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Business Owner Planning

For owners whose net worth lives in the business — retirement plans, tax strategy, and the eventual exit.

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The owner's dilemma

The company got every spare dollar. The plan got what was left.

Business owners do their financial planning last, for an understandable reason: every spare dollar and hour goes into the company. The result is a household whose net worth is concentrated in a single, illiquid, hard-to-value asset — with the owner's retirement, tax picture, and family security all riding on what eventually happens to it.

That concentration isn't a mistake. It's how businesses get built. It just can't be the whole plan forever.

A household whose net worth is one illiquid, hard-to-value asset — with the owner's retirement riding on what eventually happens to it.
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The work itself

Planning around the business — not pretending it's a stock

We plan the household with the company in the middle of it: choosing and funding the right retirement plan for your payroll and goals, managing the tax interaction between the company's books and your own, and building assets outside the business deliberately rather than someday.

On the table

  • Plan design — SEP, SIMPLE, 401(k), cash balance — matched to payroll and goals
  • Owner compensation and distributions, coordinated with your CPA
  • Deliberate diversification: wealth built outside the business, over time
  • Exit readiness — what the sale must net, after tax, for the plan to work
  • Succession and contingency: buy-sell coordination, key-person coverage

Working backward

Start from the retirement. Price the exit.

The most useful number an owner can know is what the eventual sale has to produce for everything else to work. Established early, that number reshapes decisions while there's still time for it to matter — how profits are used, what the company invests in, when the exit conversation starts.

The exit runway

Most of the value levers work slowly — the earlier the start, the more of them are still available.

  1. 10 yrs outEntity structure, plan design, and diversification all still work
  2. 5 yrs outCompensation and the tax shape of a sale get set up
  3. 2 yrs outBooks cleaned, buy-sell funded, the number known
  4. The saleTerms you shaped — not whatever the moment offers

Owners who start when a buyer appears get whatever terms the moment offers. The runway is where the price gets made.

Illustrative structure only. Figures shown are not typical or predictive.
Hypothetical

An owner in her late fifties, twenty-two years into the company, planning to "sell in a few years" — with no number for what the sale had to net, no retirement assets outside the business, and a buy-sell agreement unfunded since a partner left. Working backward from the retirement she actually wanted produced the number; the number reshaped how the next three years of profits were used.

Hypothetical scenario for illustration. Not an actual client. Individual circumstances and results differ.

What does your exit actually need to net?

Find your number or send us a note below

Owners always ask

When should exit planning start?

Years before you want to leave — five is comfortable, ten is better. Most of the value levers, from entity structure to tax treatment of a sale, work slowly. Owners who start when a buyer appears get whatever terms the moment offers.

My CPA handles the business. What do you add?

Your CPA optimizes the company's picture, usually year by year. We plan the household across decades — and coordinate with your CPA so the two stop pulling in different directions, which in our experience is where owners lose the most.

The rest of the picture

Retirement Planning

The exit only works if it funds this.

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Tax Planning

Entity, compensation, and sale — all tax decisions.

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Estate Planning

What happens to the business if something happens to you.

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Kingsbury Financial Advisors

True wealth is more than money.

Kingsbury Financial Advisors is a full-service comprehensive financial planning and wealth management firm located in Tampa, Florida. Alongside our strategic partnership with the leading comprehensive financial planning firm Caitlin John Private Wealth management, we have all of the necessary resources to support our clients in conquering their financial goals.

What to expect

  1. 01 Introduction A short conversation about what prompted you to reach out. No preparation needed and nothing to sign.
  2. 02 Discovery We gather the full picture — accounts, obligations, timelines, and the goals behind them.
  3. 03 Your plan We walk you through a written plan together, including the trade-offs behind every recommendation.
  4. 04 Ongoing partnership Regular reviews, proactive tax and planning work, and a direct line when something changes.

Talk through your situation

What would you like to talk about? (optional)

A 20-minute conversation, no cost and no obligation. Please don’t include account numbers.

True wealth is more than money.

Start with a conversation. No cost, no pressure, no obligation to continue.

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