Tech Professionals
Financial planning for tech professionals with equity
Your RSUs, ISOs, and ESPP shares can fund the rest of your life or hand you a tax bill you never budgeted for. We plan the exercise timing, the AMT, and the sale so the plan is built to move more of the equity toward your goals with the tax cost managed, not left to chance.
What we solve
Your compensation is not just salary. It is RSUs that vest and get taxed whether or not you sell, ISOs that can trigger the Alternative Minimum Tax the year you exercise, and ESPP shares that quietly pile more of your net worth into one employer. Each one has its own tax treatment, and getting the timing wrong is expensive.
Then there is concentration. A large part of your wealth is tied to a single company's stock, and an IPO, acquisition, or job change forces decisions on a tight clock, often during a lockup, often when the tax bill is largest.
Most of this happens in a handful of high-stakes moments: an exercise deadline, a vesting cliff, a liquidity event. Handling them without a plan is measured in taxes you did not need to pay and risk you did not need to hold.
How Wealth Habits helps
We work with you through one integrated service: financial planning and investment management together, with tax planning built into both.
For your equity, that means planning the exercise timing on ISOs and NSOs, managing the AMT, and coordinating RSU vesting and ESPP purchases so your exposure to one stock stays deliberate. When a liquidity event or IPO turns equity into cash, we plan how the proceeds are invested and taxed rather than letting the event dictate it.
Your portfolio is built with low-cost, globally diversified index funds and ETFs, and we manage the concentration in your employer's stock as part of the whole picture. Where your plan needs trusts or estate documents, we coordinate with independent attorneys.
Our financial planning fee is a flat $9,500 a year; investment management is billed separately by asset tier, with no management fee on your first $1,000,000.
Frequently asked questions
The difference is when and how you get taxed. With NSOs, the spread between your strike price and the market price is taxed as ordinary income the day you exercise, and your employer withholds on it. With ISOs, there is no ordinary income tax at exercise, but that same spread counts toward the Alternative Minimum Tax, and if you hold the shares long enough the eventual gain can be taxed at long-term capital gains rates. Which grant you hold changes the exercise strategy, so we look at both before you act.
It depends on the strike price, the current value, the tax hit at exercise, and how much risk you want to hold in a single company. Exercising early, when the spread is small, can lower the AMT exposure on ISOs and start the long-term capital gains clock, but it also puts your own cash into an illiquid position. We model the tax cost of exercising now against waiting, so the decision is based on numbers rather than a hunch about the stock.
When you exercise ISOs and hold the shares, the spread does not show up on your regular tax return, but it does count as income for the Alternative Minimum Tax. That can create a tax bill in a year you never sold anything. We plan the size and timing of ISO exercises around the AMT so you are not caught paying tax on a gain you have not turned into cash.
Most option grants give you a short window, often 90 days, to exercise vested options after you leave, and unvested options usually expire. An IPO or acquisition can lift the restrictions on selling but also concentrates a large, taxable position on a specific timeline. We map your vesting, the post-departure exercise window, and any lockup so a job change or a liquidity event does not force a rushed, expensive decision.
An ESPP lets you buy company stock at a discount, and that discount is a real benefit, but it adds more of your net worth to a single stock and creates its own ordinary-income and capital-gains treatment depending on how long you hold. We fold the ESPP into the same plan as your RSUs and options so your total exposure to one employer stays deliberate rather than accidental.
Plan your equity before the next deadline.
Book a free intro meeting and we will walk through your grants, your timing, and the tax picture together.