Join an Employee Stock Purchase Program ASAP

ESPP, or employee stock purchase programs, is an easy and fast ROI that many folks overlook. Though purchasing and selling ESPP stocks is done with after-tax dollars, you can increase your return by around 15% (pre-tax). If the company stock performs great, then the ceiling can be even higher. If the company stock doesn’t perform well, it has to lose 15% of its offer value from purchase day (assuming the stock price remained the same) to break even, which doesn’t usually happen to good / great companies in the long term. Plus you can choose when to sell.

So if you’re already invested in a pretax 401k, why not capitalize even further with the cash you can immediately leverage from ESPP? You can even use the return to buy low cost index funds, which will give you a less volatile return in the long run.

It’s a win win in my book, but please do your research. And definitely make sure you can afford to try this approach!