Stocks given by company vest if I quit?
"You were probably not given stock, but stock options.  Those options have a strike price and you can do some more research on them if needed.  Lets assume that you were given 5K shares at a strike of 20, and they vest 20% per year.  Assume the same thing in your second year and you are going to leave in year three. You would have 2K shares from your year 1 grant, and 1K shares from your year 2 grant, so 2K total. If you leave no more shares would be vested. If you leave you have one of two options: To complicate matters subsequent grants may have different strike prices, so perhaps year two grant is at $22 per share.  However, in pre-public companies that is not likely the case. For a bit of history, I worked at a pre-ipo company and we were all going to get rich.  I was given generous grants, but decided to leave.  I really wanted to buy my options but simply didn't have the money.  Shortly after I left the company folded, so the money would have been thrown away anyway.  When a company is private the motivate their employees with tales of riches, but they are not required to disclose financial data.  This company did a very good job of convincing employees that all was fine, when it wasn't. Also I received options in a publicly traded company.  Myself and other employees received options that were ""underwater"" or worth far less than the strike price.  You could let them expire so one did not owe money, but they were worthless. Hopefully that answers your question." Vesting typically stops after you quit.   So, if your plan vests 20% per year for 5 years, and you received a one-time stock grant as part of this plan (i.e., ignoring the fact that these often involve new grants each year that vest separately), and you were hired in 2014 and leave at the end of 2016, then you vested 20% in 2015 and 20% in 2016, so would have 40% of the stock vested when you quit, and would never have more than that.
"I've tried Mint, and I've tried Quicken. Now, I think Quicken is an annoying, crashy little piece of software, but it is also quite capable; overall I think it has the features you want. You can enter your bills, broken down by category, in advance. You can enter your paychecks, broken down by category (gross income, federal income tax, state income tax, social security, SDI, transfers to tax-protected 401(k) account, etc) in advance. You can enter in your stock trades and it can tell you how much you'll need to end up paying in capital gains taxes. You can even enter in your stock option vesting schedule in advance (it's a royal pain because you can't go back and change anything without deleting everything, but you can do it). It'll forecast your bank account balance in all of your bank accounts in advance with a shiny chart. It'll even model your loans, if you set it up right. I didn't do too much with the ""budgeting"" tools per se, but the account-balances-daily features sound like the closest thing to what you're looking for that's likely to exist. The only thing that's a trifle tricky is that transfers from one account to another may take multiple days (hello, ACH) and you'll have to decide whether to record them at departure or arrival." "In fact, it's quite the opposite. If someone is willing to sell some stock as low as $30/share, and someone else is willing to pay $31/share, one of those individuals is going to get a good deal - unless HFT acts as the middle-man and snags the extra dollar. In which case the individuals get the worst price they would accept and someone with fast collocated computers gets to skim some profits (while adding no value, the order could have happened without the so called ""liquidity"" that HFT claims to add).  It's not exactly that simple, but that's the basic effect. It's an unnecessary middleman that skims profits away from individuals on both sides.  I would like to see a return to ""investing"" back to the meaning of the word, instead of gambling on daily or short-term fluctuations. I wouldn't mind a long-term holding requirement (3 months?) for every purchase, and a daily exchange-calculated set price (calculated by actual orders placed) that everyone who buys/sells a particular stock on a given day pays.  Yes, my ideas would destroy an entire industry. I'm ok with that because it would encourage people to *really* invest in companies." Advantage: more money.  The financial tradeoff is usually to your benefit: Given these, for having your money locked up for the average length of the vesting periods (some is locked up for 3 months, some is locked up for nearly 0), you get a 10% return.  Overall, it's like a 1.5% bonus for the year, assuming you were to sell everything right away. Of course, whether or not you wish to keep the stock depends on how you value MSFT as an investment. The disadvantage lies in a couple parts: "I find the question interesting, but it's beyond an intelligent answer.  Say what you will about Jim Cramer, his advice to spend ""an hour per month on each stock"" you own appears good to me. But it also limits the number of stocks you can own. Given that most of us have day jobs in other fields, you need to decide how much time and education you can put in. That said, there's a certain pleasure in picking stocks, buying a company that's out of favor, but your instinct tells you otherwise. For us, individual stocks are about 10% of total portfolio. The rest is indexed. The amount that ""should be"" in individual stocks? None. One can invest in low cost funds, never own shares of individual stocks, and do quite well." My best answer is to simply fish out that old email account. DumbCoder makes a good point - the company whose shares you own can probably figure out what brokerage firm is holding the shares, but it'd take a lot on their end. Honestly you're better off just hitting up random brokerage firms until you find the right one than going to the company and asking them where your shares are. Good luck. You also need to remember that stock options usually become valueless if not exercised while an employee of the company.  So if there is any chance that you will leave the company before an IPO, the effective value of the stock options is zero.  That is the safest and least risky valuation of the stock options.   With a Google or Facebook, stock options can be exercised and immediately sold, as they are publicly traded.  In fact, they may give stock grants where you sell part of the grant to pay tax withholding.  You can then sell the remainder of the grant for money at any time, even after you leave the company.  You only need the option/grant to vest to take advantage of it.  Valuing these at face value (current stock price) makes sense.  That's at least a reasonable guess of future value.   If you are absolutely sure that you will stay with the company until the IPO, then valuing the stock based on earnings can make sense.  A ten million dollar profit can justify a hundred million dollar IPO market capitalization easily.  Divide that by the number of shares outstanding and multiply by how many you get.  If anything, that gives you a conservative estimate.   I would still favor the big company offers though.  As I said, they are immediately tradeable while this offer is effectively contingent on the IPO.  If you leave before then, you get nothing.  If they delay the IPO, you're stuck.  You can't leave the company until then without sacrificing that portion of your compensation.  That seems a big commitment to make. "This is a great question.  I've participated in a deal like that as an employee, and I also know of friends and family who have been involved during a buyout.  In short:  The updated part of your question is correct: There is no single typical treatment.  What happens to unvested restricted stock units (RSUs), unvested employee stock options, etc. varies from case to case. Furthermore, what exactly will happen in your case ought to have been described in the grant documentation which you (hopefully) received when you were issued restricted stock in the first place. Anyway, here are the two cases I've seen happen before: Immediate vesting of all units.  Immediate vesting is often the case with RSUs or options that are granted to executives or key employees.  The grant documentation usually details the cases that will have immediate vesting.  One of the cases is usually a Change in/of Control (CIC or COC) provision, triggered in a buyout.  Other immediate vesting cases may be when the key employee is terminated without cause, or dies.  The terms vary, and are often negotiated by shrewd key employees. Conversion of the units to a new schedule.  If anything is more ""typical"" of regular employee-level grants, I think this one would be.  Generally, such RSU or option grants will be converted, at the deal price, to a new schedule with identical dates and vesting percentages, but a new number of units and dollar amount or strike price, usually so the end result would have been the same as before the deal. I'm also curious if anybody else has been through a buyout, or knows anybody who has been through a buyout, and how they were treated." You generally cant roll funds from a 401k with a company you're still employed with.  Some companies allow it depending on the custodial agreement but it's rare.  Generally you need to wait until retirement or separation to roll funds out of a 401k.