Your Lockheed Martin Benefits & Career: Financial Planning for Employees and Executives

Do you work at Lockheed Martin? Get the resources you need and expert insights from financial professionals who specialize in helping Lockheed Martin employees make the most of their compensation packages and benefits.

Whether you’re a new Lockheed Martin employee or you’ve moved up the ranks into a management or executive leadership role over a multi-year career, it’s important to make smart money moves with your income and employee benefits. For example:

✅ Do you know the right moves to make to get the greatest value from the Lockheed Martin benefits available to you?

✅If you’re thinking about leaving Lockheed Martin for another job or planning to retire from the company in a few years, are you taking the right steps today to ensure you will receive all of the compensation and benefits that you’ve earned?

Please note, neither this article nor the advisor(s) featured are endorsed, affiliated or sponsored by Lockheed Martin in any way.

Get the Most Value from Your Lockheed Martin Benefits and Compensation Package

Throughout the year, Lockheed Martin provides its employees and executives with updates about their benefits ranging from health insurance and health savings plans to retirement plans like a 401(k), deferred compensation plans, and stock options. While the company offers many useful resources and access to knowledgeable staff who can assist with questions, you’ll also find financial professionals not affiliated with Lockheed Martin who specialize in helping Lockheed Martin employees make the most of their income and benefits.

Whether you work in the Lockheed Martin headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, another office location around the country, or remotely from home, you may have questions about your compensation package and benefits better suited for a financial professional who can offer unbiased advice and guidance.

For example, sensitive topics like discussing the steps you should take before quitting your job at Lockheed Martin to work elsewhere, protecting yourself in advance of a corporate layoff, or deciding when you should plan to retire are all conversations that may be more comfortable with a trusted financial advisor.

💡 In the Q&A below, you’ll gain insights from financial advisors who work with Lockheed Martin employees to help them make smart decisions to get the most value from their compensation and benefits, reduce their money stress, and prepare for a comfortable retirement.

🙋‍♀️ Do you have questions not yet answered? Use the form below to submit questions anonymously and watch this article for updates with answers to your questions. You can also reach out to the financial advisors below to set up an introductory call or contact them with your questions by email.

💸 Smart Money Insights for Lockheed Martin Employees & Executives

This page is organized into sections to help you quickly find the information you need and get answers to your questions:

1. Q&A: Financial Planning Tips for Lockheed Martin Employees & Executives
2. Get Answers to Your Questions About Your Lockheed Martin Benefits and Career
3. Quick Facts & Resources for Lockheed Martin Employees
4. Browse Related Articles

Q&A: Financial Planning Tips for Lockheed Martin Employees & Executives

In this section, you’ll learn how you can make the most of your Lockheed Martin employee benefits and gain valuable tips from financial advisors who specialize in working with Lockheed Martin employees and executives.

Get to Know:

✅ Blaine Thiederman, MBA, CFP® (Arvada, Colorado)
✅ David Sandhu, CRPC®️ (Forth Worth, Texas)

Answers to Employee Questions with Blaine Thiederman, MBA, CFP®

Blaine Thiederman is a financial advisor based in Arvada, Colorado, who specializes in offering financial planning services to Lockheed Martin employees. Blaine helps his clients get the most value from their Lockheed Martin benefits and compensation package so they can enjoy life and feel confident about their financial future.

Q: As a financial advisor with experience helping Lockheed Martin employees save for their retirement, what challenges do you find they often face when building their financial plans?

Blaine: I generally find that Lockheed Martin employees plan too optimistically on one hand (stock market returns, stability of income, lack of bad things happening) and too pessimistically on the other (tax rates going up). 

Most Lockheed Martin employees I’ve worked with lack sufficient life insurance, have no estate plan (e.g., a last will and testament, trust, etc.), don’t know how they should prioritize saving for their future, don’t have a scientific process for managing their money, lack any process for managing their budget, and typically assume that their job will be around forever. These are all major assumptions that could be completely inaccurate. 

What’s worse is, if Lockheed Martin announces a major layoff due to a decrease in government military spending, you’d expect most jobs in aerospace engineering to have major cuts simultaneously, and as a result, finding a job would be incredibly hard for many of their employees. 

The point is, if Lockheed Martin employees plan too optimistically, it could result in their plans falling short and their futures being worse than expected.

Q: What risks are prevalent in the financial lives of Lockheed Martin employees that aren’t significant risks to many other people? 

Blaine: The most important risk faced by Lockheed Martin employees is the fact that few recognize the real risk that future administrations could advocate for a sharp cut in Department of Defense (DOD) spending. Many don’t save enough because they assume things will always be good for Lockheed employees. In preparation for that, it’s important to be conservative with your saving and plans.

Many Lockheed employees don’t necessarily know how to use their equity compensation or deferred compensation packages, which can be substantial. If you’re a Lockheed employee who lacks a scientific approach to using these benefits appropriately, you could be wasting literally tens (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in taxes in retirement or taking way too much risk. There are things you should do yourself and others you shouldn’t (this is one you shouldn’t).

Tax planning is another major area that many Lockheed employees typically overlook. Most employees of Lockheed are paid well, and rarely do they need their whole salary, so saving is very affordable. It’s not uncommon for Lockheed employees to have rental properties, significant balances in their bank accounts, large uninvested dollar amounts in HSAs, or poorly constructed saving strategies because there’s so much room for error when you earn much more than you need. This leads to thousands of dollars in wasted taxes for no good reason.

Another unfortunate risk affecting many Lockheed employees is the heightened likelihood of divorce. It’s a well-known fact that people who work 60 hours a week or more are significantly more likely to get a divorce. Without proper planning for a divorce, not only can it make life harder to afford today, but it can make your future more difficult as well. 

Get to Know Blaine Thiederman, Financial Advisor for Lockheed Martin Employees:

View Blaine’s profile page on Wealthtender or visit his website to learn more.

Q: What are the most valuable and most rarely used employee benefits for Lockheed Martin employees?

Blaine: If you’re a Lockheed employee, your employer-sponsored legal services through Hyatt Legal can be incredibly valuable. The cost of an attorney preparing estate documents, reviewing your divorce plan, reviewing trusts, representing you in the event of a DUI, or a slew of other things is incredibly valuable.

Another valuable opportunity involves using a mega backdoor Roth conversion for your Lockheed Martin 401(k) to get additional funds into your Roth 401(k). This is a fantastic way to save potentially as much as $64,500 a year into your Roth 401(k) plan.

And finally, employees should consider taking advantage of the life and disability insurance benefits offered by Lockheed Martin. Insurance policies are expensive, but getting life and disability insurance through your employer-sponsored plan can make it more affordable. Ensuring you don’t just make the right choice on how much of each you should get, but also what kind, is incredibly important to your risk management strategy. 

Q: What experience should employees of Lockheed Martin expect from a financial advisor who specializes in working with company employees? 

Blaine: Because many Lockheed Martin employees have long work weeks, I understand they may not want to spend a lot of time chatting or tied up in meetings. If any meeting can be replaced with a text message, an email, or a task listed on their planning dashboard, that’s a better experience I strive to deliver and encourage Lockheed employees to look for in any advisor they’re thinking about hiring.

I also believe in being direct, so ensuring the meeting is simple, straightforward, and easy to follow is vital. I follow every meeting by sending an email summarizing the points that I’ve reviewed with them. And by sharing the document I’m taking notes on, my clients can ensure I’m understanding what they’re telling me throughout our conversation. 

If you’re a Lockheed employee interviewing financial advisors and any of them say they’re opposed to anything digital, it means more conversations, time, and energy are required of you unnecessarily. That’s not good enough. If your current or prospective financial advisor is incapable of giving you all the information you’re looking for when you ask them “why”, it means they’re likely parroting something their company told them and don’t really understand it and whether it makes the most sense for you at that moment in time. 

Answers to Employee Questions with David Sandhu, CRPC®️

David Sandhu is a financial advisor and former engineer at Lockheed Martin, based in Fort Worth, Texas. David specializes in educating Lockheed Martin employees on ways to maximize their benefits so they can focus on supporting the warfighter and develop confidence in their retirement plans.

Q: For Lockheed Martin employees approaching retirement age, how do you recommend they prepare to make the transition from living off their salary to relying upon other sources of income?

David: As a former Lockheed Martin employee, I’ve noticed that there are two major types of groups retiring from Lockheed Martin, those with a pension and those without a pension.

For those that were hired before Lockheed Martin froze their pension plan, I often see that the pension plan is a major aspect of their retirement income, but they don’t incorporate all the decisions about their pension into the overall retirement plan.

For example, there are many options that need to be considered when incorporating Social Security income, pension payouts and Required Minimum Distributions into their overall income plan. Proper tax planning is crucial to ensure tax efficient withdrawals.

The best way to transition your income into retirement is to ensure that you have guaranteed monthly income covering your monthly expenses. After that, it’s prudent to ensure your medical and long term care issues are covered and insured against. Finally, review opportunities to reduce your overall tax liability, and whether or not Roth conversions, Qualified Charitable Distributions or a Donor Advised Fund is appropriate.

The key for Lockheed Martin employees is to incorporate their 401(k), IRA, Pension (if they have one), tax considerations, Medical Care, Long Term Care and Estate into one comprehensive plan.

Get to Know David Sandhu, Financial Advisor for Lockheed Martin Employees:

View David’s profile page on Wealthtender or visit his website to learn more.

Q: For Lockheed Martin employees who have managed their finances on their own to this point, what would you suggest they consider to help them decide if they should begin working with a financial advisor at this stage in their lives?

David: Having worked as a “Skunk” and engineer at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs, I have a deep appreciation and understanding of the technical expertise it takes to develop the next generation of warfighter support. For many, though, “we don’t know what we don’t know” is a common theme I hear.

As an advisor, I’ve spoken to many teams at the Lockheed Martin Leadership Association and in partnership with IEEE, and the most common thing I hear from someone is “that’s a risk I hadn’t thought of before, but I need to start planning for”.

As technical experts, it’s easy to assume that we have thought of everything, accounted for error and are on the right path. But, getting a second opinion, especially if you consider yourself a “do it yourselfer” is crucial to not making missteps. In my free E-Book: Building Your Wealth at Lockheed Martin, I talk about the various parts of a plan that a Lockheed Martin employee should have covered.

Especially if you are within the “Critical 15”, the 10 years before retirement or 5 years after retirement, you cannot afford to make a mistake. The risks and the consequences are greater and sometimes can have long lasting effects.

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📺 Video from David Sandhu: The “Understanding Your Lockheed Martin 401k Retirement Plan” webinar will walk you through understanding your investment options, which is right for you and the most common mistakes to avoid with your 401k.

Quick Facts & Resources for Lockheed Martin Employees

Lockheed Martin Quick Facts & Resources	Details / Useful Links
Lockheed Martin Corporate Headquarters Address	6801 Rockledge Dr, Bethesda, MD 20817 (📍 Google Maps)
Overview of Lockheed Martin Benefits	Visit LockheedMartinJobs.com/Working-Here
How much do Lockheed Martin employees Make?	View Lockheed Martin Salary Research on Glassdoor
Where can I learn more about careers at Lockheed Martin?	Visit LockheedMartinJobs.com/
How many people work for Lockheed Martin?	Lockheed Martin has approximately 114,000 employees worldwide (Source: Lockheed Martin)
What is the ticker symbol for Lockheed Martin stock?	The Lockheed Martin ticker symbol is LMT.

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