Comprehensive Financial Planning for Executives
You're busy. Your career is demanding, and family life is important. You also need time for friends and outside interests. You want a partner to help you manage your financial life, so you can focus on what matters most to you. Executive financial planning takes a comprehensive view of your goals, company benefits, investments, insurance and estate planning to work through complexity and ensure a strong financial and life foundation.
Here’s how Old Peak Finance can help
- Develop a financial plan that allows you to achieve your goals
- Identify and address risks to your financial investments
- Create an investment plan with growth potential and risk mitigation
- Manage company stock exposure
- Develop a plan for lifetime tax minimization
- Navigate complex company benefits
- Stock options, including ISOs and NQSOs
- Restricted stock units (RSUs) and performance stock units (PSUs)
- 401k
- Deferred compensation
Have Questions?
Sign up for a complimentary call. We'll listen and determine together if we can help you achieve your goals.
Types Of Executives and Professionals We Help
- Executive and C-Suite professionals with complex compensation packages
- Professional looking to maximize company benefits
- Professionals looking to maximize Stock Options, Insurance Planning, and Investments
- Professionals looking for Tax Efficiency
- Professionals seeking Legacy Financial Planning and Wealth Management
- High performing executives who are short on time to manage their personal financial planning
Why Work With Old Peak Finance
We focus on comprehensive financial planning that centers around your goals, taking into account the complexities that come with a career and financial responsibilities. Investing is only one piece of the puzzle. We’ll help you see the full picture.
Our financial advisors are fiduciaries. That means we take an oath to put you first. You can trust you are receiving experienced, knowledgeable advice personalized to your specific situation.
How We Help
Your challenges, and how our CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS™ help:
Senior-Level Executives
Situation
Solution
We help you measure the risk and create a plan to diversify your portfolio based on your financial goals. Your personalized solution will account for restrictions, tax impacts, and company stock investments. And, we accommodate your schedule, meeting evenings or weekends if needed.
Understanding Your Benefits
Situation
Solution
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401k
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Deferred Compensation
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Stock Options, including Incentive Stock Options (ISOs) and Non-Qualified Stock Options (NQSOs)
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Restrictive Stock Units (RSUs) and Performance Stock Units (PSUs)
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Disability Insurance
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Basic and Supplemental Life Insurance
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Transitioning retirement benefits between employers
Impact of Equity Compensation
on Retirement
Situation
You're unsure how to plan for retirement cash flow because you have a variety of compensation plans. They may include discretionary cash bonuses, 401k plans, deferred compensation, stocks options, restricted stock units and performance stock units and employee stock purchase plans, among others. Forecasting cash flow from these plans is challenging. It is also difficult – but important – to make decisions on whether to participate in optional plans and when to sell, creating cash flow and a potentially large tax bill. The impact on you and your family can be long-lasting.
Solution
Together, we build a financial plan, showing you how to weigh your options with the goals of maximizing value, managing tax and creating a reliable retirement income stream that maximizes your corporate benefits and tax efficiency. We work with your HR team to understand the intricacies of your compensation package. We partner with your CPA to manage the tax burden. We also consider estate planning implications.
Old Peak Finance does not sell any products or make commissions on our recommendations. Our advice is solely based on your best interest.
Our Comprehensive Financial Planning For Executives and Professionals Includes:
- Goal Planning
- Wealth Management & Investment Planning
- Insurance Planning
- Estate Planning
- Tax Planning
Goal Planning
We help you set financial goals such as owning a second home, supporting older parents, college savings for your children, retirement, and leaving money to non-profits or to the next generation.
- We’ll work closely with you to create a financial plan that maximizes the likelihood you can achieve these goals, and over time, we’ll help you adjust the plan as your circumstances change.
- We help plan for financial transitions associated with your career such as promotions, mergers and job changes.
Wealth Management & Investing Planning
- Today, many are enjoying longer retirements, making it critical to structure an appropriate investment portfolio.
- You may have significant company risk, including salary and company stock. We work with you to manage that within constraints like required company stock ownership and limited trading windows.
- Our investing is tax-sensitive. We seek to minimize capital gains through low turnover and tax-loss harvesting. We also seek to hold tax-inefficient investments in retirement accounts such as rollover and Roth IRAs.
Estate Planning
- We start with basic estate planning documents: wills, financial and healthcare powers of attorney, and advanced healthcare directives. Early in your career, that may be sufficient.
- As you build wealth, you may need revocable trusts, allowing your executor to avoid probate. Revocable trusts enable you to create more complex instructions at your passing, ensuring your financial legacy and property are handled as you desire.
- Creating the right beneficiary instructions for retirement plans is also important, as they may have large balances.
- There are tax-smart ways to leave assets to family and non-profits in your estate plan. One popular example: retirement plan assets are better left for non-profits, because they have a significant tax liability for individual beneficiaries.
- It may be wise to create irrevocable trusts for the next generation. A benefit is moving growth from your estate to the next generation. This makes sense once you are comfortable you have sufficient assets for your own needs in retirement.
Personal Tax Planning
- You are likely to be in a high tax bracket. Tax planning is critical.
- Owning tax-smart investments is one element of an effective strategy.
- You should typically defer as much employment income as possible during your highest earning years. Deferred compensation plans and 401(k) or 403(b) plans are valuable tools.
- If you are charitably inclined, we create a strategy that maximizes the tax benefit of your giving.
- We will help you create a tax plan and work with you and your CPA to execute it.
- We check your paystub mid-year to make sure you are maxing out on deferrals. We consult in the fall to review other strategies before year-end, and we help you assemble information in the spring for your CPA.
Insurance Planning
- All professionals need basic insurance: home, auto, and health care.
- Life and disability insurance is often critical. Both types of coverage are most important early in your career, when your future expected income is high but current net worth is modest.
- As you build net worth, you will likely need a large umbrella liability policy, to protect your finances in an at-fault auto accident or accident in your home.
- With financial success over time, you will probably be able to eliminate some or all your life and disability coverage, saving significant annual premiums.
Financial Planning Resources for Busy Executives and Professionals
We write a lot about the importance of being a fiduciary. Here are a few of blogs on the subject.
Delayed gratification: The 5.9% Social Security bump
Delayed gratification: The 5.9% Social Security bump Read More >
Frequently Asked Questions
Some people want to do their own financial planning. If you devote the time, have discipline, and want to develop the expertise - it’s certainly possible. But the stakes are high. Senior-level professionals and executives have high salaries and may transition between companies and c-suite positions during their careers. That means saving and planning are critical. It also means making thoughtful decisions on goal planning, wealth management, insurance, tax planning, and estate planning can be complicated.
When looking for a financial advisor, we recommend that you start with a Fee-Only CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional. There are many sites to research financial planners, including NAPFA (the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors), The Investment Advisor Public Disclosure site - Advisor Info SEC and BrokerCheck® by FINRA. Checking the firm's website and blog, in particular, are important tools to determine if a firm might be a good fit. Nothing beats a conversation with advisors at the firm. At Old Peak Finance, you can book a complimentary call here. If you have a question about anything, scroll down our contact page or submit it here.
When you begin to generate significant income, you should hire a financial planner who can help maximize your investments, savings, and company benefits. That’s also when you start making critical decisions about spending, repayment of student loans, insurance, and tax planning. Whether you are in a new position or decades into your career, the sooner you create a financial plan the more time you have to build the future you want.
Calculating the fees you pay to a financial advisor should be transparent and easy to understand. At Old Peak Finance, transparency in the fees you pay is a point of pride. We are fee-only, which means our only source of income is a quarterly fee each client pays us directly. We do not charge commissions or make money on product sales. That means we don’t have an incentive to recommend high-fee products. When you interview a prospective advisor, ask for details on how they make money, and what you will pay. Often, you may not pay a direct fee, but there is a fee built into the product cost.
At Old Peak Finance, we charge an annual planning fee of $10,000 plus 0.25% annually on any assets we manage. We have no other source of revenue.
We disclose up front that we do not take any commissions. Zero.
When looking for a financial advisor, we recommend that you start with our complimentary phone, in person or virtual meeting to explain your story and hear ours. Your advisor should be a fee-only fiduciary, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional. Old Peak is a fee-only fiduciary, which means we take an oath to put your interests first.
We believe your advisor should provide personalized planning, not off-the shelf products or portfolios. Finally, they should provide comprehensive planning. That means more than investing. Financial success demands a focus on your entire plan - on your goals, your investments and wealth management, insurance, estate planning and tax planning.
Have Questions?
Sign up for a complimentary call. We'll listen and determine together if we can help you achieve your goals.