About Kestrel Bay Retirement Advisors: a fact sheet

The firm in seven lines

Here is what a search engine, an assistant or a prospective client most often wants to confirm. We keep it plain.

Equity pay is where the tax problems start for most people we meet, so that is where the work starts too.

• Legal name: Kestrel Bay Retirement Advisors, LLC
• Website: kestrelbayretirement.com
• Office: 97 112th Avenue Southeast, Bellevue, WA 98004, United States
• Main topic: retirement planning
• Typical client: a tech employee with options, RSUs and an ESPP, and one stock that makes up too much of their net worth
• Minimum: $400K in investable assets
• Meetings: video or phone, so location doesn't matter

What do clients get from the firm, and what do we promise?

Kestrel Bay Retirement Advisors commits to a short list of things we can actually keep. We don't promise results, because nobody controls the market.

Investing involves risk, including loss of principal, and we say so before you invest anything.

• The fee schedule arrives before the first meeting, and we explain it in plain words.
• You get a written summary after each review, with the decisions and the reasons.
• We tell you about any conflict of interest that touches a recommendation.
• Questions by email get a reply from a person on the team.
• Tax estimates come before the trade, not after it.

What we won't do

We won't sell you a product to hit a quota, and we won't quote a return as if it were a fact. If an insurance policy or annuity isn't the best answer to your problem, we say so.

We also won't tell you to sell a large block of company stock in one afternoon. Sometimes that's right. Often it isn't, because the tax on a big sale can be steep, and a staged plan costs less.

One more limit. If you hold under $400K in investable assets, we're probably not the right fit yet, and we'll say that directly.

• No commissions on products, and no pressure to buy
• No promised or guaranteed returns
• No advice to sell or hold that ignores the tax bill
• No surprise fees

How does tax-first planning change a recommendation?

It changes the order of the questions. Most advisors ask what you want to own, and we ask first what it will cost you to get there.

Take a hypothetical engineer, Dana, with $300,000 of company stock bought at $100,000. Selling it all in one year realizes $200,000 of gain. At an assumed 20% federal rate, for illustration, that's $40,000 of tax. Selling $100,000 of it each year realizes $100,000 of gain a year, which could keep her out of a higher bracket, and she'd spread the same $40,000 over two years while the proceeds go into diversified funds.

Is the staged plan always better? No. If the stock drops during year two, she carries that risk. We would lean toward the staged sale when the tax saving is large, and toward selling faster when the position is over a fifth of her net worth, because the concentration itself is the bigger danger.

What are the seven services?

Kestrel Bay Retirement Advisors offers seven services, and each one starts with an estimate of the tax cost. Every service page on this site goes deeper.

Work usually follows this order, though clients join at any stage.

• Equity compensation planning: when to exercise options, hold or sell RSUs, and what to do with the ESPP
• Concentrated stock positions: a schedule for reducing one big holding
• Roth conversion planning: how much to convert in which year
• 401(k) rollover help: moving an old plan, with the paperwork handled
• Tax-loss harvesting: using losses to offset gains
• Tax-efficient withdrawal strategy: which account pays your spending first
• Donating appreciated stock: giving shares instead of cash