Find a Financial Advisor for Boeing Employees & Executives: Expert Q&A Insights

Boeing’s Legacy Pension and 401(k) Have to Be Coordinated, Not Managed Separately

Whether a Boeing employee has a traditional pension depends on hire date and union status, and longer-tenured employees may hold vested benefits across several plan generations at once. Deciding which income streams to turn on and when — pension payout option, Social Security, portfolio withdrawals — is primarily a tax-planning problem. Michael describes clients who had forgotten entire plans until a full inventory was built.

Concentration Risk at Boeing Runs Deeper Than the Stock Position

Career income, pension benefits, and equity compensation can all depend on the same employer, which means the exposure is larger than any one account balance suggests. Michael describes long-tenured employees for whom loyalty made that concentration hard to see, and made selling shares feel personal, until a bigger-picture review put the whole position in front of them.

Move Your Benefits Portals to a Personal Phone Number Before You Resign

Access to Fidelity and other Boeing benefits portals is often tied to a company phone number, and losing that number at separation can lock you out of your own accounts and delay decisions that carry deadlines. It is among the cheapest and most commonly missed steps to take before giving notice.

I can help Boeing employees make decisions that fit within the framework of their entire financial lives, building a plan that works for them, not just for Boeing. That includes carefully evaluating the choices related to employees fortunate enough to have access to the older pension plans, making choices on healthcare plans (especially if retiring before Medicare eligibility), and ensuring that savings are sufficient to make the most of their lives outside of work. By optimizing benefit elections, I help my clients secure their future on their own terms.

I like to ask how they got to where they are, and where they want to go. I want to make a connection that lasts and understand the human part of the story. The numbers and financials will come into play, but it’s important to know the “Why” behind someone’s choices, so that we can make the “How” fit into their needs, not the other way around. I like to know about my clients’ families, who they are outside of work, and their unique preferences for how they like to be served.

Choices related to stock compensation can be tricky. I have noted over the years that many employees don’t fully understand their choices–or more importantly the consequences of some of the choices–they are presented in this area. The education provided can be lacking in context tied to the employees’ bigger picture dreams and wishes, and I can help to provide that context.

Definitely. The company has a great benefits package, and I love to help optimize solutions around health benefits, including making use of the health savings account options, the different risk management and insurance benefits available (beyond health insurance only), managing cash flow and taxes related to the various bonus and incentive programs available, and making tax-smart choices using things like the commuter benefits program when applicable.

Make sure that your various benefits portals (including Fidelity for example) are connected to a personal cell phone number and not your company phone number so you don’t risk being locked out of your accounts and delaying the ability to make future decisions when needed.

Make sure that you’ve prepared appropriately for managing your cash flow in retirement. Without knowing in detail what you project your living expenses and required payments to be, it will be hard to have confidence that you’re making the right choice in electing to retire. Building a plan ahead of time can give you increased confidence that things are going to be fine, even with the addition of new variables like changes to healthcare expenses, especially when retiring early.

You’re in a spot where there is a lot of risk around the next step. While you have likely done an admirable job in managing your own finances, a second look from a professional with deep expertise serving clients in your situation is warranted if for no other reason than a quick confirmation that you’ve thought of everything already. There’s something to be said for having the confidence that someone who has helped many similarly-situated people through life’s big decisions in your corner and agreeing that you’re on the right track. If you’re not on the right track, a professional can usually help you get there more quickly and efficiently by cutting out the noise and giving you a plan to follow that’s unique to your needs.

Boeing employees are loyal. That doesn’t sound like a challenge, but in some ways it can become one. They’ve often invested their entire working careers at a single firm, which is increasingly a rarity. For more seasoned individuals, this often means a mix of legacy and current benefit programs that can be challenging to navigate because of the number of variables and options on the table. I can help cut through the noise, focus on what’s important, and build plans that help my clients make the most of their choices in a way that gives them confidence to move forward with conviction.

I would ask them if they’ve worked specifically with Boeing employees in the past. The nuances of the Boeing benefits systems and plans can be difficult to navigate for inexperienced advisors. I would ask also how they’re compensated, what their investment philosophy includes, and what kind of services the advisor offers. Does the advisor offer comprehensive planning, or only investment management for their fees?

I’m often surprised at how many times clients and potential clients mention that they have family members who do currently work at or have worked at Boeing previously. Especially in places where Boeing has larger operations, it seems to be that Boeing is part of the family story.

Planning around stock options, restricted stock, and other incentive plans becomes a key component of a well-rounded plan for these individuals. Making smart choices now and in the future can have a dramatic impact on outcomes, so being intentional with the related choices and being fully informed makes a big difference. Sometimes, a unique investment strategy is warranted to carefully work around limitations on the amount that can be saved and invested in the different plans that are available.

I’ve worked with numerous clients that have spent their entire careers at Boeing, having worked their way up from entry level to upper management positions. As a result, they’ve accrued a variety of benefits that aren’t normal either for newer hires, or for people who have regularly changed jobs or careers along the way. Sometimes these clients have had 4 different retirement plans in which they have vested benefits, including some they have forgotten about until we work together to put all their facts together at the beginning of making a plan.

This is a great question, and one I like to proactively ask my clients when they come on board. Sometimes the years of loyalty to Boeing can make it difficult to see just how many eggs one may have in the same proverbial basket until a bigger-picture overview can be prepared. It can be difficult, for example, to sell portions of Boeing stock because sometimes it can feel like one is selling a portion of himself or herself along with the stock. By adding a trusted advisor to the evaluation and planning process, employees can gain some clarity of thought that many find useful in making forward-looking decisions.

The unique planning considerations can sometimes be boiled down to the simplicity that Boeing employees, especially more seasoned ones, tend to have more irons in the fire than many people in the general population. Coordinating which income streams to turn on, and when to do so, can be overwhelming without bringing a professional–and professional-level tools–to bear on the question of how best use those benefits. Tax planning becomes more prevalent for these employees. If they’re retiring early, building a plan that doesn’t get them killed with taxes isn’t always an easy thing to do with the expertise on how all this components will interact.

I help my clients thing of things holistically. That means taking a great inventory of all the tools and resources that are on the table, and creating a timeline for what income is needed at what point in time. I like to show my clients the differences between the different pension payout options, and also for different investing levels and tax choices (Pre-tax vs. Roth) in the VIP plan. Using advanced financial planning software, we can confidently decide which options make the most sense for each unique client’s needs. What I’ve discovered is that there is no universal answer–each client deserves the time and attention needed to make these calculations and then to make individually optimal choices.

It starts with education. While many people have heard of and accept the wisdom of diversification, they may not notice all the ways in which one can be diversified that go beyond the traditional pie charts attached to an investment portfolio. In particular, it’s easy to lose track of how many eggs many employees have in the Boeing basket that we can work to diversify. Sometimes that may mean letting go of a concentrated stock position purchased at a discount in the stock purchase plan, or to liquidating restricted stock positions to fund other investment opportunities in support of the plan. Next, we work to make tax-smart choices on the timing for these moves so that they can keep as much of their hard-earned wealth as possible. Then, by working together we can help to prevent future concentrations that might put their plans at risk without ongoing partnership.