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I did implement employee stock options for you a while back. It’s not a commonly used feature and was a little tricky, so I’m wondering how’s that's working out?
Hi Elisabeth,
I can imagine that it was tricky, and I appreciate it. 
I’m still fiddling with it though.  Specifically the nuance of when the options are ‘in the money’ and when they ‘expire’ and have to be executed or be lost.
So how to force the ‘execution’ of the options – which are basically a ‘cash’ payout (market price less the option price- not stock retention), which triggers the taxable event?
I initially split one option into 3 separate options (with one executing each year over 3 years), then selecting 100% withdrawal each year and prioritized the account to be drawn down.
However, when optimizing, it ignored these ‘planned’ events, or didn’t recognize it’s taxable upon ‘execution’, or it is optimizing not to ‘execute it’  – which then jeopardizes the options expiring.
So I’m having fun with it.
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The withdrawal does not trigger the exercise in the TM, it’s in the function to  grow the investments that does it. It checks for hitting that strike date. The options are always exercised on the strike date and trigger the taxes, (if in the money, otherwise they are lost but I suppose that would only happen in a simulation run). The way it’s done is you get shares, not cash, and these can then be sold to accommodate  automatic withdrawals from the account (or priorities if you need the money). After exercise and not withdrawn, the shares just behave as any regular investment.

In an optimized scenario, the TIME MACHINE ignores your set automatic withdrawals and priorities after retirement to instead do withdrawals according to what was suggested by the optimizer algorithm. If that algorithm determined you should keep those shares, then they won’t be sold (but they will be exercised and trigger taxes).

However think of it this way: in real life you would get the cash and have to move it, but the TIME MACHINE/Optimizer is telling you don’t need it for consumption so you can reinvest it in a different account/investment. Just think of the option account after exercise as that new non-registered account holding a similar investment in terms of growth rates as the original underlying stock (it will even start paying dividends at that point if the stock was set to pay dividends). Does that make sense?

Glad you’re having fun! Thanks for the feedback,

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Thanks!

How you have set it up makes sense. 

So, the options are exercised and would be included in the "external" income, with associated taxes calculated accordingly?

That would explain the bump in external income over those 3 years.

Very cool, thanks again.

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The TM does record the shares value as a deposit to the account on the strike date, it also will increase taxes. This is how external income is calculated:

External income = Net income + Taxes

Net income = Spending + Savings

Savings = sum of all net deposits to all accounts


Savings is increased by the deposit, but decreased by the increased taxes that are paid out from accounts. So the boost in External income you are seeing is the net effect of the share value - taxes. So I agree, very cool!