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

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

Whether you’re a new NVIDIA 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 NVIDIA benefits available to you?

✅If you’re thinking about leaving NVIDIA 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 NVIDIA Benefits and Compensation Package

Throughout the year, NVIDIA 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 NVIDIA who specialize in helping NVIDIA employees make the most of their income and benefits.

Whether you work in the NVIDIA headquarters in Santa Clara, California, another office location 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 NVIDIA 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.

Q&A: Financial Planning Tips For NVIDIA Employees & Executives

Answers to NVIDIA Employee Questions with Emily Rassam and Richard Archer (Archer Investment Management)

With a focus on serving professionals in the technology industry, the financial advisors at Archer Investment Management help their clients get the most value from their benefits and compensation package so they can enjoy life and feel confident about their financial future. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas, respectively, Emily Rassam and Richard Archer specialize in offering financial planning services to NVIDIA employees.

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

Emily: At Archer Investment Management, we specialize in working with mid-career technology professionals. We have several NVIDIA employees as clients and are familiar with the company’s employee benefit plans, retirement plans, equity compensation packages, and ancillary benefits. More importantly, we are acutely aware of the financial planning needs of technology professionals and how their Nvidia benefits fit into an overall financial plan, including long-term planning, goal setting, tax planning, and estate planning. We start by building a financial personality profile and risk tolerance assessment to understand your relationship with money and your comfort level with risk.

Q: When you first speak with an NVIDIA 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?

Richard: Our detailed onboarding process includes conversations about your life goals, how your finances play a role in maximizing happiness, and what it means to be intentional with money. We gather information about your benefits and compensation package, spending plan, short-term and long-term goals, taxes, estate plans, and insurance. This detailed planning process allows us to build a comprehensive picture of your financial life and how each piece of the puzzle fits together. You cannot make recommendations without examining the whole picture.

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

Richard: I see two areas that are underutilized and often deserve more attention. (1) The opportunity to make after-tax 401(k) contributions. (2) The ability to perform an in-plan conversion of your pre- and after-tax savings. Employees tend to focus on contributing to their pre-tax or Roth 401(k) without realizing the power of additional savings via after-tax 401(k) contributions.

Q: Beyond NVIDIA employee benefits for retirement savings, are there other types of benefits offered by the company that you find valuable to discuss with your clients (e.g., stock, education savings, health savings)?

Emily: NVIDIA offers an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) within which they can receive a 15% discount on NVIDIA stock. You can contribute up to 15% of your salary. The offering price is set on the first trading day after your enrollment month, and it remains the ‘look-back’ price for up to 24 months. There are four purchase periods within that 24-month period. and the 15% discount is applied to the lower of the price at the beginning or end of the offering period. NVIDIA also contributes up to $3,000 annually to your Health Savings Account (HSA).

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

Emily: Your matched 401(k) dollars are 100% vested from day one. However, you may have received employee stock options or restricted stock units (RSUs) that are unvested. Look carefully at the dates on your grants and vesting schedules to determine when each grant vests; this may impact your timing to leave NVIDIA – you don’t want to leave any money on the table! You have 90 days after departing the company to exercise your stock options. Work with an advisor to determine which grants to exercise and the best way to fund this purchase.

Q: For NVIDIA 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?

Richard: Our detailed retirement planning process includes:   

• A spending strategy tailored to your income goals
• Social Security timing recommendations
• Coordination of health care benefits
• Discussion around how your spending will change throughout retirement
• Stress-testing your retirement projection with many what-if scenarios
• Timing your exit to maximize any unvested incentive stock options (ISOs), non-qualified stock options (NSOs), or RSUs

Q: For NVIDIA 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?

Emily: There are many online tools and calculators. Where we find NVIDIA employees get stuck is understanding how to prioritize goals and seeing the big picture. We help NVIDIA employees organize their financial lives and provide accountability for reaching goals. Understanding whether you should use surplus dollars to pay down debt, save towards a short-term goal, or work towards a long-term aspiration (such as retirement or college education savings) can be challenging. For Nvidia employees planning with a spouse or partner, an advisor helps facilitate difficult conversations and moves the ball forward in your planning process.

Get to Know Emily Rassam, Financial Advisor for NVIDIA Employees:

View Emily’s profile page on Wealthtender or visit her website to learn more.

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

Richard: One common obstacle we find is knowing when to diversify away from the concentration risk of holding a high percentage of your net worth in one company’s shares. Many of our NVIDIA employee clients struggle with selling positions; it requires coaching, recognizing natural human biases, an evaluation of the risks, and careful diversification away from an outsized position.

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

Richard: If you were granted ISOs or RSUs, be sure to work with an advisor who understands how to incorporate those into your overall picture. Seek an advisor who can model the alternative minimum tax (AMT), understands the rules around qualifying and disqualifying dispositions, and knows how and when to diversify away from sizeable single stock positions, if appropriate.

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

Richard: Employees do not always understand the full realm of benefits – both big and small – available to them. Be sure to carefully review the benefits available to you! For some employees, this may be the first time they have received an equity compensation package, and they often need our guidance to fully understand the type of grant they received and potential tax implications. We enjoy helping people with strategies to ensure they fully benefit from their entire compensation package.

Get to Know Richard Archer, Financial Advisor for NVIDIA Employees:

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

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

Emily: For highly compensated employees, we advise you contribute the maximum to your 401(k) with after-tax dollars. Without that additional contribution, it will be hard to save the recommended amount of 15% to 20% of your salary.

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

Emily: One of our clients did not have the opportunity to contribute to an ESPP at a previous employer. We helped him understand the benefits of purchasing company stock at a 15% discount and encouraged him to contribute the maximum amount. We also showed him how to use vesting RSU shares as cash flow to offset money set aside for the ESPP purchase if needed. NVIDIA’s ESPP has a particularly attractive feature in that the stock price at the beginning of the offering period is part of the look-back for 24 months.