Financial Planning for Executives with Equity Compensation and Concentrated Stock
When your compensation comes in layers, your financial plan should too.
Executives at public and private companies often face a different kind of financial complexity than most clients. Compensation arrives through multiple channels, salary, bonus, restricted stock units, stock options, performance shares, and deferred compensation. Each has a distinct tax profile, vesting timeline, and planning implication. Without a coordinated strategy, important decisions get made reactively rather than intentionally.
Helium Advisors helps executives build plans that work across compensation layers, time horizons, and personal financial goals.
Common Planning Challenges We Solve
- Concentrated stock risk - a single company position may represent a large share of your net worth; diversification must be balanced against tax cost, holding restrictions, and timing
- Equity compensation coordination - ISOs, NSOs, RSUs, PSUs, and ESPPs each have different tax treatment; planning across grant, vesting, exercise, and sale decisions can meaningfully improve outcomes
- 10b5-1 plan design and coordination - systematic selling programs require advance planning and integration with the broader financial strategy
- Deferred compensation elections - NQDC plan decisions lock in distribution timing; they intersect with income planning, tax bracket management, and retirement readiness
- Retirement planning for high earners - income limits, contribution strategies, and distribution planning require more coordination when compensation is both high and variable
- Estate and liquidity planning - significant appreciated assets require intentional estate planning to avoid inefficient transfer and unnecessary tax cost
Our Approach
We begin with the full compensation picture: what you earn, when you receive it, what it's worth, and what it costs in tax. From there, we build a strategy that addresses diversification, tax efficiency, retirement goals, and long-term wealth accumulation in a coordinated way, rather than making siloed decisions about each component independently.
