Understanding Equity Compensation
Net Unrealized Appreciation and how it affects tax responsibilities.
Insurance Planning
What we review.
Life insurance. Term, whole, universal, variable. Whether you've enough, too much, the right type, and whether it still fits your stage of life.
Disability insurance. Own-occupation vs. any-occupation, group vs. individual, elimination period, benefit period. The single most underdiscussed risk for high earners.
Long-term care. Traditional LTC policies, hybrid life-LTC products, asset-based LTC, and the case for self-insuring.
Annuity review. If you already own one, we read the contract, the surrender schedule, the rider provisions, and tell you what you actually have. If you're considering one, we model it against alternatives.
Property and casualty referrals. Umbrella liability coverage especially. We don't sell P&C, but we'll refer you to a broker who matches your situation.
How Life Insurance Needs Change By Decade
The right amount of life insurance in your 30s looks nothing like the right amount in your 60s. Early on, the case is straightforward income replacement: a young family, a mortgage, income the household would miss for 15-20 years. Term coverage sized to replace 10-12 times income covers most of that need at a fraction of the cost of permanent policies.
By the 40s and 50s, the calculus shifts. The mortgage is smaller, the retirement accounts are larger, and the kids are closer to independent. Some households need less coverage than they carried a decade earlier. Others need more, especially if a spouse stepped back from paid work or if college obligations still stretch a decade out. The right move is often a re-underwrite of the term policy at a lower face amount, not a permanent product pitch.
In the 60s and beyond, the conversation changes again. Income replacement matters less. Estate liquidity, pension maximization, and charitable planning become the reasons to carry a policy at all. A well-structured second-to-die policy can move meaningful value to heirs at a discount to the estate tax cost. A poorly structured whole life bought decades earlier can sometimes be repurposed through a 1035 exchange rather than surrendered.
The Disability Coverage Gap High Earners Often Miss
Group long-term disability through an employer typically caps at 60% of base salary, and the benefit's taxable if the employer paid the premium. For someone earning $250,000 base plus a $100,000 bonus, the real replacement ratio in a claim can land closer to 30% of total compensation. That's a gap most high earners don't see until they run the math side by side.
The fix is usually an individual own-occupation policy layered on top of the group coverage. Own-occupation matters because it defines disability by whether you can perform your specific job, not any job. A surgeon who can no longer operate but could work in medical education is disabled under own-occupation; not under any-occupation. Group policies frequently use the weaker definition.
The other lever is the benefit period. Group policies often terminate benefits at 65. Individual policies can extend to 67 or 70. For a 45-year-old professional, the extra five years of coverage matters materially. We review each existing policy's definition of disability, elimination period, benefit period, and offset provisions before recommending any change.
Reading An Annuity Contract Before You Sign One
Annuity contracts are typically 80-150 pages. The sales illustration is 3-5 pages of highlights. The gap between what the illustration shows and what the contract says is where most annuity regret comes from. Before recommending or advising against any annuity, we read the actual contract cover to cover, then translate it into a one-page plain-English summary.
The provisions that matter most: the surrender schedule (how long you're committed and at what withdrawal penalty), the rider costs (income riders often charge 1-1.5% annually against the benefit base, not the cash value, which is a materially different number), and the participation rate or cap on any indexed component. A 6% cap on an S&P-linked crediting method looks different when you see the historical years the market returned 15-30%.
Existing annuity owners often benefit from a 1035 exchange review rather than an outright surrender. If a policy has been in force long enough to clear its surrender schedule and its expense structure has become uncompetitive, a 1035 exchange to a lower-cost contract can maintain the tax-deferred status without causing ordinary-income treatment on the gain. We model both paths against simply keeping what you have.
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Building wealth requires protection from the forces of wealth destruction.
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Find Us
Two offices, one team.
Boca Raton (Home Office)
1200 North Federal Highway, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33432
Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM ET
