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He checked the share price before getting out of bed.
$800K in RSUs. $2.2M in idle equity. No plan. Here’s what changed.
A senior sales executive came to see me.
CrowdStrike. Early 50s. Earning well above $600K. By every measure, he had made it.
But he told me something in the first five minutes.
“Mike, I check the share price every morning before I get out of bed.”
Not because he was excited about the stock. Because $800K of his financial future was tied to it. Every quarter.
What his balance sheet looked like
$800K in RSUs. Vested and unvested. All sitting in one stock.
$2.2M in home equity doing nothing.
Super contributions not optimised.
No retirement income model. No clear picture of when he could actually stop.
The anxiety was not irrational. It was the natural result of having everything pointed at one ticker.
Here is what we built
A tax efficient RSU sell down plan. Every vesting event mapped. CGT windows identified. Proceeds directed into a structure rather than disappearing into lifestyle.
A $1M investment loan against the home equity. Interest tax deductible. Money deployed into a growth portfolio. Debt recycling running from day one.
Super contributions maximised for him and his wife. Concessional and non concessional. Both optimised.
Retirement income modelled across multiple scenarios. Stress tested at multiple retirement ages.
The result
He now has a clear, modelled path to $22,000 a month in sustainable retirement income.
He told me he hasn’t checked the share price before breakfast in months.
Not because the stock stopped moving. Because his financial future no longer depends on it.
Watch his full story in the CrowdStrike case study, or read about RSU advice for tech executives.
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