Corporate executives and CFOs
You run the numbers for the company. Yours deserve the same care.
Most of the CFOs we work with say the same thing with a smile: rigorous about the company's balance sheet, and running personal decisions on autopilot for years.
Sound familiar
What people in your position bring us
Elections you make in a hurry every fall
Deferral percentage and distribution schedule, chosen in a short enrollment window, often repeating last year. Those forms determine which tax year large sums arrive in.
Deferred comp is your employer's promise
Non-qualified deferred compensation is generally an unsecured claim on the company. Deferring lowers this year's tax and increases your exposure to one balance sheet. That trade should be sized, not maximized by default.
You can only trade in a window
Blackout periods and insider restrictions mean you cannot always act when you want to. Selling on a schedule set in advance, sometimes through a 10b5-1 plan, is how diversification actually happens.
Concentration on top of concentration
Salary, bonus, equity, and deferred comp all trace back to one company. Then the employer stock position sits on top of that.
Change-in-control language you have not read
What accelerates, what forfeits, and what your severance terms mean in cash-flow terms. Written years ago, usually without your input, and relevant with very little notice.
Charitable giving handled inefficiently
You give already, usually in cash, in the year you happen to think of it. Timing and giving appreciated shares instead changes the arithmetic without changing what you give.
Advisors who have never seen your package
Generic advice does not survive contact with a deferred comp plan document and three grant types. You need someone who works in this material regularly.
The next role, or no role
A move, a board seat, or stepping back. Each has consequences for unvested equity and deferred comp that are best understood before the decision, not after.
Where we start
How we work with executives
From your actual documents. Deferred comp plans and equity plans vary enough between employers that general rules are close to useless. We work from what your plan says.
The rhythm is built around your calendar rather than a standard quarterly review. Enrollment season gets a deferral and distribution conversation. Fall gets a two-year tax projection with your CPA in it. Vest dates and open windows get a sale plan agreed in advance so the decision is not made in the middle of a moving stock.
And we keep the transition file current: what accelerates, what forfeits, what severance means in cash-flow terms. When a change arrives with two weeks of notice, the analysis already exists.
The work that follows
What we usually end up covering
- What this involves →
Executive compensation
Deferral elections, bonus timing, benefit choices, severance terms. Each one is a decision, and most of them default if you leave them alone.
- What this involves →
Equity compensation
Vest dates arrive whether or not anyone has thought about them. The work is deciding, ahead of time, what you sell, what you hold, and what the tax bill will be.
- What this involves →
Tax strategy
Most tax advice assumes you own a business. When your income is a paycheck, the levers are fewer, and using them depends entirely on timing.
- What this involves →
IPO & acquisition planning
Most of the decisions worth making about an IPO or acquisition have deadlines that pass before the money arrives.
- What this involves →
Retirement income
It is the question most people ask late and quietly. Answering it properly takes an afternoon, and the answer changes how you feel about the next ten years.
- What this involves →
Estate & legacy
Most estate problems we find are not missing documents. They are documents that no longer match the accounts, the titling, or the family.
Free tool
Vesting this year? Find the tax bill nobody warned you about.
Employers commonly withhold federal tax on vesting RSUs at 22%. Plenty of the people we work with sit in the 32% or 37% bracket, and that difference shows up as a bill at filing. Five inputs and about twenty seconds gives you the number.
- Shares vesting
- 1,200
- Value at vest
- $180,000
- Withheld at 22%
- $39,600
- Owed at 35%
- $63,000
- Gap to cover
- $23,400
How this starts
Three steps, and the first one costs you an hour
Step 01
Tell us your story
About an hour, no cost, no obligation to do anything afterward.
- How you got to this point, in your own words. Career, family, the decisions that shaped the last ten years.
- What keeps your attention at odd hours. Usually it is more specific than money in general.
- What success looks like to you. Not a number we hand you, the version you would describe to a friend.
- Who is already in your corner: your CPA, your attorney, anyone else we should be working alongside.
Straight about money
The first meeting is free
If we go ahead together, planning carries a fee, and you will know the number before you commit to anything. For households above $1 million in assets we manage, it is typically waived.
Straight answers
Corporate executives & CFOs: common questions
Rarely the right frame. The decision depends on your bracket now versus at distribution, the length of the deferral, and how much unsecured exposure to your employer you are willing to hold, since non-qualified deferred compensation is a promise to pay rather than a funded account. For many executives a deliberate partial deferral fits better than maximizing it.
By deciding in advance rather than in the moment. A sale schedule agreed ahead of time, and where appropriate a 10b5-1 plan set up in coordination with your company's counsel and compliance team, lets shares be sold on a predetermined basis. That removes both the timing pressure and the awkwardness of acting on a specific date.
A current read on what accelerates and what forfeits in your equity plan, your deferred compensation distribution triggers, your severance and change-in-control terms translated into monthly cash flow, and a picture of which tax year the whole thing would land in. Assembled in advance, that turns a stressful two-week window into a decision you have already thought through.
This material is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as tax, legal, or investment advice. Neither GGM Wealth Advisors nor Cambridge provides tax or legal advice. Please consult a qualified professional about your specific situation. Estimates are illustrative, based solely on the figures you enter and simplified assumptions. Your actual results will differ.
Let's start with a conversation
Bring whatever is on your mind: a vest date you are unsure about, an offer you are weighing, a business you might sell in three years. Nothing to prepare, no cost, and you will leave with something useful whether or not we end up working together.