If you work at Lockheed Martin, there is a good chance your employee benefits could be doing more for you than you realize.

That becomes especially important as your income, retirement savings, and exposure to Lockheed stock grow.

You may already be doing a lot of things right. You contribute to your 401(k). You receive the company match. You understand when your RSUs vest. Maybe you are already maxing out your normal retirement contributions.

But that does not necessarily mean you are getting the full value out of the benefits available to you.

Some of Lockheed’s most useful planning opportunities are easy to miss because they sit one layer beneath the obvious benefits.

Your 401(k) may give you access to a much broader investment universe than the normal fund menu. You may have an additional opportunity to build Roth assets after reaching the standard contribution limit. Retiree healthcare could change how early you are able to retire. And if you are required to hold Lockheed stock, you may need to build the rest of your investment strategy around that concentration.

The important question is not simply whether you are using these benefits. It is whether you are using them in the right way, at the right time, and as part of one coordinated financial plan.

Here are four areas we think higher-earning Lockheed employees should understand.

1. Your 401(k) May Be More Flexible Than You Think

Most employees treat their 401(k) like a menu. You log into Empower, choose from the investments available to you, decide how much to put into each one, and move on. You may even be choosing one, simple target date fund for your entire 401(k)

That may be perfectly fine to the average investor, but Lockheed’s retirement plan also provides access to a Self-Directed Brokerage Account, or SDBA, which can give you access to a much broader range of investments.

That broader investment access can be paired with Schwab’s Personal Choice Retirement Account, or PCRA.

The reason this matters is simple:

You may not have to build your retirement portfolio entirely from the standard investment choices you see inside Empower.

Depending on the investments permitted by the plan, you may have access to individual stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, publicly traded real estate, and other publicly traded investments.

That can also include funds designed to diversify beyond a traditional mix of stocks and bonds, such as investments tied to real estate, real assets, commodities, structured strategies, or funds that combine several different investment approaches.

Why should you care?

Because as your financial life gets more complicated, your 401(k) becomes less useful if you look at it by itself. You may already have:

• Lockheed stock
• RSUs
• A taxable brokerage account
• Real estate
• Roth assets
• Cash
• Other retirement accounts

If your 401(k) is invested without considering everything else you own, you may be taking more risk than you realize or missing opportunities to diversify more effectively.

This is especially important if a large percentage of your wealth is already tied to Lockheed Martin. You may feel diversified because your 401(k) owns dozens or hundreds of companies. But if your career, paycheck, RSUs, and a meaningful portion of your investments are all connected to Lockheed or large U.S. companies, your overall financial picture may still be more concentrated than it looks.

A PCRA can give you more tools to build around that.

You may also be able to have it professionally managed

For eligible accounts, an outside advisor may be able to manage the investments inside the PCRA. That can allow your Lockheed retirement assets to be considered alongside the rest of your portfolio instead of being treated as a completely separate account.

And that changes the question from:

“Which fund should I pick in my 401(k)?”

to:

“How should all of my investments work together?”

If you have built a sizable 401(k), that can be a much more important question.

2. Maxing Out Your 401(k) May Not Mean You Are Done

This is one of the Lockheed benefits that higher earners can easily overlook. You probably know there is an annual limit on how much you can contribute to your 401(k) through normal pre-tax or Roth contributions.

Once you hit that number, it is easy to assume you are finished.

But Lockheed’s plan may allow you to make additional non-Roth after-tax contributions after you have reached the normal contribution limit.

That sounds similar to a Roth contribution, but it is not the same thing. Both contributions are made with dollars you have already paid taxes on and the difference is what happens next.

If non-Roth after-tax money is left sitting in the account, the investment growth generally grows tax-deferred, similar to money in a traditional pre-tax 401(k).

Lockheed’s plan also allows certain in-plan Roth conversions. That may allow eligible non-Roth after-tax contributions to be converted into Roth assets.

This is the foundation of what is commonly called a mega backdoor Roth strategy.

Why should you care?

Because if you are already maxing out your normal 401(k), you may still have another opportunity to build additional Roth retirement assets. That can matter later.

If most of your retirement savings are pre-tax, you may eventually have a large pool of money that creates taxable income when you withdraw it.

Building Roth assets gives you another bucket to work with.

By retirement, you may have money spread across:

• Pre-tax retirement accounts
• Roth retirement accounts
• Taxable investments
• Lockheed stock

That can give you more flexibility when deciding where retirement income should come from and how much taxable income you want to create in a given year.

This is also where mistakes can happen

The Roth opportunity and the PCRA opportunity are not completely separate. How and when money is moved between different parts of the plan can matter.

For example, moving certain non-Roth after-tax assets into a self-directed brokerage account before completing an intended Roth conversion may create additional steps or complications.

You do not need to memorize the mechanics.

The important thing to know is this:

If you are using both the SDBA and the mega backdoor Roth feature, the order matters.

We have seen this become unnecessarily complicated simply because the two benefits were treated as separate decisions.

If you are already contributing aggressively to your Lockheed 401(k), this is an area worth reviewing before assuming you have fully maximized the plan.

3. Your Lockheed Healthcare Benefits Could Affect When You Retire

You can have enough money to retire and still feel like you cannot retire.

Healthcare is often the reason.

If you want to leave Lockheed before age 65, there can be a long gap between your retirement date and Medicare eligibility and health insurance during that period can be expensive.

Lockheed maintains retiree healthcare options for certain eligible retirees under age 65.

The exact eligibility rules and costs can depend on your individual circumstances, service history, and current plan provisions, so this is something you should verify before building it into a retirement plan.

But if you qualify, it could change your retirement math.

Think about the actual problem

Suppose you are 58.

Your investments are strong. Your mortgage is manageable. You have enough savings to support your lifestyle.

You would like to retire, but you assume you need to keep working because you do not want to pay for seven years of expensive health insurance before Medicare. If you qualify for Lockheed retiree medical coverage, you may have another option.

You may still be responsible for some or all of the premium, and the coverage may not be cheap, but it could compare favorably with alternatives such as COBRA or Marketplace coverage. That means this benefit can become much more than an insurance decision.

It can become part of the answer to:

“Can I retire yet?”

We have found that many people spend years focused on hitting a retirement account number without realizing that one benefit can materially change the amount they actually need before leaving work.

If early retirement is even remotely on your radar, this is something you should understand before simply assuming 65 is your earliest realistic retirement age.

4. Your Lockheed Stock May Be Creating More Risk Than You Realize

For certain Lockheed executives and senior employees, owning LMT stock may not be entirely optional. Lockheed maintains stock ownership requirements for a number of senior positions. Published executive requirements vary by role and can be expressed as a multiple of annual salary.

Examples include:

Published Stock Ownership Requirements Required LMT stock ownership shown as a multiple of annual base salary
CEO and Chairman	6x
CFO and COO	4x
Business Segment Presidents	3x
Senior Vice Presidents and certain Vice Presidents	2x
Measurement: Multiple of base salary

Other internal requirements may apply to additional positions, so you should confirm the requirement specific to your role.

At first glance, this may not seem like a major planning issue, but think about how much of your financial life may already depend on Lockheed. Your salary comes from Lockheed, your bonus may depend on Lockheed and your RSUs are tied to Lockheed. You may even own LMT through your retirement plan or a personal account.

And your position may require you to hold even more LMT stock. That can create a level of concentration that is easy to underestimate.

The issue is not whether LMT is a good investment

You may have tremendous confidence in the company. That is not the point. The issue is that one company can begin to control too many parts of your financial life at the same time.

If Lockheed performs well, that concentration may work heavily in your favor, but if the stock struggles, your investment portfolio, compensation, and career may all be affected at once.

That is why the investments outside your Lockheed stock become increasingly important. If you are required to maintain a large LMT position, the rest of your portfolio may need to do more of the diversification work.

This is another reason the flexibility available through a PCRA can matter.

You may not be able to hedge the risk while you are still employed

Lockheed also restricts employees, officers, and directors from using certain strategies designed to hedge or monetize Lockheed stock. That means some of the tools investors might normally use to manage a concentrated stock position may not be available to you while you are employed.

By the time you retire or leave Lockheed, you could be sitting on a large LMT position with significant unrealized gains.

Then the problem changes. You may want to diversify, but selling a large position all at once can create a significant tax bill. At that point, you are no longer dealing with one investment decision, you are dealing with diversification, taxes, retirement income, trading restrictions, and potentially estate planning at the same time.

That is why we believe planning around a concentrated LMT position should begin before the day you decide you want to sell it.

The Biggest Mistake Is Looking at These Benefits One at a Time

This is the part we think matters most.

You do not have a PCRA problem.

You do not have a Roth problem.

You do not have a Lockheed stock problem.

You do not have a retiree healthcare problem.

You have one financial plan, and each benefit can affect the others. Your LMT concentration may influence how the rest of your retirement portfolio should be invested. Your Roth strategy may affect which types of accounts you have available later. How you use the PCRA can affect how certain Roth transactions need to be handled. Your healthcare benefits may change how much money you actually need before retiring.

The mistake is assuming that because you are using each benefit individually, you are necessarily using them efficiently together. You may be, but you may not be. And as your net worth grows, the cost of getting that coordination wrong can grow with it.

Are You Actually Getting Everything You Can From Your Lockheed Benefits?

That is the question we think is worth asking. You may already have a strong 401(k), you may already be contributing aggressively, you may already own substantial Lockheed stock and you may already be thinking about retirement. But none of those things tells you whether your benefits are being used as effectively as they could be.

The answer depends on your income, age, role at Lockheed, service history, tax situation, portfolio, stock concentration, and retirement goals. That is where planning becomes valuable.

At Maia Wealth, we help Lockheed employees look at these benefits as one connected system rather than a collection of separate accounts and programs.

We can help you identify which opportunities may apply to you, where there may be gaps in your current strategy, and how your Lockheed benefits fit into the rest of your financial life.

Want to find out whether your Lockheed benefits could be doing more for you? Schedule a Lockheed Benefits Review with Maia Wealth. Schedule a Lockheed Benefits Review