Find Financial Advisors for Garmin Employees & Executives: Q&A Insights from the Experts

Garmin offers one of the strongest retirement benefit packages I’ve seen, and my job is to make sure employees are capturing every dollar available to them. There are three areas I focus on right away:

First, the 401k. Garmin provides a 5% base contribution to every employee’s 401k automatically, plus a 75% match on up to 10% of salary. That means if you contribute at least 10% of your pay, Garmin is putting in an additional 12.5%. That is an extraordinary employer contribution, and I’m always surprised how many employees aren’t contributing enough to capture the full match.

Second, the Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). Garmin’s plan includes a lookback provision, meaning shares are purchased at a 15% discount off the lower of the stock price at the beginning or the end of the plan period. That built-in discount, combined with the lookback feature, can produce meaningful returns. But there are important tax planning considerations around when to sell those shares that employees often overlook.

Third, I help employees think about how all of these pieces fit together with their broader financial picture, including their HSA, insurance elections, and any restricted stock units they may be receiving. The goal is a coordinated strategy, not a collection of isolated decisions.

I start by asking them to walk me through what they actually know about their benefits. It tells me a lot about where the gaps are. From there, I dig into specifics:

Are you contributing at least 10% to the 401(k) to capture the full company match? Are you participating in the ESPP, and if so, what is your strategy for the shares once they vest? Have you chosen the high-deductible health plan with the HSA, or the PPO, and do you understand the long-term financial implications of that choice?

I also ask about their career trajectory at Garmin. Someone who is early in their career and climbing into management has very different planning needs than someone five years from retirement. Understanding where they are in that journey helps me tailor the plan to what actually matters for them right now and what we need to start preparing for down the road.

The Health Savings Account, without question. When Garmin employees elect the high-deductible health plan, they pay zero in premiums and Garmin contributes $1,000 annually to their HSA. That alone is a significant benefit. But the real power of the HSA is what most employees miss… It can function as a stealth retirement account!

HSA contributions are tax-deductible, growth is tax-free, and withdrawals for qualified medical expenses are tax-free as well. That is triple tax advantage that no other account in the tax code offers. For employees who can afford to pay current medical expenses out of pocket and let their HSA balance grow and invest over time, the long-term value is substantial. I regularly help Garmin employees rethink their HSA from a “medical spending account” into a strategic piece of their retirement plan.

Absolutely. Beyond the 401k and HSA, there are several benefits worth a closer look:

The ESPP is a big one. The 15% discount with the lookback provision is essentially a guaranteed return on day one, but employees need a plan for managing that concentrated stock position. I help clients decide when and how to diversify those shares in a tax-efficient way.

For employees receiving restricted stock units, we need to plan for the tax impact at vesting. RSUs are taxed as ordinary income when they vest, and I’ve seen employees caught off guard by a larger-than-expected tax bill because they didn’t plan ahead.

Garmin’s tuition reimbursement program (up to $400 per credit hour) is another benefit I encourage employees to consider, especially younger employees building skills that could accelerate their career growth. And for families, the dependent care FSA can reduce the cost of childcare with pre-tax dollars, which is easy money that many employees leave on the table simply because they don’t enroll during open enrollment.

This is a conversation I encourage people to have well before they give notice. There are several time-sensitive items that can cost you real money if you don’t plan ahead:

First, check your ESPP enrollment period. If you’re mid-cycle, you may want to wait until shares are purchased before resigning so you capture that 15% discount. Walking away mid-period means forfeiting the purchase.

Second, understand what happens to any unvested RSUs. Depending on the terms of your grant, you may lose unvested shares entirely when you leave. If you’re close to a vesting date, the math may favor staying a few extra weeks or months.

Third, review your 401k options. You don’t have to roll it over immediately, and in some cases Garmin’s plan may have investment options (or lower fees) that are worth keeping for a period of time. We can evaluate that together.

Finally, take stock of your health coverage transition. Know when your Garmin benefits end and when your new employer’s plan kicks in so there is no gap. And if you have an HSA, that money is yours to keep regardless of where you work.

The transition from a steady paycheck to drawing from multiple income sources is one of the biggest psychological and financial shifts a person goes through. I break it into a few steps:

Start by understanding what you actually spend. Not what you think you spend, but what the numbers say. Your current take-home pay is often the best proxy, because most people spend close to what hits their checking account.

Next, map out your guaranteed income sources: Social Security (and the optimal timing to claim it), any pension or deferred compensation, and what your 401k and other investments can sustainably generate. We stress-test these numbers against different scenarios so there are no surprises.

Then we build a withdrawal strategy. This is where having a mix of pre-tax (401k), post-tax (Roth), and tax-free (HSA) accounts gives us real flexibility to manage your tax bracket year by year in retirement. Garmin employees who have been strategic about all three buckets throughout their career have a meaningful advantage here.

I also encourage employees to start rehearsing retirement a year or two before they leave. Track your spending, simulate living on your projected retirement income, and identify any adjustments you want to make while you still have a paycheck as a safety net.

Managing your own finances is something to be proud of, and plenty of Garmin employees have done a great job on their own. The question I’d encourage them to ask isn’t “am I doing it wrong?” but rather “am I capturing everything available to me?”

Garmin’s benefits package is genuinely complex. Between the 401(k) match structure, the ESPP lookback provision, HSA optimization, RSU tax planning, and the interaction of all of these with your broader tax picture, there are a lot of moving parts. A good advisor should be able to show you specific opportunities you may be missing, not just offer general advice you could find online.

I’d also say that the complexity tends to increase as your career advances and your compensation grows. Stock-based compensation, higher tax brackets, and approaching retirement all raise the stakes. If you’ve been doing well on your own, an advisor’s value is often in the details and blind spots, the things you didn’t know to look for.

The most common challenge I see is concentrated stock exposure. Garmin employees who have been with the company for several years and have participated in the ESPP (and possibly received RSUs) can end up with a significant portion of their net worth tied to a single stock. They feel loyal to the company and optimistic about its future, but from a risk management perspective, having your paycheck, your retirement savings, and a large stock position all tied to one employer is a vulnerability.

I help clients build a disciplined plan to diversify over time in a tax-smart way, so they’re reducing risk without triggering unnecessary tax consequences.

The second challenge is underutilizing the 401k match. Garmin’s match structure is generous, but it requires a 10% employee contribution to fully capture. For employees earlier in their career or managing other financial obligations, that can feel like a stretch. We work together to find a path to get there, even if it means stepping up contributions gradually over a year or two.

The third is simply not having a coordinated plan. Employees are making decisions about their 401k, ESPP, health plan, and HSA in isolation during open enrollment without considering how those choices interact. That is where having an advisor who understands the full Garmin benefits picture makes a real difference.

I’d start with this: “Have you worked with other Garmin employees, and can you describe how their benefits package affected the financial plan you built for them?” If the advisor can’t speak specifically about the 401k match structure, the ESPP lookback provision, or RSU tax treatment, that tells you something.

Beyond that, ask how the advisor is compensated and whether they act as a fiduciary. You want someone whose interests are aligned with yours.

Ask what the planning process looks like, not just the investment management. A good advisor should be talking about tax planning, insurance review, estate planning, and benefits optimization, not just picking investments.

And finally, ask how they communicate and how often. You want someone who will be proactive about adjustments as your life and career evolve, especially around events like a promotion, a stock vesting, or a change in family circumstances.

What surprises me most is how many long-tenured Garmin employees don’t realize the full value of the company match in their 401k. They know there’s a match, but they haven’t done the math to see that contributing 10% of their salary unlocks a total employer contribution of 12.5%. When we show them the difference between contributing 6% versus 10% over a 20 or 30 year career, compounded with market growth, the gap can easily be six figures.

The other thing that comes up often is ESPP shares sitting in a brokerage account untouched for years. Employees purchased them, the shares went up, and they never sold or rebalanced. They’re sitting on significant unrealized gains with meaningful tax and concentration risk, and they simply haven’t had anyone walk them through their options.

Yes, higher compensation at Garmin introduces additional planning layers. Executives receiving RSUs need a clear strategy for managing the income tax hit at vesting and a plan for diversifying those shares over time. When RSUs represent a significant portion of total compensation, the tax planning around vesting dates, charitable giving strategies, and capital gains management becomes critical.

Highly compensated employees may also bump up against 401k contribution limits more quickly, which means exploring additional savings strategies like backdoor Roth IRA contributions (or mega backdoor Roth), taxable brokerage accounts, or other vehicles depending on their situation.

I also pay close attention to how stock-based compensation interacts with other parts of the financial plan. A large RSU vest in a given year can push someone into a higher tax bracket, affect the taxation of their Social Security benefits if they’re nearing retirement, or trigger the Net Investment Income Tax. These are all things that require proactive planning, not after-the-fact tax preparation.

I had a client who had been with Garmin for over a decade and had been contributing to the ESPP the entire time but had never sold a single share. They came to me with well over half of their investable assets in Garmin stock. They loved the company and believed in the product (they were an avid user of Garmin devices themselves), but they hadn’t considered what would happen to their retirement timeline if the stock experienced a significant downturn.

We built a systematic plan to diversify a portion of their holdings each quarter while being thoughtful about the tax implications of selling shares with different cost bases and holding periods. That experience reinforced something I always share with Garmin employees – being a loyal employee and being a diversified investor are not mutually exclusive. You can believe in where the company is headed while also protecting the wealth you’ve already built.

Garmin is headquartered in Olathe, Kansas, and many employees live on the Kansas side of the metro, but plenty also live in Missouri. That state-line dynamic creates real planning opportunities. Kansas and Missouri have different income tax rates, property tax structures, and retirement income exemptions, so where you live can meaningfully affect your take-home pay and your tax picture in retirement.

For example, Kansas currently offers favorable treatment of certain retirement income, and Missouri has its own set of deductions and credits. If a Garmin employee is approaching retirement and considering a move within the metro area, we can model the tax impact of living on one side of the state line versus the other. It is one of those details that is unique to working and living in a border metro like Kansas City, and it comes up frequently in my conversations with Garmin employees.