WEALTH MANAGEMENT FOR TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONALS

HELPING YOU TURN CAREER SUCCESS INTO LASTING WEALTH

Technology Professionals

Technology pays in a way most careers do not: a salary and equity that may be worth several times as much. That equity can also be spread across your current employer and one or two companies you have already left. Equity, taxes, retirement accounts, and investments need to work together, even when they sit with different companies and different advisors.

LRVS Advisory Group helps technology professionals, executives, and founders bring those pieces together. We design and manage your finances around your goals, your priorities, and what you want your wealth to make possible.

As your family CFO, we look at the whole picture and keep the specialists in your life working from the same plan. When a new role, equity grant, or liquidity event comes up, you have an advisor who already understands where you stand and what you are working toward.

We run the financial side. You run your career.

Part of your pay is salary. Much of it is equity, spread across the company you are at now and one or two you have already left.
What has not kept pace is everything around it:

None of it is urgent, so it stays undone until something forces the issue: an offer with a deadline, a vest in the wrong tax year, a parent who can no longer live alone. People call us then, because no one was looking at all of it together.

  • Retirement accounts left at former employers

  • Grants from an old job you never fully sorted out

  • An accountant who files in April and does not call in October

  • No single place where any of it is written down

The Questions That Bring People to Us

We work with software engineers, engineering and product leaders, executives, and founders across the country, in artificial intelligence, cloud and enterprise software, semiconductors, e-commerce, gaming, and medical technology.

At a large public company, compensation often includes restricted stock on a rolling refresh, which raises a decision every quarter about what to hold and what to sell. At a private company, selling usually depends on a liquidity event, and where options are involved, the exercise decisions carry deadlines of their own.

Most technology careers pass through more than one of these, and the financial plan has to survive the move. LRVS provides continuity as your employer and compensation change, so decisions about equity, taxes, investments, and retirement accounts remain part of the same financial strategy.

Financial Planning

CONCENTRATION RISK

How Much of Your Life
Depends on One
Employer?

The answer is usually more than the stock. Add it up:

Your salary and bonus

Your health insurance and retirement benefits

Your unvested grants

The vested shares you
continue to hold

Concentration is usually what success looks like on paper: the company did well while you were there, and the grants kept coming. For many technology professionals one company represents a significant share of both household income and accumulated wealth. Refresh grants increase that exposure over time, even when holding more company stock was never a decision you made.

LRVS helps turn that concentration into a deliberate strategy. We give you the real number for what share of your household depends on one employer, and work out how much company stock belongs in your plan. From there we set the pace at which the rest comes down, around your tax year and your trading windows:

01

Sell each tranche on the day it vests, so there is no decision to make each quarter

02

Direct appreciated shares to charity
instead of writing a check, so the gain is never realized at all

03

Spread sales across tax years, so one year does not push you into a higher bracket

04

Adopt a 10b5-1 plan if you are an insider or trade inside blackout windows

05

Set a tiered limit order, so shares sell at prices you chose in advance

You decide once, not every quarter. Whichever mix of these you choose, we write it into one schedule and keep it current as your equity and your career change.

Equity and Deferred Compensation Planning for Technology Professionals

Your pay arrives in several forms, and it is taxed differently in each. The open questions are what to sell, what to defer, what to hold, and what a choice costs. Our article on equity-based compensation covers the ground in more depth.

Restricted Stock Units

What your company withholds at vest often does not cover what you will owe. We set the sell-or-hold rule in advance and size the tax payment as a tranche vests.

Employee Stock Purchase Plans

How much to fund is one decision. What to do with the shares afterward is a different one. We set both in advance.

Stock Options

With incentive stock options we plan the exercise around the alternative minimum tax. Non-qualified options are taxed as ordinary income at exercise, so the timing is a cash-flow question as much as a tax one.

Deferred Compensation

Deferring moves income into a year you choose, and it leaves that money with your employer until the payout date. The election has to be made before the year begins.

Your 401(k) and the Accounts Around It

The easiest part of the package to leave on default settings for a decade. We bring in the accounts left behind at previous employers and use the after-tax contribution room most technology plans allow.

Private Company Shares

Double-trigger vesting, early exercise, and the qualified small business stock exclusion, where the holding period decides how much of the gain is excluded and the clock cannot be restarted.

At the private companies building AI, everything moves faster. A valuation can reset between rounds, and a tender offer can open a selling window measured in weeks. Those decisions are worth making before the window opens, not inside it.

If some of your grants are still unsorted, one meeting will show you what they are worth and what a choice costs.

The Questions That Bring People to Us

Equity usually prompts the first call. It is rarely the only thing on the list. A few of the questions we work through, whether you are a tech employee at a large public company, a founder at a private one, or at an AI company whose valuation moved faster than your plan:

01

How do you plan around a number that changes every year?

02

Could you stop working if you wanted to, or if the
company decided for you?

03

Who is looking at your taxes in October, while you can still do something about them, rather than in April when the year is already closed?

04

If something happened to you tomorrow, would your family know what you own and where it is?

05

If something happened to you tomorrow, would your
family know what you own and where it is?

They are hard because the answer to one of them moves the other four. We answer them together, in one plan, and revisit them as your equity and your career change.

What We Handle as Your
Family CFO

Your equity is one line on a longer list. Here is the rest of it.

Restricted stock units are taxed as ordinary income when they vest, on the full market value of the shares that day, whether or not you sell them. Your employer withholds at the default rate for supplemental wages, which sits below the bracket most people at this income level land in, and the difference is owed at filing. What the share price does afterward is a separate capital gain or loss, measured from the vest-date value.

Restricted stock units are taxed as ordinary income when they vest, on the full market value of the shares that day, whether or not you sell them. Your employer withholds at the default rate for supplemental wages, which sits below the bracket most people at this income level land in, and the difference is owed at filing. What the share price does afterward is a separate capital gain or loss, measured from the vest-date value.

Restricted stock units are taxed as ordinary income when they vest, on the full market value of the shares that day, whether or not you sell them. Your employer withholds at the default rate for supplemental wages, which sits below the bracket most people at this income level land in, and the difference is owed at filing. What the share price does afterward is a separate capital gain or loss, measured from the vest-date value.

Restricted stock units are taxed as ordinary income when they vest, on the full market value of the shares that day, whether or not you sell them. Your employer withholds at the default rate for supplemental wages, which sits below the bracket most people at this income level land in, and the difference is owed at filing. What the share price does afterward is a separate capital gain or loss, measured from the vest-date value.

Restricted stock units are taxed as ordinary income when they vest, on the full market value of the shares that day, whether or not you sell them. Your employer withholds at the default rate for supplemental wages, which sits below the bracket most people at this income level land in, and the difference is owed at filing. What the share price does afterward is a separate capital gain or loss, measured from the vest-date value.

The rest of it, insurance and education funding and the cash reserve you need when par tof your income arrives as equity, is covered in our wealth services. You will not have to become an expert in any of it. You see the model and the assumptions inside it, you push back where you disagree, and we execute.

Job Offers, Company Changes, and Liquidity Events

An offer arrives with a deadline measured in days and consequences measured in years. So does a reorganization, an acquisition, or your own decision to leave. As your trusted advisor, we work through those weeks with you.

We read the offer against what you already hold, including the unvested equity you would leave behind and what it would take to be made whole

We tell you what an acquisition does to grants that have not vested yet

We work through the severance and the gap in health coverage

We watch the exercise window that opens the day you resign

We move the retirement plan before it becomes one more account you have lost track of

The weeks around a change are when the largest and least reversible decisions get made. Because we already know your position, you decide with the numbers in front of you, inside the days you have.

Tax Planning and Estate Coordination for Tech Employees

Tax planning for tech employees and executives is a calendar problem before it is a filing problem. Your accountant reports what already happened. Your estate attorney drafts your documents and files them away. The decisions in between are where the tax gets decided: when you exercise, when you sell, what you defer, what you give away, and whose name is on what.

We bring those decisions to your accountant and your attorney early enough to matter, so the three of us work from the same plan. That includes the items that sit unresolved for years:

That includes the items that sit unresolved for years:

A beneficiary designation still naming someone from a previous decade

A trust that was signed but never funded

An estate tax exemption a married couple can lose because nobody made the election

These are quick to fix once someone is looking for them. What makes them expensive is that nobody is, and the year closes before anyone checks.

Your Plan Changes as Your Career Does

What you need from us changes as your career does. Early on it is the savings rate, the allocation, and the coverage that protects your family. In your peak earning years it is the tax work and the order in which accounts are funded. Later it is who this passes to, and how much of it survives the transfer.

The moves between those stages are where the expensive mistakes happen. We plan for them in advance rather than react afterwards. The same team carries the history forward, so a change of employer or a change of stage does not send you back to the beginning.

Our legacy and family business page covers estate planning and business succession in more depth.

Financial Independence, Often Earlier Than Planned

Technology pays well and asks a lot. Many of the people we work with want the option to stop long before a traditional retirement age, and a good number take it. A longer retirement is a different problem than a shorter one. Four things get harder at once.

Health coverage has to be solved for the years between your last paycheck and the year Medicare begins

Money has to come out of the right accounts in the right order, because the years between your last paycheck and required withdrawals are often the lowest-tax years of retirement

A weak market early in retirement does more damage than the same market later, so the plan has to hold up against a poor sequence of returns

A concentrated stock position that was survivable while you were earning is a different risk once it is paying your bills

The work shifts from accumulating to converting. We build the spending strategy that turns what you have into income you can rely on, then keep testing it against a long retirement, poor markets early on, and the plans you change along the way.

Financial Independence, Often Earlier Than Planned

Technology pays well and asks a lot. Many of the people we work with want the option to stop long before a traditional retirement age, and a good number take it.

A longer retirement is a different problem than a shorter one. Four things get harder at once.

01

Health coverage has to be solved for the years between your last paycheck and the year Medicare begins

02

Money has to come out of the right accounts in the right order, because the years between your last paycheck and required withdrawals are the cheapest tax years you will have

03

A weak market early in retirement does more damage than the same market later, so the plan has to hold up against a poor sequence of returns

04

A concentrated stock position that was survivable while you were earning is a different risk once it is paying your bills

The work shifts from accumulating to converting, and the mechanics of drawing an income are set out under retirement planning.

We build the spending strategy that turns what you have into income you can rely on. Then we keep testing it against a long retirement, poor markets early on, and the plans you change along the way.

Fiduciary Financial Advisors for Tech Professional

LRVS Advisory Group is an independent registered investment advisor and a fiduciary, which means we are required to act in your interest. We are not owned by a fund company, and there is no product line we are expected to sell.

We are a national wealth management practice with advisors on both coasts, working with engineers, technology executives, and their families across the country. We manage the whole financial plan, year after year. We also know the decisions a technology career brings. Equity vests every quarter. A layoff arrives without warning. An offer has to be weighed against what you would leave behind. You work with one financial planner who knows your entire situation, rather than a different person each time you call. You can read about the advisors and their credentials on our team page.

CASE STUDY

Concentrated Stock, Unused Benefits, and No Estate Plan

A client came to us with more than 75 percent of her net worth in her employer’s stock, a benefits package she had never used, and no estate plan. She knew the concentration was a risk. What stopped her was the tax bill she expected if she sold. Her return was prepared each April with no planning behind it, so the amount owed arrived as a surprise, and she sold shares to cover it on whatever date the money was due.

We set a multi-year schedule to bring the position down, timed around her company’s trading windows. We funded the employee stock purchase plan, set the deferred compensation election, and added a Roth 401(k). The larger gap was the one she had not asked about: a multimillion-dollar balance sheet with no will, no trust, and beneficiary designations that had not been reviewed in 15 years. We brought in an estate attorney to draft the documents, then checked the account titles and beneficiary designations against them.

The concentration now comes down on a schedule instead of in one decision. The benefits she was not using fund her retirement. The documents say the same thing her accounts do.

Meet Our Advisors

Spencer Graham

Financial Advisor

Patrick Lawler, CFP®

Founding Partner

Jeff Van Siclen, CFP®

Founding Partner

Marc Instrum, CFP®

Financial Advisor

Getting started

Getting Started With LRVS

Working with us begins with three conversations:

01

An introductory meeting

to see whether we are a good fit

02

A discovery meeting

to understand your equity, your taxes, and your goals

03

A plan presentation

to review our recommendations and assumptions

After that we meet regularly to review the plan, and we are available in between whenever something comes up. The introductory meeting is confidential and carries no obligation. If an offer or a vest has put a clock on this, say so when you book, and we will meet inside your deadline.

FAQS

Equity Compensation FAQs for Technology Professionals

Restricted stock units are taxed as ordinary income when they vest, on the full market value of the shares that day, whether or not you sell them. Your employer withholds at the default rate for supplemental wages, which sits below the bracket most people at this income level land in, and the difference is owed at filing. What the share price does afterward is a separate capital gain or loss, measured from the vest-date value.

You cannot change the tax at vest, but you can change nearly everything around it. When you sell, which lots you sell, what offsets the gains, how much you defer through retirement and deferred compensation elections, and what you give to charity in a high-income year are all open. Those decisions have to be made before December, not at filing.

The discount is an immediate return that does not depend on the share price rising, which is why an employee stock purchase plan is usually worth funding when your cash flow allows it. The harder question is what to do with the shares afterward. Selling at purchase locks in the discount and is taxed as ordinary income. Holding through the qualifying period changes the tax treatment and adds more of your employer to a portfolio that likely holds a great deal already.

Private-company shares usually vest on two triggers: a time-based schedule and a liquidity event such as an initial public offering or an acquisition. Until the second trigger occurs, the shares are not yours to sell. That gap is why decisions about early exercise are worth making years before an exit. The same is true of the qualified small business stock exclusion: eligibility is mostly a question about the company rather than about you, and your holding period determines how much of the gain is excluded.

There is no universal pace. The right one depends on your tax year, your trading windows, and how much of your household already depends on that employer. What matters more than the speed is that the schedule is written down and decided in advance.

It is a selling schedule set in advance, which keeps working even during a blackout window. You need one if you are an insider. It is useful either way if you would rather make the decision in a calm month than a volatile one.

Financial planning at LRVS is typically a flat annual fee. Investment management is charged on a tiered schedule based on the assets we manage. Every relationship is different, so the numbers for your situation are set out in the introductory meeting, before you have committed to anything.

Yes, and most clients do. We work alongside the professionals you already have and bring them into the same conversation, so the equity decisions, the tax work, and the estate documents rest on the same facts. Where you do not have someone, we can introduce you to people we work with regularly.