Your RSUs Just Vested. Now What?

Then life keeps moving, and you move with it. The shares sit there. Another vesting cycle passes. Another. And slowly, without a single dramatic decision, you have accumulated a position in your company's stock that represents a significant portion of your net worth — while that same company still signs your paycheck every two weeks.

This is one of the most common financial situations I encounter with San Diego's high-earning professionals — and it is one of the easiest to sleepwalk into, because nothing bad happens until it does.

The Story That Made Me Want to Write This Post

I recently sat down with a client who works in the tech sector here in San Diego. Smart, accomplished, making excellent money. We started working through her financial picture, and when we got to her equity compensation, the number stopped us both.

Twenty-four percent of her total net worth was sitting in vested RSUs from her employer. She wasn't sure exactly when it had gotten that high. Each quarter, shares vested. She didn't know what to do with them — sell felt like a statement she wasn't ready to make, and hold felt like doing nothing wrong. So they accumulated.

Here is what made that number significant: her paycheck also came from that same company. Her health insurance. Her 401(k) match. One quarter of her entire net worth and 100% of her active income were dependent on the continued success and stability of a single organization.

That is not a strategy. That is exposure — and it is the kind of exposure that tends to stay invisible right up until the moment it isn't.

We are now working through a coordinated plan to reduce that concentration thoughtfully — in a way that is tax-aware, timed well, and connected to her broader financial picture. She feels better. Not because the problem disappeared overnight, but because she finally has a map.

Why This Happens to Smart, Financially Aware People

The professionals I work with in San Diego — biotech researchers in Torrey Pines, engineers at Qualcomm and the defense firms along the 15, physicians and healthcare executives, dual-income households in Carmel Valley and Del Mar — are not financially irresponsible. They are busy, and they are making a quiet error that the financial industry rarely explains clearly.

RSU accumulation happens for three reasons that all feel reasonable in the moment:

Selling feels disloyal. If you believe in your company — and you probably do, or you wouldn't have stayed — selling your shares can feel like a vote of no confidence. It isn't. But the feeling is real, and it keeps a lot of people holding longer than their financial situation warrants.

The tax hit feels punishing. RSUs are taxed as ordinary income when they vest — not as capital gains. For a San Diego professional in a high tax bracket, that can mean a combined federal and state rate well above 40%. Selling and writing that check feels painful. So people avoid it. But that tax is owed whether you sell or hold. You already paid it at vesting. Holding after that point is an investment decision, not a tax decision — and most people don't realize that.

The decision feels non-urgent. Nothing forces you to act on vesting day. The shares sit in the account, the number grows, and the urgency never arrives. Until it does.

The Concentration Risk Problem — Explained Simply

When you hold RSUs in your employer's stock, you have what's called a concentrated position. That means a single company represents a disproportionate share of your total financial picture. For context, most diversified investment portfolios aim to keep no single holding above 5% to 10% of total assets. A 24% concentration — like my client's — is more than double that threshold.

Why does that matter? Because company-specific risk is real, and it does not care how good the company is. Sector downturns, earnings misses, leadership changes, regulatory shifts, and broader market corrections can all compress a stock's value quickly and without warning. Biotech companies in San Diego know this better than most — the sector's volatility has been well-documented, and even strong companies with solid science can see significant share price swings around clinical trial outcomes, FDA decisions, or macro shifts in life science funding.

And unlike a portfolio holding, your RSUs come with an additional layer of exposure: your paycheck. If something significant happens to your employer — a large layoff, a restructuring, an acquisition — you don't just lose stock value. You lose income, benefits, and potentially your 401(k) match simultaneously. That is a compounding risk that single-stock investors in unrelated companies don't face.

So What Should You Actually Do?

This is where I want to be honest with you: there is no universal answer. What you should do with your vested RSUs depends on your tax situation, your total financial picture, your timeline, your risk tolerance, and how your equity fits into the rest of what you're building. Anyone who gives you a one-size-fits-all answer on this isn't looking at your full picture.

That said, here are the questions that a coordinated strategy needs to answer — and that most people in your situation have never been walked through clearly:

What a Coordinated Strategy Actually Looks Like

For my client — the one with 24% of her net worth in employer stock — the plan we built together is not dramatic. It doesn't require selling everything at once, taking a massive tax hit in one year, or making a statement about her confidence in her company.

It involves a systematic, tax-aware diversification approach: selling a defined percentage of shares as they vest going forward, reinvesting the proceeds into a diversified portfolio, and coordinating the timing of those sales with her broader tax picture so we're not creating unnecessary exposure. We also looked at her disability coverage, because when income and wealth share the same risk, protection becomes more important — not less.

The Living Balance Sheet® — a tool I use with clients to create a consolidated view of their entire financial picture — was essential to that conversation. Seeing everything in one place made the concentration visible in a way that spreadsheets and account statements scattered across three different platforms never had.

The result is not perfection. It is a plan she trusts, built on clarity rather than reaction. That shift — from financial anxiety to financial direction — is what I see the H.E.N.R.Y. Strategy deliver most consistently for high-earning San Diego professionals.

You Earn Well. Make Sure Your Financial Life Reflects That.

If you are a professional in San Diego's biotech corridor, the Qualcomm ecosystem, the defense sector, or a healthcare practice — and you have been accumulating RSUs without a clear strategy for what to do with them — this is the conversation worth having. Not because something has gone wrong. Because you have worked too hard and earned too much to leave your financial future to inertia.

A complimentary H.E.N.R.Y. Strategy Session is a 30-minute conversation. We look at your full picture — income, equity, tax exposure, protection, and long-term trajectory. We identify where the gaps are. And we talk about what a coordinated strategy actually looks like for your specific situation.

No obligation. No product pitch. Just clarity — and a plan you can trust.