The Art of Adapting to Evolving Financial Needs

When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered offices and schools in 2020, Jerry Ju and his wife, Yan Gao—both senior leaders at Seattle-area tech firms—found themselves facing a familiar challenge: how to keep their 4-year-old son occupied and engaged while they navigated the bumpy transition to remote work.

Jayden had always liked doodling, so they set him up with some colored pencils and paper, hoping to buy themselves enough time to attend their video calls uninterrupted. Instead, hours would go by without a peep from him. "Jayden was good at drawing from the start, and very focused," Yan says. "It wasn't long before we realized this might be something we could help him develop further."

He quickly transitioned to painting, and each trip to the art supply store near their home in Bellevue, Washington, resulted in bigger and bigger canvases. "After a while, they couldn't even fit in our car," Jerry says.

Today, Jayden's creations suggest the work of someone much older than 9—thanks in part to the steadfast nurturing of his parents, who have taken Jayden to some of the world's great galleries and found him an established art-world mentor. "School art classes were hemming him in too much," Yan says. "His skills have really flourished under his mentor's guidance."

In a way, Jayden's story largely mirrors those of his parents: two people who started out modestly but had much bigger ambitions—and who needed their own mentor as their finances became increasingly complex.

Jerry and Yan met at college in Beijing. Both were born in China's Shandong Province and raised by middle-income parents who nervously supported the couple's decision to relocate to the U.S. in 2009 so Jerry could pursue a new role with his employer at the time. The move was supposed to be temporary, but after Jerry was recruited by his current employer, the couple committed to staying in the Seattle area.

They became Schwab clients when Jerry started receiving stock grants from his employer, which were administered through Schwab. "We invested here and there over the years, but we did it ourselves and didn't really have a plan," Jerry says. Things got more serious when Jayden was born. "That's when we started to think, It's not just us anymore," Yan says. "We needed a better approach."

In 2018, Jerry and Yan began working with Phoebe Chao, a Schwab financial consultant originally from Taiwan who also spoke Mandarin. Right away, Phoebe noticed the couple had a substantial position in Jerry's employer's stock—an overconcentration risk deepened by their investment in broad market funds with significant holdings of the same company. "Instinctively, they would sell a bit at a time but weren't always sure what else to buy," Phoebe says.

The couple also realized that managing their growing portfolio was something that required more time than they wanted to commit to it.

As Jerry and Yan's financial picture became more robust, so did their network at Schwab.

To better address their situation, Phoebe introduced the couple to Schwab Wealth Advisory™, a comprehensive wealth management service tailored to each client's needs. The team focused on paring back the couple's largest holdings and steering clear of companies with similar traits.

Later, when Schwab debuted Schwab Personalized Indexing^®—a professionally managed account that allows investors to directly own the stocks in an established index so they can exclude certain positions and strategically realize losses—Phoebe knew it would be a natural fit. "They were intrigued by the possibility of actively harvesting losses to help offset the gains from Jerry's stock awards," she explains.

"Direct indexing has indeed been extremely helpful to us," Jerry says.

In addition to Phoebe and her team, the couple has been working with Christopher Satterfield, a wealth advisor with Schwab Wealth Advisory who leads a group dedicated to solving clients' complex equity-compensation challenges.

"The clients I work with are certainly smart enough but lack the time to handle a lot of this on their own," Christopher says.

At least once per quarter, Jerry and Yan meet with Christopher and his team to discuss their plans for Jerry's vesting restricted stock units. "They have limited vesting windows for those units, so we talk ahead of time and help them assess their options," Christopher says. "Managing the potentially significant tax consequences of such transactions can be especially tricky, so we're here to make sure they're being as tax-smart as possible."

With a solid investment plan in place and a team to assist, the couple's focus now revolves around securing Jayden's financial future so he has the freedom to pick his own path, whether that's continuing with his art or something else altogether.

"In China, it was all about study hard and work hard, so even though I liked to draw myself, it could never be more than a hobby," Yan says. "It's important to us that Jayden has choices and doesn't have that same burden on his shoulders."

That's what prompted Jerry and Yan to begin "superfunding" a 529 college savings plan in Jayden's name. This strategy allows them to front-load the account with five years' worth of their annual gift tax exclusion in a single year without eating into their lifetime gift and estate tax exemption, so long as they treat the gifts as happening over five consecutive years for tax purposes. (The gift tax exclusion in 2026 is $19,000 per individual, or $38,000 per couple, for each recipient.) Superfunding maximizes the time their contribution is invested, allowing for more years of compounded tax-free growth within the 529 account.

With Jayden's higher education funded, the couple, who are in their mid-40s, have started to think about his long-term security and are working with Phoebe to assemble a team for a full-fledged estate plan, including a trust. "Phoebe has been a really good partner, helping us stay on track to realize our dreams for Jayden's financial future," Yan says.

It's too early to say what that future will hold, but for now the couple is simply enjoying seeing the world through Jayden's eyes. "Each new experience brings out a different side of his art," Yan says. "After we visited Italy and Spain last summer, he started drawing more in the impressionist style. He gets inspiration and then makes it his own."

Over the past few years, Jayden's vibrant, large-scale artwork has been featured in the Seattle Art Walks and earned him second place in a kids art contest. He's even been invited to showcase his work at several international exhibitions, including the Venice International Art Fair.

"We're grateful to be in a position to give Jayden the enriching experiences that feed his creativity," Yan says. "That's ultimately the end goal for us—and working with Schwab is helping us to achieve it."