Marcel Miu, CFP®

Marcel Miu specializes in helping tech professionals navigate the complexities of high-income careers, RSU/stock option compensation, and the unique challenges of early retirement. Marcel brings 15 years of experience to a flat-fee model designed for transparency, including 13 years of institutional investment experience at JP Morgan and Cohen & Steers.

Q: You focus specifically on clients with employer stock. Why is that your niche?

Marcel Miu: Most of my clients are in the tech industry where RSUs and stock options aren't just a bonus — they are a core part of their net worth. My background is in the investment world, but I realized that while these people are brilliant at what they do, they often face significant pain points in managing that concentrated risk. They need more than just "investment advice"; they need a strategy for the "go-go" years of their career.

Q: What is a mistake you see high-income earners make repeatedly?

Marcel Miu: Two things:

• Ignoring the "Small" Wins: People see a $7,000 backdoor Roth contribution and think it won't move the needle. But when you run the math where you consistently do it over 30 years, that tax-free growth is massive. It's the systematic, "clunky" tasks that add up.
• Poor Asset Location: Holding the wrong assets in the wrong accounts. People rarely do this correctly on their own because it's cumbersome to manage across eight or ten different platforms. It's not a "press a button" solution; it requires manual, diligent rebalancing.

Q: You mention that "early retirement" is a different ballgame than retiring at 65. How so?

Marcel Miu: If you retire at 50, you have a 40-year horizon. The margin for error is razor-thin compared to someone retiring at 65. You face three main hurdles:

• The Health Care Bridge: How do you fund insurance before Medicare kicks in?
• The 59½ Penalty: You don't have unfettered access to retirement accounts without strategic planning (like Roth conversion ladders).
• Sequence of Return Risk: If the market dips in your first two years of retirement while you're also paying $100,000/year for an Ivy League tuition, Harvard isn't going to give you a discount. Your plan has to be robust enough to handle that "perfect storm."

Q: Your firm is called "Simplify Wealth Planning." Why the focus on simplicity?

Marcel Miu: The industry loves to add layers of complexity to justify fees. I've seen clients with multi-million dollar concentrated positions who think they need a complex "Exchange Fund" or legal maneuvers. Often, when we look under the hood at the tax lots, the best move is a simple market sell. I've had cases where we sold, took a modest tax hit, and the stock dropped 35% afterward. We took the "big fear" off the table. Sometimes, simplicity is the ultimate hedge.

Q: How do you handle it when a couple has different risk tolerances or conflicting goals?

Marcel Miu: I often act as a "financial therapist" or a neutral moderator. One partner might be ready to "go-go" while the other is worried about safety. My job is to quantify those trade-offs. We look at the data, run the simulations, and I help them find a resolution where both feel heard. It's about extracting maximum enjoyment from your money while protecting your future self.

Q: Who is your ideal client?

Marcel Miu: The "Reluctant DIYer." People who didn't see the value in the % of assets model, which dominates the industry. Our flat fee approach, which includes managing investments, gives these smart, capable people who could do this themselves an off-ramp once they realize their time is better spent elsewhere. There's a Vanguard study that suggests outsourcing this work saves you about 100 hours a year. In the age of AI and high-pressure tech roles, that "mind share" is valuable. If you value delegation to remove the mental load, we're a great fit.

Q: Why do you use a flat-fee model?

Marcel Miu: Because the traditional model has a conflict baked into it that nobody talks about. If I charge 1% of assets and a client says "I want to pull $1,000,000 out to buy a house," I just lost $10,000 a year in revenue. That creates a subtle gravitational pull toward keeping money invested, even when spending it is the right call.

The incentive structure shapes the advice, whether the advisor realizes it or not. My fee doesn't change if your portfolio doubles, and it doesn't shrink when you use your money for what it's actually for. The advice stays clean. That matters most during the high-stakes moments: exercising options, selling a concentrated position, funding a sabbatical. Those are exactly the decisions where you don't want your advisor doing mental math about their own revenue.

Q: What is the most "squishy" part of financial planning?

Marcel Miu: The decisions where there's no objectively correct answer. Software can model a Roth conversion, project a Monte Carlo probability, show you the difference between retiring at 48 versus 53. I use that software every day. But the hardest moments in a client's financial life are almost never math problems.

They sound like this: "My company offered me a role with a higher base but fewer RSUs. Do I take it?" Or: "I'm 47 and I'm burned out. Can I actually stop working?" A projection can tell you what happens to your success probability at 47 versus 52. What it can't do is help you figure out whether 78% is a number you can sleep with, or whether your spouse has a completely different definition of "enough." That's the squishy part: the intersection of money and identity, money and marriage, money and fear. The math is the easy half. The hard half is sitting across from someone and helping them reason through a decision when the spreadsheet says one thing and their gut says another.