How to estimate a reasonable amount for a signing bonus?
"So you've already considered relocation. Here are a few additional things to consider with respect to negotiating a signing bonus (if any): Would you be leaving a position where you are eligible for an upcoming bonus, profit-share, or other special incentive payout, such as a stock option or RSU vesting date?  A signing bonus can help offset the opportunity cost of leaving a previous job when an incentive payout date is near. At the new company, would you be required to wait some pre-defined period to be eligible to participate in the pension or retirement savings plan with employer basic or matching contributions? If you were receiving ongoing employer contributions in your previous company's plan and would need to wait, say, six months before participating in the new company's plan, a signing bonus can offset lost employer contributions in the interim. Consider funding your own IRA in that time. Would you be required to give up something else of value to you that your previous employer was providing, such as an expensive laptop, that is not expected to otherwise be replaced by the new company? Whether they offer a signing bonus and how much you can expect to negotiate is based on a lot of factors and you'll need to ""play it by ear.""  Remember what bonus means: ""A payment or gift added to what is usual or expected, in particular."" Remember also that a signing bonus is a one time thing.  In general, it's more important to consider the overall ongoing compensation package – salary and incentive plans, vacation, retirement benefits, health benefits, etc. – and whether those meet your long-term needs." "Signing bonuses are probably the most variable of all, as there is a general understanding that more personal factors are taken into account. As a result, HR isn't under a huge obligation to explain away the differences. In comparison, for salary there's the wide expectation that same job = same pay. Since there's so variable, but also fairly rare, ""budget"" isn't a main concern for many HR departments. And they certainly won't have a finely grained budget breakdown. ""This year we'll pay $250.000 for headhunters, $50000 for relocation payments, $100,000 for pension transfers, $150.000 for stock option losses..."". It's generally tossed on one big heap, ""cost of hiring"". So, what can you ask for? That's really a market question. What's your value to the company? How much of that is already reflected in salary and other benefits? The main downside to signing bonuses is that a company won't know how long you'd stay. Your value to the company is probably your monthly work. Therefore they cannot amortize that bonus over a fixed amount of months. What if you leave after 3 months? For that reason, a ""conditional"" signing bonus is a reasonable offer from your side. E.g. ask for one month salary, conditional on you staying for 24 months, and otherwise you'll repay them from your last salary."
From the FAQ I think it is fairly clear that it is OK: Can I open a Help to Buy: ISA with someone else? No. Help to Buy:   ISAs are only available to individuals. But, you can put more than one   government bonus towards the home you are buying. So, if you are   buying a home with someone else who is also a first time buyer, they   can open and save money into their own account and receive a   government bonus. Inference: if you are buying a home with someone else who is NOT also a first time buyer, they can't get their own account and get the bonus (but there's no problem with you doing so).  Alternatively - open the Help To Buy ISA, you'll still get the normal interest rate on it, and then argue the case with the conveyancer / solicitor once you actually buy the property and claim the Government bonus. In fact, here is the declaration you (well, specifically, your girlfriend) would have to sign at the point you jointly make the purchase. Nothing in there that forbids it being a joint purchase with a non-first-time-buyer either. Recommend using quickbooks for account management. If you use the manufacturing and wholesale you can track POs from vendors, estimates, bill payment quotes and invoicing (there's an editor to customize your set up)Also, most accountants are very familiar with this platform so come tax time they'll be able to give you a hand no problem. For accepting payments I highly suggest asking for checks. If you do accept credit cards keep in mind most  payment processors charge a percent (1.5-3%) depending on transaction amounts and quantities of transactions. So you'll want to mark up your products by at least that amount.   Another area is sales tax. Since you are not the end user you should be able to avoid sales tax on the items you will be selling to customers. You then charge the customer this sales tax. Not sure about NJ but in Texas we are 8.25%. I then pay the state of Texas the taxes collected quarterly.   Edit: also make sure you have separate finances for the LLC. Separate checking, separate credit card, separate everything! If you end up using an account that is tied to you personally then you run into the risk of losing the protective nature of an LLC from a legal standpoint.   Edit2: by separate I mean using your IRS issued EIN number to open accounts with the LLC name. When you sign anything on behalf of the company make sure to add the name of the company next to it to show the company is making the signature not you. For instance   u/sexlessnights Company name, LLC "It depends what you mean. Finance Independence and Retirement Early (FI/RE) are two overlapping ideas. If you plan to retire early and spend the same amount of money every year (adjusted for inflation), then you need to save twenty-times your yearly spending to satisfy the 4% Safe Withdrawal rule of thumb. Carefully notice I say ""yearly spending"" and not income.  I'm unaware how it is in Pakistan, but in America, people who retire in their sixties tend to reduce their spending by 30%. This is for a host of reasons like not eating out as much, not driving to work, paid off mortgages, and their children being adults now. In this type of profile, a person needs to save 17.5x yearly spending. This numbers presume a person will only use their built assets as an income source. Any programs like a government pension acting as a safety net. If you factor those in, the estimates above become smaller." As a start-up, the initial shares can be given at various price points. So essentially they can give someone a larger percentage based on the same amount earlier, and lesser percentage to someone else for the same amount. As its a start-up the valuations can be very tricy and what matters is that whether you believe the percentage you got for the amount is right or not.   It is very important to note that when you have been given an ownership in the company, how that is designated. Is it in absolute number of shares or is it in terms of percentage based on the existing shares. For example you maybe given 100 shares, without any qualification. Or you maybe given a 5% stake in the paid-up capital, that translates to 100 shares. It is always better to hold the shares in % of the total shares. Also read the contract, any dilution should require your approval. Normally start-ups once the valuation starts to go up, start creating more shares and sell these to private equity or create more shares and give it as a bonus to promoters. Hence in both cases your holding will keep getting diluted. There is a related quesiton If a startup can always issue new shares, what value is there to stocks/options? There is one edge case that may be of value to you. If you declare a bonus (probably to yourself given a very small company) you can deduct it from your year and then have up to 6 months to actually write the cheque and give it to the person. Say your year end for the corporation is July 31st. You could declare the bonus July 30th and deduct it from that year, lowering your corporate tax. You could then wait until January 30th to actually write the bonus cheque. The person would then have that taxable income in a later calendar year, deferring paying the tax. Depending on the size of the bonus, this would possibly matter, although if you did large bonuses every year it would only matter the first time. The other issue is the availability of your bookkeeper or accountant. They are sometimes very busy during personal income tax season. They often like a vacation immediately after that. They may go away in the summer when their kids are out of school. The nice thing about a July 31st year end is that you can probably count on a quick turnaround from your accountant in September. The possible downside is that you won't enjoy reconciling your credit card statements and the like in August as part of getting your year end stuff together. You can avoid that by keeping your books in a decent shape all the time. "In the U.S., virtually all salaries are expressed as ""gross salaries"", which are before the taxes that the individual must pay on their income. The numbers shown in the links are almost certainly gross salary figures. However, the ""gross salary"" is not the entire ""total compensation"" number, which is the total value of all compensation and benefits that the employee receives for his work. Total compensation includes not only salary and bonuses, but the cost or value of any employer-paid healthcare, retirement, company car, expense account, stock options, and other valuable goods or services. That's still not the total amount of money the company has to pay to have you; there are employer-paid payroll taxes totaling 6.2% of your gross salary, plus practical costs like the cost of your computer, cubicle or office furniture, and the portion of utility costs that keep you well-lit, clean and comfortable. This complete number is called ""total employee cost"", and the general rule of thumb is that it's double your gross cash compensation (salary + bonuses). Lastly, $100k in California isn't worth as much, in real terms, as $100k in other parts of the U.S. The cost of living in California, especially in Silicon Valley where the majority of the people who make six figures by being C++ programmers are located, is ridiculously expensive. There are other tech hubs in the U.S., like DFW, Austin TX, Atlanta GA, St Louis MO, Raleigh NC, etc where people earn less, but also spend less to live and so can use more of their salary in a ""discretionary"" manner." Another option to a human advisor is FutureAdvisor, a web service that (if it supports your 401k plan) gives personalized algorithmic advice on what you should hold in your 401(k) and other retirement accounts.  If it doesn't support your 401(k) plan just yet you can sign up to be emailed when your plan is added.  [Disclosure: I work here, but I believe in the product and it's designed to solve this exact problem so I'm mentioning it here]  Note from JoeTaxpayer - bolu's disclosure is much appreciated. The fee is $39/yr, with a free trial. Consider that a commissions based advisor won't even take on a $10K level account, and at $100K, you'd be hard pressed to gain by more than his 1% fee. So while I've not dug deeper into this site, a rules-based methodology is likely to be worth the cost if over time it gains you even a fraction of a percent compared to what you'd have done blindly. Well, I think the first negotiation tip would be not to advertise that all  you do is million dollar contracts.  If everyone knows that's what you're going to settle on, nobody is going to be willing to offer any more than that.