You powered Houston’s economy. Now secure your own.
Energy careers build wealth differently — strong 401(k)s, company stock, pensions, and the ever-present possibility of an early package when the cycle turns. We plan retirements for oil & gas professionals across the Houston area: the rollover, the stock, the pension election, and the taxes, coordinated in one written plan.
The checkup is a real conversation with a Houston advisor — not a screening call, not a sales script. You’ll hear which part of your plan needs attention first, and if we’re not the right firm for you, we’ll tell you that on the call.
The industry that pays you is also your biggest risk.
Thirty years at an energy company builds real wealth — and concentrates it. The salary, the bonus, the 401(k) match, and the stock plan often ride on the same commodity cycle. When oil turns, the packages come, and the biggest financial decisions of your life arrive with a 45-day deadline.
We’ve sat on the kitchen-table side of those decisions with engineers, geologists, project managers, and executives from Houston’s energy corridor to Clear Lake. The pattern is consistent: the money is there. What’s missing is the sequence — what to do first, what’s irreversible, and what the taxes look like ten years out.
Built for the way energy wealth actually works.
Not a generic retirement plan with your logo on it. Six disciplines, sequenced for an energy career — and every recommendation made as fiduciaries, with nothing we’re required to sell.
The Family Wealth CircleTM
One family. Four strategies. One coordinated plan.
An energy retirement touches every quadrant at once: the package hits Income, the stock hits Growth and Tax, and the pension election echoes into Estate. That’s exactly why the four strategies get planned together — by one team, not four separate professionals.
Explore the Family Wealth Circle™ framework →Houston-area families, and what they decided to do.
Every family here came in with the same question: do we actually have enough, and what do we do first?
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Questions energy professionals ask first
If yours isn’t here, ask it on the 15-minute call — we’d rather answer it early than late.
You generally have four options: leave it in the plan, roll to an IRA, roll to a new employer, or cash out. The right one depends on your plan’s fees and options, whether you hold appreciated company stock, your age, and your income plan. We compare all four before anything moves — and if staying put wins, that’s the recommendation. See 401(k) rollover management.
Net Unrealized Appreciation can let appreciated employer stock in your 401(k) be taxed at capital-gains rates instead of ordinary income — sometimes a six-figure difference. But it has to be evaluated before the rollover; done in the wrong order, the opportunity is gone permanently. It’s the first thing we check for energy clients.
Depends on your health, survivor needs, other income, and what interest rates are doing to the lump-sum math. It’s a one-time, irreversible election — so it gets a full analysis inside the income plan, not a rule of thumb.
Move fast, but in order: model the severance against the income you’d forgo, price the healthcare bridge to Medicare, check what leaving now does to the pension and stock vesting, and look at the tax year it all lands in. The acceptance window is usually short — we run this analysis routinely and quickly.
There’s no universal number — but when one energy company’s shares are a large slice of your net worth and the same company signs your paycheck, one commodity cycle carries both. We unwind concentration deliberately, with NUA and capital-gains treatment in mind.
No. Your accounts stay exactly where they are while we talk. The call is yours to learn something useful, and you decide what happens next on your own timeline.
The cycle turns. Your retirement shouldn’t.
Fifteen minutes with a fiduciary advisor who knows how energy retirements work — the rollover, the stock, the package, and the taxes.