Why Tech Professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area Should Consider a Flat-Fee Financial Advisor

The San Francisco Bay Area Tech Wealth Puzzle

Working in tech in the San Francisco Bay Area poses several unique financial planning challenges and opportunities.

• Rocket-fueled earnings & equity: Median total compensation for SF Bay Area-based software engineers tops $262K and $450K for engineering managers as of June 2025 per levels.fyi. This might seem like a lot of money, but doesn’t necessarily always feel like it, especially after taxes or if you’re trying to purchase a home here.
• Seven-figure homes: The median SF Bay Area home price is hovering around $1.4M-plus as of June 2025, careening to $2.2M for San Mateo County, $2M for Santa Clara County, $1.675M for Marin County, and $1.6M for San Francisco.
• Non-linear income and tax spikes: RSU vesting cliffs, soaring stock prices, option exercises, IPOs, and one-off retention bonuses create lumpy income and tax bills.
• Large, sometimes illiquid, employer stock positions: Pre-IPO shares and post-IPO lockups can create paper wealth and real tax problems while holding onto vested RSUs and/or employer stock acquired through an ESPP at a rapidly growing company can create large, concentrated positions with significant unrealized gains.
• Career volatility and layoffs: Hiring cycles can be boom or bust. You might be making $600K one day and laid off the next. It’s important to account for this volatility in your planning and you may have to make frequent decisions around your previous employer’s equity and how you’re going to navigate your healthcare options during unemployment.

The bottom line: High incomes, pricey real estate, non-linear income and tax spikes, career volatility, and concentrated employer equity combine to make holistic advice crucial—but traditional fee models weren’t built for this balance sheet.

How Traditional Assets under Management Pricing Misses the Mark for SF Bay Area Tech Professionals

In the author’s opinion, the traditional 1% of Assets-Under-Management (AUM) fee model misses the mark for SF Bay Area tech professionals for several reasons.

1. Simple formula, costly outcome:

   The typical 1% AUM fee is a great business model in a lot of ways, but it is incredibly expensive if you have a lot of assets. And typically, you’ll need a lot of assets to afford to retire in the San Francisco Bay Area.

   You don’t need to be an engineer or finance wiz to do the math on what 1% costs you. Let’s say you have a $5M portfolio—a not uncommon target for retirement in the San Francisco Bay Area. Your fees under the standard AUM model would be $50K per year. Maybe you get a discount and “only” pay $35K per year. Still, this is a significant sum!

   While quality financial planning isn’t something you should expect to pay bargain basement prices for, it doesn’t necessarily need to cost $50k per year either.

2. Assets that don’t “count”:

   If you want to purchase a primary residence or rental property in the San Francisco Bay Area, these are excluded from the AUM model even though they drive significant planning decisions. In fact, asking an AUM advisor if you should purchase a home presents a conflict of interest for them, as recommending the purchase will reduce their pay.

   On the other hand, illiquid employer equity isn’t always able to be immediately accounted for under the AUM model—yet it dictates real tax, liquidity, and risk decisions.

3. Concentration penalty:

   Your company’s stock already dominates your paycheck and possibly your net-worth pie chart. If you also pay 1% of that same position to an advisor whose compensation rises the longer you don’t diversify, you’re effectively doubling down on a single-stock bet.

   Under a flat-fee model, your planner can be brutally objective: draw up a diversification glide-path, explore different mechanisms, stress-test various scenarios, and even model protective overlays without worrying about their own pay cut.

4. Cash-rich, portfolio-light moments:
   

   Bay Area tech careers are punctuated by sudden spurts of liquidity and equally sudden cash drains.

   After an IPO or a tender offer you may have a $600K wire show up with a large chunk having gone straight to withheld taxes, and the rest earmarked for a down payment on a house. Your investable balance at Schwab? It might be $0 next month—right when you need guidance navigating estimated taxes and all of what comes with the purchase of a new home.

   Similarly, you may have a six-figure down payment parked in a savings account for a down payment on a house. Until the offer closes, that cash isn’t “managed.” Traditional AUM could drop to near-zero just when you’re juggling appraisal gaps, rate locks, and whether to buy points.

   A flat-fee arrangement keeps the planner engaged through the whole roller-coaster: modeling after-tax proceeds before a liquidity event, then navigating purchase decisions and cash flow during and after the sale.

5. High-Earning, Not Rich Yet (HENRY):
   

   Many Bay Area tech professionals at public companies pull in $250k–$600k but still have a relatively modest portfolio because of high taxes and high costs of living, especially for new homeowners with young children.

   And for those working at startups, which typically pay less than larger public companies, employer equity may loom on the horizon, but not yet be reflected on the balance sheet.

   Under an AUM model, HENRYs may find themselves in asset minimum purgatory where account minimums shut them out entirely—even though their planning needs (tax strategy, liquidity modeling, student-loan decisions) are already complex.

Why Flat-Fee Advice Fits Tech Pros

Your income and assets may explode during a liquidity event and then shrink when you take a sabbatical or mini-retirement. A fixed annual or quarterly retainer keeps your planning budget steady, so you can forecast cash flow without worrying that a market rally will turbocharge your advisory bill.

Reduced incentive to “gather assets”

Large equity grants and private shares that can’t be custodied—no problem! You can still receive coordinated guidance.

Another perk of a flat-fee model which doesn’t require investment management is that your advisor does not stand to benefit economically from managing your assets so there is a reduced incentive for them to require that you must give up control of your investments.

What you pay isn’t directly influenced by real estate purchases

Purchasing a home is a significant financial decision that should be approached with careful thought and planning.

Homes in the San Francisco Bay Area aren’t cheap, so home equity often represents a large portion of the net worth of local tech professionals.

Under a flat-fee model, you can rest well knowing that the advice you receive about your home purchase is not being influenced by the impact to your advisor’s compensation.

Tax planning baked in, not bolted on

Every equity decision is also a tax decision, which becomes even more impactful in a high-tax state like California.

Flat-fee firms typically include professsional-grade tax projections, estimated payment calculations, and coordination with your CPA because their planning, guidance, and support—not the dollar amount at Schwab—is what drives their compensation.

Alignment with lumpy liquidity events

Tender offers, secondary sales, ISO early exercises, QSBS planning… none of these swell your managed portfolio until after the dust settles.

A flat-fee advisor is incentivized to help before the event and after because their pay isn’t tied to how quickly—or whether—you reinvest.

Scales with complexity, not just portfolio size

You add a Washington crash-pad and become part-year CA/WA, launch a consulting side gig, and begin gifting long-vested RSUs to a donor-advised fund. Your financial complexity went up; your Schwab balance might not have.

A flat-fee structure can calibrate pricing based on service scope and complexity so you get depth where you need it without an automatic fee hike every time the S&P rallies.

HENRY-friendly (“High-Earning, Not Rich Yet”)

Pulling in $400k but still building that first $1M portfolio? An AUM minimum can lock you out.

Flat-fee firms can welcome income-rich, asset-light professionals because they’re paid for their ongoing support and guidance—regardless of the size of your portfolio.

What Should Tech Professionals Look For in an SF Bay Area Flat-Fee Advisor

Tech professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area searching for a flat-fee advisor should look for the following:

1. Expertise in equity compensation:

   You’ll want to be sure that your advisor has experience navigating equity decisions you may face, including navigating irregular income like RSU vests, concentrated employer stock, planning through events like IPOs and tender offers, managing Alternative Minimum Tax from Incentive Stock Option exercises, setting up Mega Backdoor Roth contributions, making 83(b) elections, navigating blackout windows, and setting up 10b5-1 plans.

   A generic advisor at a big firm may not provide much actual advice around these topics, whether due to their lack of expertise or due to the service model or compliance requirements of their firm.

2. Comprehensive planning scope:

   Does your advisor review your tax returns and do proper tax planning? Many big firms shy away from any talk about the tax impact of any decision, including equity decisions.

   Will they work with you on making supplemental withholding adjustments, setting up Mega Backdoor Roth contributions, performing real estate analysis, evaluating job offers, and doing college & charitable planning?

3. Transparent pricing: This might just be me, but I get annoyed whenever I see a website that requires me to schedule a meeting to even get a sense of what the pricing might look like.This virtually guarantees into an instant no from me!

   In my admittedly biased opinion, you should always be able to at least get a sense of what the potential pricing could look like for a fixed project, subscription, or retainer, e.g. through a range, without having to “hop on a call” first.

4. Tech-forward service model:

   You’ll want to be sure your advisor takes client security seriously and leverages secure client portals.

   No doubt, you’ll also want to be sure they use the best planning tools on the market. There are a variety of them out there and they each have their pros and cons. Some of the favorite tools in my stack are RightCapital as my main client hub and tool for long-range planning for accumulators, Income Lab for long-term distribution planning in retirement, Monarch Money for tracking spending, and Holistiplan for tax projections and detailed scenario modeling.

   Given how busy life in tech can be you’ll also want to be sure that you can collaborate effectively with them asynchronously using modern methods of communication.

5. Credentials & fiduciary oath:

   Stick with a fiduciary, fee-only advisor whose compensation is fully transparent. A flat retainer structure and a written engagement letter make it crystal-clear what you’ll pay and exactly what services are included—no asset minimums, no hidden breakpoints, no surprises.

   Look for meaningful, relevant credentials. The CFP® designation is the gold standard for financial planning, but it should really be the base level foundation for deeper equity compensation and tax planning expertise.

   Finally, make sure your planner stays current. I log dozens of hours of advanced CE each year and meet regularly with fellow advisors specializing in equity compensation so the guidance you receive reflects the latest tax laws, stock-plan tweaks, and company-specific quirks. I can only hope that your planner is equally as curious.

Key Takeaways

In a nutshell, the unique characteristics of Bay Area tech professionals represent a combination that is, in the author’s opinion, better served by a flat-fee model than the traditional AUM one.

Flat-fee advice aligns cost with complexity, not portfolio size, allowing for the delivery of holistic planning when it matters most with reduced conflicts of interest.

By opting for a flat-fee fiduciary, tech professionals can retain more of their upside and get advice that covers their whole financial life.

Thinking about whether flat-fee financial planning is right for you? Schedule a call today to explore whether you might be a fit for our flat-fee financial planning services.