Your Palantir Benefits & Career: Financial Planning for Employees and Executives

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

Whether you’re a new Palantir 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 Palantir benefits available to you?

✅If you’re thinking about leaving Palantir 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?

Get the Most Value from Your Palantir Benefits and Compensation Package

Throughout the year, Palantir 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 Palantir who specialize in helping Palantir employees make the most of their income and benefits.

Whether you work in the Palantir headquarters in Denver, Colorado, Palo Alto, 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 Palantir 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 Palantir 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 Palantir 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 Palantir Employees & Executives
2. Get Answers to Your Questions About Your Palantir Benefits and Career
3. Browse Related Articles

Q&A: Financial Planning Tips for Palantir Employees & Executives

Answers to Employee Questions with CJ Stermetz, CFP®, CEP

CJ Stermetz is a financial advisor based in San Jose, California who specializes in offering financial planning services to Palantir employees. CJ helps his clients get the most value from their Palantir benefits and compensation package so they can enjoy life and feel confident about their financial future.

Q: As a financial advisor with experience helping Palantir employees save for their retirement, how do you help them make the most of their employee benefits?

CJ: Palantir has been pretty generous with granting equity over the years. Employees have received ISOs, NSOs, and RSUs. What I find myself doing for most people at Pal is simply helping them make good decisions with the equity they’ve received.

Q: When you first speak with a Palantir employee, what questions do you like to ask to better understand their unique circumstances and determine how you can best help them achieve their goals?

CJ: Our favorite part of working with people is getting to know people.

When we first meet people from Palantir, they’re usually coming to us for advice on something specific. Most commonly, “I now have $XM of Palantir and I don’t know what to do with it.

We’ll ask questions that fall into these categories:

• Equity Comp. “What mix of PLTR ISOs, NSOs, and/or RSUs do you have?”
• Emotion Behind PLTR. “How do you feel having $X amount tied to PLTR? “How well do you handle the swings in the stock price?”
• Potential Selling Plans. “Do you envision keeping some portion of PLTR forever? How much?
• Taxes and Residency. “Do you currently have a CPA?” “What state do you live in?
• Future Plans. “How do you envision making the most of your PLTR equity?”

The questions we ask in the moment will vary, but the goal in our first meeting is to get a sense of the situation and to make sure we’re able to help. Even after this intro call, we have a deeper 90-minute get-to-know-you meeting where we spend time getting to know each other personally. And that call is always a fun one.

Q: Is there a particular benefit available to Palantir employees you feel isn’t as well utilized or understood by employees as it should be?

CJ: Palantir doesn’t have a 401(k) match, but there is an ability to contribute on an after-tax basis and then convert to Roth. (Mega Backdoor Roth) This is easily the most underutilized employee benefits.

Q: Beyond Palantir employee benefits for retirement savings, are there other types of benefits offered by the company that you find valuable to discuss with your clients?

CJ: If the person we’re talking to is still working at Palantir, managing equity and taxes around trading windows is crucial. We make sure all of our clients at Palantir know (1) what their estimated taxes are and (2) that they know what they should be doing during the next open trading window.

The other benefit that’s helpful to talk through is the health insurance. Palantir pays for premiums no matter what, so it’s interesting discussing whether people should stick with the low-deductible plan or high-deductible HSA-eligible plan.

Q: For Palantir employees thinking about leaving the company to accept a job elsewhere, what actions do you recommend they take before resigning and shortly thereafter?

CJ: Even if Palantir offers a favorable post-termination exercise period with your options, you still need to make sure you have a plan for when to exercise your options. Your options are probably pretty valuable, you do not want them to expire.

Q: For Palantir 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?

CJ: Many people at Palantir aren’t approaching a traditional retirement age, but are instead approaching an age in which they’ll be completely financially independent. For people who want to optimize becoming and staying financially independent, having an investing account that isn’t just Palantir will make for a smoother ride.

Q: For Palantir 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?

CJ: Trust your gut. If you’ve been feeling anxious about Palantir, your equity, or other financial topics kind of related to Palantir, it probably means it’s time to chat with someone. People at Palantir love EquityFTW because we’re an Advice-Only firm. This just means that we provide our advice without requiring management of your investments.

Q: What are some of the unique financial planning challenges you commonly see among your clients who are Palantir employees and how do you help them overcome these obstacles?

CJ:
Palantir went from being worth $9/share to $140/share as of mid-year 2025. When appreciation like this happens to a company that compensates its employees heavily with equity, it creates MAJOR tax implications for any seemingly little decision you make. We’ve built both an NSO Tax Calculator and an RSU Tax Calculator for people who don’t hire us, but for our clients, we make sure that (1) we’re executing on any tax-saving strategies possible and (2) we’re paying the taxes when they’re due.

Q: What questions do you recommend Palantir employees ask financial advisors they’re considering hiring to help them decide if they’re a good fit?

CJ: Here are a few questions I suggest Palantir employees ask financial advisors?

• What’s your experience working with people who have ISOs, NSOs, RSUs? (Check their website to see what content they’ve written.)
• Do you have any experience working with people from Palantir?
• How do you get paid? What are common conflicts of interest you have when working with clients?

Get to Know CJ Stermetz, Financial Advisor for Palantir Employees:

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

Q: Is there anything that comes up frequently in your initial meeting with Palantir employees that surprises you?

CJ: Generally speaking, most people from Palantir, love Palantir. Clients have voiced some normal annoyances, but overall, everyone thinks there’s a lot more room for growth at the company.

Q: For highly compensated Palantir employees and executives, are there any special benefits you believe it’s important to take into consideration when preparing their financial plan?

CJ: Because Palantir has granted so much equity, many employees who might not have been “highly compensated” are now very much highly compensated. For people who are new to significant wealth, it’s important to ask for help when you no longer feel you’re sure you’re making the right moves. This really applies on the tax planning side of things.

Q: Is there a particularly memorable experience or a moment you recall with a client who worked at Palantir when you realized they have unique opportunities and circumstances when it comes to their financial planning needs?

CJ: There have been multiple clients who wanted to sell/diversify over time to eventually fund a house purchase. For all of these clients we:

• Mapped out the vesting, sale, and exercise/sale schedule (helps avoid wash sales on RSUs)
• For current employees, we aligned the schedule with estimated trading windows; for former employees, we built in a monthly/quarterly sales schedule
• Earmarked the required quarterly estimates for taxes (helps avoid underpayment penalties)
• Set aside the cash in the highest-yielding but still 100% safe place
• Notified their CPA or introduced a new CPA to ensure the tax returns had all the information necessary and that they were thinking about all the potential tax-savings strategies at our disposal

Pulling money in a tax-efficient way to fund the purchase of a house is a really fun thing to help with.

🙋‍♀️ Have Questions About Your Palantir Benefits or Career?

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