I'm Jake Song. I came to this work the long way.
Nobody explained money to my family. I learned it the hard way, and explaining it became the job. Severance, equity, the old 401(k), health coverage, cash runway: the money side of a technology career change is what I do every week.
What I do, and who it's for
The first health insurance I ever had came with a uniform.
Where I'm from.
I was born in South Korea and spent my early childhood there. At twelve, my mother and I left the only home I knew and started over in Queens, New York.
New country, new language.
I came to the US at twelve with my mother. We lived in Queens. She didn't speak English, and she made it through on stubborn persistence I didn't appreciate until much later.
I couldn't play sports in high school because we didn't have health insurance. The school required it. We couldn't afford it. That's what money looked like growing up. Wanting to understand money, how to save it, how to grow it, started right there.
I didn't know what I didn't know.
I joined the United States Air Force at eighteen and served for five years. It gave me a path forward and introduced me to the practical side of credit, insurance, and long-term planning.
It's also where money got explained to me for the first time. I didn't know a loan could buy a car. First health insurance. First retirement plan.
Then came my first car, brand new, financed at over ten percent interest because I had no credit score. I was proud of it anyway. That was the moment I realized I had to learn how money works, because school never taught me any of it.
Fixing credit scores came first.
On my way out of the service I co-founded FlyCredit, a company teaching military members how to build credit and use card points. I knew exactly where they were. In 2019, Forbes quoted me on it.
"Due to an ever-increasing number of new credit cards offers, it has become ever harder for consumers to choose the best fit for them," says Song.
Forbes, "The Best Travel Credit Cards For 2020," December 9, 2019
Consumer credit, life insurance, asset management. In the credit years, a client conversation showed me what I was good at: explaining. Advising came almost by accident, and I've done it at McCune Whiteley Wealth Management ever since.
Today, I help people make sense of financial change.
I'm a licensed financial advisor now, working with tech professionals through the money side of a career change. Today the record is public: Series 7, 65, and 66 registrations, and a Texas life and health insurance license. Anyone can look it up.
Before becoming an advisor, I worked across credit, life insurance, and asset management. Each job showed me one part of the system.
Financial planning is where the pieces meet. The work is to help a person see how one decision can affect the others.
Most people who sit down with me are where I was at twenty: working hard, never taught the money part. Almost everything I know about money, someone had to explain to me once. I try to be that person now, one room and one household at a time.
In tech, the paycheck is the simple part.
Most of what a tech career pays shows up as equity on a schedule somebody else set. RSUs vesting quarterly, refreshers stacked on older grants, an option window that closes on a date buried in the paperwork, and a net worth that quietly ends up concentrated in one company's stock. Nobody at work explains it, because it isn't anyone's job to.
I've spent years explaining it, including from a stage. One of the seminars I taught was on planning around equity compensation, for a room of tech professionals.
I work with technology professionals facing connected decisions about equity, benefits, retirement accounts, taxes, and cash flow.
This part of my practice started with a layoff email that landed on someone close to me. The severance agreement, the equity summary, the COBRA notice: dense, and parts of it on a clock. I learned it line by line, and then the packages kept coming.
A layoff, job change, retirement, or planned break can create many of the same planning questions. The first step is identifying the documents, dates, and choices that need to be verified.
The job search gets all the energy. The money decisions run on their own deadlines either way. Putting them in order is the job.
The firm behind the work.
McCune Whiteley Wealth Management.
The rules I work by.
Planning first.
The first conversations are about what you have, what's moving, and what has a date on it. That comes before any product conversation.
Tax planning, not tax preparation.
Withholding checks, the timing of a rollover or a sale, which account to draw from first. I don't prepare returns and I'm not a CPA. Filing questions go to your CPA, and I coordinate with them directly.
Straight answers.
Sometimes the honest answer is "leave the 401(k) where it is, you don't need me for that." I say it when it's true. If you don't need an advisor at all, I'll tell you that too.
How I get paid.
The intro call is free and so is most of what's on this site. The business works because some people, after the free part, ask me to put things in place. Depending on what that is, I may be paid through advisory or planning fees, or commissions on insurance and brokerage products. Either way, you'll know how, in plain numbers, before any commitment.
McCune Whiteley Wealth Management.
Most conversations are with Jake directly. McCune Whiteley Wealth Management provides firm support behind the work.
Visit the firmRegistrations and licenses.
Series 7, 65, and 66 registrations. Texas life and health insurance license.
Start with the call.
Thirty minutes on Microsoft Teams to identify the first questions and documents to verify.
Book a free intro call No pitch, no obligation.Come empty handed · No account minimum for the free session · (512) 960-4900