How to read the total compensation calculator
Project salary, expected bonuses, cash awards, RSU vesting, refresh grants, and ESPP economic benefits year by year, then identify how much compensation depends on company stock and where an equity cliff may occur.
What it calculates
The calculator runs a monthly compensation projection and rolls those events into annual results. Base salary accrues while employed; bonuses and cash awards land when scheduled; each RSU grant becomes fixed shares and vests in its own tranches; recurring refresh rules create later grant cohorts; and each ESPP purchase separates the employee contribution from the employer-provided discount or lookback benefit.
Total compensation is salary, expected bonus, one-time cash, vested RSU value, and other employer compensation. TC with ESPP adds only the ESPP economic benefit. The employee’s own payroll contribution is shown separately and is never counted as employer compensation.
Questions it answers
Read projected total compensation over the selected horizon, average annual compensation, and the year-by-year mix of cash and equity.
See initial and additional grants beside recurring refresh cohorts so it is clear which grant produces each year’s vesting value.
Find the largest projected year-over-year decline and inspect whether an initial grant ending is offset by salary growth or refresh vesting.
Compare the same compensation package under different stock-growth assumptions without treating any path as a forecast.
Scenarios can represent competing offers, a current role, different bonus payouts, or different stock-price paths. Clone a scenario when only one assumption should change.
Major inputs
- Projection start and horizon
- The first modeled month and the number of years included in the headline total. Five years is useful because it exposes what happens after a conventional four-year initial grant ends.
- Base salary and annual increase
- Current annual salary plus either a percentage raise or fixed-dollar increase applied on each employment anniversary. Salary is accrued monthly so partial years and a departure date stop at the correct point.
- Target bonus and payout
- A fixed amount or percentage of salary, multiplied by the expected payout. Separating target from payout makes conservative and optimistic scenarios easier to compare.
- Cash awards
- Signing, retention, relocation, or other employer cash recognized in the year it is paid.
- Stock price path
- The current price and annual growth assumption used at future grant and vest dates. In manual mode, the year-row table accepts a separate year-end price anchor for every projected employment year. A zero-percent growth default means the calculator does not imply that historical stock performance will continue.
- RSU grants
- Known shares or a target grant value converted to shares at the grant price, plus a vesting schedule whose tranches total 100%. Already vested years remove completed schedule portions without renormalizing the remaining award. Front-loaded schedules use 40% / 30% / 20% / 10%; back-loaded schedules reverse that order.
- Refresh grants
- A repeatable rule based on fixed value, a percentage of salary, or fixed shares. Each future award becomes a separate cohort with its own grant-date share conversion and vesting events.
- ESPP assumptions
- Payroll contribution rate, eligible pay, employer plan cap, discount, lookback choice, and offering period. For a qualified Section 423 plan, each offering start is treated as the option grant date and the $25,000 grant-date-value limit accrues for each calendar year the option remains outstanding through purchase, using the earliest available year first. The model reports both the employee contribution and the estimated economic benefit.
- Departure date
- An optional final employment month that stops salary and future grants, cancels unvested tranches, and reports the projected value forfeited.
What the results mean
- Projected total compensation
- Compensation across the selected period, excluding the ESPP economic benefit. It includes RSUs vesting during the period, not the headline value of unvested awards.
- TC with ESPP
- Total compensation plus the estimated ESPP discount or lookback benefit. It does not add the employee’s payroll contributions.
- Annual compensation mix
- Salary, bonus, cash awards, initial RSU vesting, refresh RSU vesting, ESPP benefit, and other employer compensation for each year.
- Annual TC change
- Percentage growth or decline in TC with ESPP compared with either the prior projected year or Year 1. Multiple scenarios can be grouped under each employment year; the tooltip reconciles the total and the dollar difference in every compensation component.
- RSU vesting by cohort
- The vest value attributable to each grant. The grant-to-vesting matrix makes overlapping refresh awards and an initial-grant roll-off visible.
- Cash and equity mix
- The share of recognized compensation coming from salary and employer cash versus RSUs. It is exposure to the company stock price, not a ranking of compensation quality.
- Largest compensation cliff
- The largest projected year-over-year decline in dollars and percentage terms. Read the annual and cohort tables to identify which grant or cash payment ended.
- Unvested value
- Projected market value of shares not yet vested at the selected date. It is a pipeline estimate, not recognized compensation or guaranteed cash.
Worked example
Hypothetical example. Start with a $200,000 salary growing 4% each year, a 15% target bonus paid at 100%, a $400,000 initial RSU grant vesting 25% annually for four years, $100,000 annual refresh grants beginning in Year 2 with the same vesting schedule, a flat stock price, and ESPP contributions equal to 10% of salary at a 15% discount with no lookback.
- Year 1 includes $200,000 of salary, $30,000 of bonus, $100,000 of initial-grant vesting, and about $3,529 of ESPP benefit.
- Refresh vesting grows from $25,000 in Year 2 to $100,000 in Year 5 as grant cohorts overlap.
- The initial grant ends after Year 4. TC with ESPP falls from about $437,469 in Year 4 to $372,817 in Year 5.
- The calculator identifies the roughly $64,651, or 14.8%, Year 5 decline and shows that $100,000 of refresh vesting partly offsets the initial grant ending.
The four-year TC with ESPP is approximately $1,541,387. These figures depend entirely on the hypothetical timing and flat stock-price assumption.
Assumptions and limitations
- The calculator is a deterministic gross-compensation planner. Stock prices, bonus payouts, raises, continued employment, and future grants are assumptions rather than forecasts or promises.
- Ordinary share-settled RSUs are valued at the modeled price when they vest. Later gains or losses after vesting are outside total compensation.
- Target-value grants are converted to fractional shares at the modeled grant-date price without rounding intermediate values. Actual award agreements may round shares or use another conversion convention.
- ESPP results are an economic-benefit estimate. Employer plan documents govern eligibility, payroll caps, purchase dates, refunds, share rounding, and lookback rules.
- Employee ESPP contributions are after-tax payroll cash flow, not employer compensation. Holding purchased shares can create later investment gains or losses that this gross-compensation model does not count.
- The calculator does not prepare a tax return or determine exact RSU withholding, ESPP qualifying dispositions, payroll tax, capital gains, or jurisdiction-specific tax.
- A departure-date scenario is only an estimate. Award agreements and employer policies determine forfeiture, acceleration, bonus eligibility, repayment clauses, and final payroll treatment.
- All amounts are modeled in US dollars without currency conversion.
These calculations are educational estimates, not financial, investment, legal, accounting, compensation, or tax advice. Verify offer letters, equity agreements, ESPP documents, and tax treatment with qualified professionals. Read the Financial Disclaimer.
Sources and further reading
Sources reviewed August 2026.
- Internal Revenue Service Publication 525: Taxable and Nontaxable Income — general treatment of compensation and employer-provided property.
- Internal Revenue Service: Section 423 employee stock purchase plan regulations — qualified ESPP option and accrual rules.
- Investor.gov: Restricted stock unit — background on RSUs and vesting.
The sources explain general concepts and federal rules; employer plans and individual circumstances differ, and the sources do not endorse MyInvestmentCalc or validate a particular scenario.