suited for a financial professional who can offer unbiased advice and guidance.

For example, sensitive topics like discussing the steps you should take before quitting your job at Tesla to work elsewhere, protecting yourself in advance of a corporate layoff, or deciding when you should plan to retire are all conversations that may be more comfortable with a trusted financial advisor.

💡 In the Q&A below, you’ll gain insights from financial advisors who work with Tesla employees to help them make smart decisions to get the most value from their compensation and benefits, reduce their money stress, and prepare for a comfortable retirement.

🙋‍♀️ Do you have questions not yet answered? Use the form below to submit questions anonymously and watch this article for updates with answers to your questions. You can also reach out to the financial advisors below to set up an introductory call or contact them with your questions by email.

💸 Smart Money Insights for Tesla Employees & Executives

This page is organized into sections to help you quickly find the information you need and get answers to your questions:

1. Q&A: Financial Planning Tips for Tesla Employees & Executives
2. Get Answers to Your Questions About Your Tesla Benefits and Career
3. Quick Facts & Resources for Tesla Employees
4. Browse Related Articles

Q&A: Financial Planning Tips for Tesla Employees & Executives

In this section, you’ll learn how you can make the most of your Tesla employee benefits and gain valuable tips from financial advisors who specialize in working with Tesla employees and executives.

Answers to Employee Questions with Ryan Goldenhar, CFA®, CFP®

Ryan Goldenhar is a financial advisor based in San Diego, California who specializes in offering financial planning services to Tesla employees. Ryan helps his clients get the most value from their Tesla benefits and compensation package so they can enjoy life and feel confident about their financial future.

Q: As a financial advisor with experience helping Tesla employees save for their retirement, how do you help them make the most of their employee benefits?

Ryan: Tesla has some great benefits and we make sure that you are taking advantage of all that they offer. This includes helping you with your equity compensation (ISOs, NSOs, RSUs, ESPP), retirement accounts, health insurance and family benefits within their overall corporate benefits package.

Q: When you first speak with a Tesla employee, what questions do you like to ask to better understand their unique circumstances and determine how you can best help them achieve their goals?

Ryan: Tesla is a publicly traded company which means you either need to sell during open windows or a 10b5-1 selling plan with E-Trade/Morgan Stanley. We help you to strategize around the best way to diversify with the lowest possible taxes based on your unique situation and goals.

This leads to questions such as:

• What are your goals in life?
• How long do you hope to stay with Tesla?
• How would you like your wealth to support your family and legacy?
• How well do you feel you understand your equity compensation?
• Do you have an idea of how much in taxes you will owe with your total compensation package?

Q: Is there a particular benefit available to Tesla employees you feel isn’t as well utilized or understood by employees as it should be?

Ryan: Incentive Stock Options (ISOs) are still occasionally issued by Tesla and if you have them, they can be confusing since they do have tax benefits but you have to be careful around generating Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) if you exercise-and-hold shares via an ISO exercise. We help clients navigate this issue with a structured plan of potentially exercising them early in a calendar year and then revisiting the buy-and-hold decision during the last trading window of the calendar year before AMT might become due on the phantom benefit value from exercising the following April. If the decision to buy-and-hold TSLA shares from an ISO exercise no longer makes economic sense during the last trading window of the year, we help clients explore what’s called a “disqualifying disposition” which works like a “mulligan” in golf…it’s a do over.

et to Know Ryan Goldenhar Financial Advisor for Tesla Employees:

View Ryan’s profile page on Wealthtender or visit his website to learn more.

Q: Beyond Tesla employee benefits for retirement savings, are there other types of benefits offered by the company that you find valuable to discuss with your clients?

Ryan: Tesla has a nice legal benefit that can allow you to create an estate plan for little to no cost. Many employees might not know about this benefit but it’s one we encourage our clients to use since we focus on much more than just investments. We help review our clients’ corporate benefits, estate plans, tax returns, insurance (property & casualty term life, etc.), college savings plans, debt management and review job offers as they explore moving to a new employer.

Q: For Tesla employees thinking about leaving the company to accept a job elsewhere, what actions do you recommend they take before resigning and shortly thereafter?

Ryan: If you’re thinking of leaving Tesla, you should consider the financial impact of losing your UNVESTED equity which will be forfeited when you leave. In addition, you may have a short window to exercise and remaining vested options when you leave and need to factor this economic decision into all of the other financial choices that come with leaving Tesla to join a new company. Another consideration is health insurance. Health insurance will end at month-end of your employment. Knowing you have another job starting in a few weeks vs. a few days may leave you open to a medical emergency if coverage is not continuous. Finally, 401(k) employee contributions and HSA contributions are a zero sum game across employers. If you contribute the maximum to the Tesla 401(k) and then move to a new employer, you might need to wait until the next year to start contributing to the new 401(k) to make sure you don’t overcontribute to a 401(k) plan for the calendar year and then need to fix it later to avoid a tax penalty.

Q: For Tesla employees approaching retirement age, how do you recommend they prepare to make the transition from living off their salary to relying upon other sources of income?

Ryan: Many of our tech professional clients look to make work optional around age 50 to age 55. Because they’re not 59 1/2 yet which would allow them to pull funds penalty free from an IRA or 401(k), we need to assess the level of outside retirement account assets to support the client’s lifestyle and to budget potentially higher costs for medical insurance until they reach age 65 to qualify for lower cost Medicare coverage.

We work with our clients to understand COBRA and health exchange options years in advance, so we have a good year of emergency savings ready for the first big moment of this next phase in life. Then, it’s really about seeing how you can lean into your values and passions while keeping the finances in mind. Some of our clients go on to create their own startups or decide on consulting or volunteer work, etc. For our clients, we’ve discovered that a traditional ‘retirement’ to lounge by the pool with a Mai Tai isn’t of interest. They want “financial freedom” to explore new and different life adventures that may require cash needs to get going. We make sure we understand what will be going out the door by helping our clients imagine what their new lives will look like. Then we work to structure their portfolio cash flow so they can see how they are doing spending-wise compared to what we planned for.

Q: For Tesla employees who have managed their finances on their own to this point, what would you suggest they consider to help them decide if they should begin working with a financial advisor at this stage in their lives?

Ryan: An advisor can help with short-term decision-making such as equity compensation decisions, tax planning guidance, etc. and also with bigger-picture thinking (i.e. creating a framework so you can see the direction all your hard work is taking you, and make sure your money behaviors are aligning with your life goals). A client is often already doing many of the right things, moving in a positive direction and the value of working with an advisor/coach is to serve as an execution and accountability partner to allow the client to achieve more than they can do on their own.

Our planning process helps to put things in a broader framework to allow our clients to confidently make decisions that are proactive and intentional while we serve as a sounding board for the client about ideas they’re not sure about.

We encourage DIY investors to consider the cost of NOT getting a second opinion. Investment management is one thing, but retirement planning has incredible nuance to it that many people overlook such as:

• How will my investments be taxed? Can I minimize my lifetime taxation? Am I taking too much (or not enough) risk in the markets?
• What is my plan to turn my assets into income? What are the tax implications of doing that?
• Am I going to run out of money? How should I deal with Inflation?
• What about long-term care?
• Are my beneficiary designations up to date? Do I understand what’s going to happen to my assets when I pass?
• Do I need life insurance? Do I have enough or too much? Should I keep these old policies?

There are a number of different areas that a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) can provide incredible value to a recent retiree, even if they choose to continue to manage their own investments.

Q: What are some of the unique financial planning challenges you commonly see among your clients who are Tesla employees and how do you help them overcome these obstacles?

Ryan: A good, high-paying job in tech can feel a bit like golden handcuffs sometimes and it can be hard to imagine walking away. But, if you want to prepare for an exit or a shift to a different industry, we can create a pathway to ease the transition. In a role with equity compensation, a challenge can be to define how much to rely on that compensation in the plan. It’s variable and can be hard to quantify, but can be significant. So, having a firm structure based on a client’s comfort with the exposure and how it’s treated in the plan is important.

Q: What questions do you recommend Tesla employees ask financial advisors they’re considering hiring to help them decide if they’re a good fit?

Ryan: How does the advisor think about and approach decisions to complicated financial choices? We’ve found that sometimes the best choice for a particular client isn’t the one with the highest possible economic value because “sleep at night” and emotional factors might be more important than the biggest number on a spreadsheet. Your advisor should be able to clearly articulate how they arrived at their recommendations in a way that you can understand in plain English with no salesy finance gibberish. They should understand that trust must be earned over time and isn’t going to be granted immediately. Beyond these philosophical points, you should ask if the advisor is a fiduciary legally required to put your economic interests before his or her own? Will the advisor be providing comprehensive financial planning or just investment management? What will you pay in fees? Are there any hidden fees in the products the advisor is recommending?

Q: Is there anything that comes up frequently in your initial meeting with Tesla employees that surprises you?

Ryan: Maybe not surprising in the current political climate, but Tesla employees can feel conflicted in their feelings about their company stock. Most employees of other companies where we have clients LOVE their company stock…it’s their favorite investment. With Tesla, some love it and some not so much. I suppose it makes it easier to discuss diversifying Tesla than it is at other clients’ companies.

Q: For highly compensated Tesla employees and executives, are there any special benefits you believe it’s important to take into consideration when preparing their financial plan?

Ryan: For highly compensated employees at Tesla, we encourage them to look at and explore the potential benefits of a deferred compensation plan if they get invited to participate in the following calendar year. It’s a good tool to defer income taxes but comes with some tradeoffs that we help our clients explore before participating.

Q: Is there a particularly memorable experience or a moment you recall with a client who worked at Tesla when you realized they have unique opportunities and circumstances when it comes to their financial planning needs?

Ryan: We have found that many Tesla company employees that are single when they join are more interested in getting married if their significant other doesn’t also have a high amount of compensation. In these situations where our Tesla client makes a high income and their significant other does not, filing their tax returns as “married filing jointly” instead of as a single taxpayer might be just enough of an economic benefit nudge to get clients to say “I do.”

Quick Facts & Resources for Tesla Employees

🙋‍♀️ Have Questions About Your Tesla Benefits or Career?

📰 Browse Related Articles

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About the Author

Brian Thorp

Founder and CEO, Wealthtender

Brian and his wife live in Texas, enjoying the diversity of Houston and the vibrancy of Austin.

With over 25 years in the financial services industry, Brian is applying his experience and passion at Wealthtender to help more people enjoy life with less money stress.

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