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One Piece Of Paper Can Tell You All You Need To Know About Your Benefits

By Greg Hutto, CFP®, CFA® Over the years, your financial benefits and compensation packages have piled up like the stuff in your storage unit or the third bay of your garage. When you were younger, the benefits were easy to track and understand: typically, some life and health insurance and a 401(k). As you’ve moved […]

What Should You Do With All That Company Stock? (A Decision Tree Can Provide Clues.)

By Greg Hutto, CFP®, CFA® As I have emphasized before, excessive concentration of company stock is a common source of financial problems for executives. Diversification can grow complex due to the number of different tools and structures, which can frankly introduce difficulty when deciding where to start. That’s why I put together the decision tree […]

You’re Way Too Successful To Pay For Your Own Life Insurance

By Greg Hutto, CFP®, CFA® “How much life insurance would you want, Mr. or Mrs. Corporate Executive, if you didn’t have to write a check for it?” Most people would say, “As much as I can get!”  Well, Mr. or Mrs. Corporate Executive, you won’t qualify for unlimited life insurance. But you can likely qualify […]

The Debate Of 2020: Traditional Medicare Vs. Medicare Advantage Plans

By Wes Holloway It’s that time of year again…the time everyone looks forward to: Medicare enrollment! If choosing the right Medicare plan is as confusing to you as much as a certain election that just occurred, you’re not alone. Most Medicare enrollees struggle with deciding which plan will work best for them based on costs […]

Where Does The Big Dough Go? It Goes Into Private Placement Life Insurance

By Greg Hutto, CFP®, CFA® Life isn’t fair. Unfortunately, that’s a life lesson learned early on for most of us. My mom used to give me great advice in response to this reality and would frequently say, “Just do the best you can with what you’ve got.” That’s all any of us can do, isn’t […]

Debunking The Mysteries Of Social Security

By Wes Holloway If you are like most people I talk to about Social Security, you might consider the program to be some sort of a mystery. You might be wondering if everyone is as confused as you are about the countless details of how it works. There is a bit of mystery surrounding Social […]

Lock In Your Gains And Sell Your Stock Later With A Collar Strategy

By Greg Hutto, CFP®, CFA®       In our last two articles of the Perceptive Executive Series, we’ve covered a couple of complex structures: the prepaid variable forward sale (PVFS) and charitable remainder trusts (CRT). These articles required some heavy lifting for me to write and likely some concentration (and hopefully not No-Doze) on […]

Everyone Can Win With A Charitable Remainder Trust (Except The IRS)

By Greg Hutto, CFP®, CFA® In the previous installment of the Perceptive Executive Series, we reviewed a powerful strategy that can allow an investor to achieve diversification, defer capital gains taxes, and basically have their cake (hang onto their stock and hedge downside risk) and eat it too (capture a higher price if the stock […]

It’s Okay To Be “Forward” With Your Stock

By Greg Hutto, CFP®, CFA® In one of my recent articles, I covered a little-known but powerful structure called a swap fund. In a nutshell, a swap fund can help an executive increase diversification and defer capital gains taxes on their concentrated stock holdings.  A swap fund works like this: high-net-worth investors contribute some or […]

Swap Your Shares, Not Your Spouse

By Greg Hutto, CFP®, CFA® It’s likely one of the biggest financial problems you have as an executive: concentrated stock. Your company grants you RSUs (restricted stock units) or stock options like candy, and that’s all well and good, but…you can’t always sell them at a moment’s notice, and diversifying outside of your employer’s stock […]