You’ll make this decision once.
Harbourline is an independent, flat-fee fiduciary practice in Boston. We plan retirement transitions and equity compensation for people who built careers in tech and biotech. No commissions, no products to sell. The fee is agreed before we start.
Six things we are asked to do.
Most plans need three or four of these. The fee does not change with how many.
01
Retirement transition
The date work becomes optional, and the withdrawal order that pays for it — which account funds which year, in what sequence.
02
Equity compensation
Grants, exercise windows, and a sale schedule written down in advance, so a bad month never becomes a decision.
03
Tax strategy
Roth conversions, capital-gain harvesting, charitable timing. Coordinated with your CPA, in writing, before the year closes.
04
Estate and family
Documents that are current. Beneficiaries that are correct. A binder your spouse has actually read, and can find.
05
Education funding
Tuition planned to the semester, without quietly borrowing it from the thirty years that come after work stops.
06
Business exit
Valuation, structure, and the question nobody asks first: what the money has to do for you once the company is gone.
Two situations we know well.
Most people call us the week something lands: an offer, a grant, a date. Usually it looks like one of these.
The package on the table
You’re 58. Nineteen years at the same company, and on Tuesday they offered you a package that expires at the end of the month. Pension or lump sum. Health coverage to 65, or a gap. A 401(k) allocation untouched since 2016. Four weeks to decide things that will shape thirty years.
We map the whole decision before you sign anything.
The net worth with one ticker on it
You’re 47 and eleven years vested. The RSUs kept coming, you never sold, and now one stock is 68 percent of everything you own. Selling feels disloyal. Holding keeps you up at night. There is a defensible middle, and it has a schedule.
We build the selling plan you can live with, tax year by tax year.
Neither one exactly you? Tell us what is
A plan is drawn in decades, not quarters.
Here is the shape of a typical Harbourline plan, for someone who is 55 today and wondering how much longer work is a requirement.
- 55
The map
Every account, grant, pension, and property in one drawing. We mark which options get exercised and in which tax years, what happens to the house, and the date work becomes optional rather than required.
- 62
The paycheck, replaced
Salary stops. The withdrawal order starts: which account funds which year, sequenced so the tax bill stays quiet. Done well, retirement income is boring. Boring is the goal.
- 70
The floor
Delayed benefits switch on at their maximum, and the plan now rests on guaranteed income. The portfolio's job gets smaller, so market weather matters a little less every year.
- Beyond
The part your family will thank you for
Documents that are current. Beneficiaries that are correct. A binder your spouse has actually read. A plan should outlive its owner. That is the point of drawing one.
Reviewed every year. Redrawn when life changes.
The fee is flat. Here is all of it.
Priced by complexity, agreed before we start, billed quarterly. It does not rise with the market, and it never depends on what you buy, because you buy nothing here.
Foundation
One household, one employer's equity, a retirement inside ten years.
$9,600per year
Comprehensive
Multiple grants, a sale schedule, tax coordination with your CPA.
$15,000per year
Complex
Business equity, trusts, multi-state filings, family gifting.
$21,000per year
Every tier includes the annual redraw, unlimited meetings, the equity sale calendar, estate document review, and a direct line to your CPA. If your situation fits no tier, we quote a flat number in the first meeting and hold it for a year.
For scale: a typical 1 percent adviser on a $3m portfolio collects $30,000 a year, more after a good year, the same after a bad one. Ours is on this table, and it stays there.
Same side of the table.
Fiduciary is a legal word for a plain arrangement: your interest first, in writing, enforceable. We built the firm so that promise has nothing pulling against it.
You pay us.
And nobody else does. No fund company, no insurer, no platform, no referral desk. Our revenue is the fee on the table above, in full.
We sell nothing.
No in-house funds, no annuities in a drawer, no quota behind the advice. When we recommend an investment, we earn the same either way: nothing.
Flat means flat.
At a percentage firm, advice to pay off the mortgage or gift to your kids shrinks the fee. Here it changes nothing, so you will actually hear it.
The plan we draw is the only thing we sell.
Five advisors. No sales floor.
You will work with the person whose name is on your plan. There is no junior desk behind this list, because there is no list behind it.
Eleanor Marsh
Founding advisor
Retirement transitions, twenty-four years of them. She draws the first line on every plan that leaves this office.
David Okafor
Equity compensation
Options, RSUs, and the grant agreements nobody reads. He reads them, and then he tells you what page nine actually costs.
Priya Raman
Tax strategy
The reason the withdrawal order works as well in April as it does on paper. Talks to your CPA so you do not have to.
Tom Kessler
Pensions and severance
A former actuary who has likely seen a version of your offer before, and can tell you which number in it is the real one.
Grace Liu
Concentrated stock
She builds the selling schedule, and the case for keeping some. Both are written down before the first share moves.
Two things worth reading first.
We write something down when a question has come up in enough meetings to be worth answering once, properly, and in public. So far that is twice.
01
What a flat fee removes from the conversation
When the fee does not move with the balance, nobody in the room has a reason to talk you into anything.
02
A plan is a line drawn across thirty years
It passes every fact on the way and hides none of them. The hard part is agreeing where it starts.
Bring us the decision you’ve been circling.
Come with the offer letter, the vesting schedule, or the retirement date you haven’t said out loud yet. In 45 minutes we’ll tell you what we see, what we’d charge, and whether you need us at all. Sometimes the honest answer is a two-hour plan review and nothing more.