Retirement Planning for Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida
In short
Oliver Wealth Management works with households in Ponte Vedra Beach from its office in St. Augustine. The planning here often involves compensation that has not finished paying out, a concentrated holding in a former employer’s stock, and accounts spread across three or four firms. Our work is to put the whole of it on one page, then decide the withdrawal, tax and estate sequence, in that order. Blake Oliver is an Investment Advisor Representative, and advisory services are offered through MariPau Wealth Management, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser.
Retiring out of a corporate career
Leaving a senior role usually leaves a tail: restricted stock that has not fully vested, options whose expiration is tied to your employment rather than the calendar, and a deferred compensation balance governed by a payout election you made years ago. Each has its own clock, and the clock generally cannot be renegotiated after the fact.
Tax treatment differs by instrument, and the differences matter most in the year you leave. The IRS separates statutory stock options, granted under an incentive stock option plan or an employee stock purchase plan, from nonstatutory options, and income is recognized at different moments for the two. Nonqualified deferred compensation follows its own rules, with the distribution schedule largely fixed by the election.
We are not tax preparers and we do not replace your CPA. We make sure the income plan and the tax picture are looked at in the same room, before an exercise deadline or a first distribution year forces a decision.
One position that grew too large, and four statements that never speak to each other
The first problem is concentration. A holding built over twenty years through grants and purchases can become the largest single thing you own, and trimming it is rarely a clean investment question: it is tangled up with cost basis, holding periods, and sometimes how you feel about the place you gave your career to.
The second is fragmentation: a plan at the last employer, an older one nobody rolled over, a brokerage account opened in the 1990s, an IRA started for a single contribution, an annuity bought at a dinner. None of the people minding those pieces can see the others, so no one is answering the question you care about, which is whether the whole arrangement works.
The first thing we do is inventory: everything on one page, with what it is, where it sits, what it costs to hold, and how it is taxed on the way out.
Residency, and documents that were drafted somewhere else
If you arrived from a state with an income tax, and especially if you still own property there, residency matters. Florida residency is a matter of fact and intent rather than a single form, but Section 222.17 of the Florida Statutes lets a person who has established domicile here file a sworn declaration with the clerk of the circuit court in their county. It does not replace living here, but it is a clean item in the file.
A will executed in another state is generally valid in Florida if it was valid where you signed it, with exceptions the statute spells out for handwritten and oral wills. Valid is not the same as current, or as matching what you now own. A Florida attorney should read it; we will point out what looks worth a second look, because drafting is not our role.
Beneficiary designations sit on the account rather than in the will, and they win. If the form on a rollover IRA still names someone from an earlier chapter of your life, careful estate drafting will not repair that.
Common questions
Do you have an office in Ponte Vedra Beach?
No. Oliver Wealth Management has one office, at 6 Manatee Ct in St. Augustine, roughly forty minutes south. We meet clients at the office or by video.
My accounts are spread across three firms. Do they all have to move?
Not necessarily. The first question is what you own in total and how each piece is taxed on the way out. Sometimes consolidating simplifies things, and sometimes an account is better left where it is. We would rather understand the whole picture than open with a transfer form.
I still hold a lot of stock from my former employer. What do you look at?
What the position is as a share of everything you own, how it was acquired, your basis and holding periods, and what a sale would do to the tax year it lands in. Your plan documents govern much of it, so we want your CPA in this conversation. We do not give tax advice.
I moved here from a state with an income tax. What should I check?
Three things: whether your residency is documented, for which Florida has a declaration of domicile filed with the clerk of the circuit court; whether a Florida attorney has read your estate documents since the move; and whether your beneficiary designations still say what you want them to say.
Sources
- Topic no. 427, Stock options, Internal Revenue Service
- Publication 525, Taxable and Nontaxable Income, Internal Revenue Service
- Section 222.17, Manifesting and evidencing domicile in Florida, The Florida Senate
- Section 732.502, Execution of wills, The Florida Senate
These public resources support the general educational context on this page. They are not endorsements of Oliver Wealth Management, and none of the material here is personalized investment, tax, or legal advice.
Oliver Wealth Management has one office, at 6 Manatee Ct in St. Augustine.
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