Financial Advisors for Tech Employees With Equity

Kimberly Green | 2026-03-03

Financial Advisors for Tech Employees With Equity Compensation If part of your compensation is equity, your financial planning is more complicated than most advisors are set up to handle. RSUs that vest on a schedule. Incentive Stock Options with a 90-day exercise window when you leave. Employee Stock Purchase Plans with a discount that disappears if you don't understand the holding period rules. Concentrated positions in your employer's stock that represent both your career and your net worth. These aren't edge cases. For tech employees at any company past Series B—and especially for employees at public companies—equity is often the majority of total compensation. And most financial advisors have never dealt with it seriously. The Equity Compensation Problems You Actually Need Help With RSUs (Restricted Stock Units) RSUs vest and are immediately taxable as ordinary income. Most tech employees know this. What fewer know is the planning that happens before and after vesting: whether to hold or immediately sell, how to model the tax impact across a vesting schedule, and whether the concentration risk in your company's stock is appropriate given what else you own. An advisor who specializes in equity compensation will model full-year tax scenarios and help you understand the difference between a $5K/month vesting and a $50K quarterly cliff. Incentive Stock Options (ISOs) ISOs are the most tax-advantaged equity type—but the alternative minimum tax (AMT) makes the exercise decision genuinely complex. Exercising too many options in a single year can trigger an AMT bill that arrives after the stock has already dropped. An advisor who understands ISO planning runs multi-scenario models before you click "exercise." This is not a question for your company's equity hotline. This is professional tax planning territory. Non-Qualified Stock Options (NSOs) NSOs are simpler from a tax standpoint—the spread is ordinary income at exercise—but the timing and size of exercises still matters, particularly when you have a large grant or are leaving the company with a 90-day window. Concentrated Stock Risk Whether your equity is in RSUs, vested options, or an ESPP, the result is often a large position in a single stock. Managing that concentration—through systematic selling, exchange funds, or hedging strategies—without triggering an unnecessarily large tax bill is work that requires both planning expertise and tax knowledge. Advisors Who Actually Specialize in Tech Equity Capital Area Planning Group (Malcolm Ethridge, CFP, EA) – Washington, DC Malcolm built his practice...