Randal DeFillippis - Financial Advisor at LPL Financial

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Randal DeFillippis - Financial Advisor at LPL Financial Hey 👋, I'm Randal. I graduated with a bachelors degree in Finance from Rowan University in 2013 and have been working as a Financial Advisor ever since.

I build long term relationships with my clients that allows me to help Pharma-Employees throughout their careers including when they change jobs, start their own consulting business, or retire. Pharmaceutical Companies provide a high level of quality products to their customers. I am here to help provide a high level of quality financial advice to Pharmaceutical Employees. I live in Morrisville PA with my wife Audrey and dog Scotty. In my spare time I volunteer at Angels on a Leash providing dog therapy to those in need, and I'm also working on visiting all 63 US National Parks (up to 26 so far). My all time favorite TV shows are Friends and the Office. Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, Member FINRA/SIPC (finra.org sipc.org). Pharma Financial Advisor and LPL Financial are separate entities. Third party posts found on this profile do not reflect the views of LPL Financial and have not been reviewed by LPL Financial as to accuracy or completeness. The financial professionals associated with LPL Financial may discuss and/or transact business only with residents of the states in which they are properly registered or licensed. No offers may be made or accepted from any resident of any other state.​

10/26/2026

Halloween is coming, so here’s a financial horror story for my pharma friends...

You make $350,000+ a year.

Your RSUs have been vesting all year.

Your company stock has had a great run.

Your bonus was bigger than expected.

Your investment accounts are up.

Everything feels great.

Then you sit down to do your taxes.

👻 Surprise tax bill.

Then you look at your portfolio.

👻 Way more company stock than you realized.

Then you realize most of the cash from your bonus has somehow disappeared.

👻 No idea where it went.

And those RSUs you’ve been holding?

👻 Your paycheck, bonus, future equity AND a big chunk of your portfolio now depend on the same company.

Okay, maybe it’s not exactly a horror movie.

But I’ve seen enough versions of this story to know the ending isn’t much fun.

The good news?

Unlike most horror movies, you don’t have to wait until something goes wrong to start making better decisions.

And please...

Don’t go into the basement alone.

Happy Halloween! 🎃

Pharma friends looking for work! Here’s a list of job listings I’ve come across this week from my 5,000+ industry connec...
10/23/2026

Pharma friends looking for work! Here’s a list of job listings I’ve come across this week from my 5,000+ industry connections on LinkedIn.

If any of these pique your interest, shoot me a message, and I’ll connect you with the right person.

Additional jobs I couldn’t fit in the picture:

• Regeneron – Associate Scientist (Tarrytown NY)
• Kyowa Kirin – Oncology Account Manager (Dallas TX)
• Biogen – Medical Director, US Medical Affairs (Cambridge MA)

10/22/2026

What would happen to your finances if you got laid off tomorrow?

Not six months from now.

Tomorrow.

It’s an uncomfortable question, but given the continued restructuring we’ve seen across biopharma, it’s worth answering while you still have a paycheck coming in.

I’d start with 5 questions:

**1. How long could you go without a paycheck?**

Take your available cash and divide it by your essential monthly expenses.

That number matters a lot more during a layoff than your total net worth.

**2. What happens to your benefits?**

Health insurance.
Life insurance.
Disability coverage.

How much of your protection disappears when your employment ends?

And what would it cost to replace?

**3. What happens to your stock compensation?**

This one can get overlooked.

If you have unvested RSUs or stock options, understand exactly what happens when employment ends.

What do you keep?

What do you lose?

Are there deadlines you need to know about?

**4. Which expenses could you cut immediately?**

Don’t wait until you lose your job to figure this out.

Know the difference between:

“Normal life”

and

“We need to preserve cash for the next 6 months.”

**5. What financial decisions would you NOT want to make under pressure?**

Selling investments.

Taking money from retirement accounts.

Accepting the first job offer because you need income.

The more runway you have, the more choices you keep.

That’s really what this exercise is about.

You don’t build an emergency plan because you expect to get laid off.

You build one so a layoff doesn’t get to dictate every decision that comes next.

If your paycheck stopped tomorrow, how long would you feel financially comfortable?

10/20/2026

Your RSUs had a great year.

That might actually create a problem.

Sounds backwards, right?

Your company stock goes up 30%, 40%, maybe more.

Your account balance looks great.

You feel even better about holding the stock.

But something else happened at the same time:

Your concentration risk increased.

Imagine you started the year with:

$500,000 invested
$100,000 in company stock

That’s 20% of your portfolio.

Now imagine the rest of your investments stay relatively flat, while your company stock climbs 50%.

You now have $150,000 tied to your employer.

And that’s BEFORE another year of RSUs vesting.

You never made a decision to become more concentrated.

It just happened.

That’s what makes this risk easy to miss.

When a stock falls, people immediately start thinking about risk.

When it rises?

Risk is usually the last thing on their mind.

They’re thinking:

“Why would I sell something that’s doing so well?”

But your paycheck already comes from this company.

Your bonus may depend on it.

Future RSUs may depend on it.

And now an even larger percentage of your investments depend on it too.

A great year for your company stock can absolutely be good news.

Just don’t let good performance distract you from how much of your financial life is now riding on the same company.

Sometimes the best time to review your risk is when everything is going right.

10/19/2026

Before you make another Backdoor Roth contribution, check this first.

Do you have money sitting in a Traditional, SEP, or SIMPLE IRA?

Because if you do, the Backdoor Roth may not work the way you think it does.

The issue is something called the pro-rata rule.

Here’s a simple example:

Let’s say you already have $93,000 of pre-tax money in an IRA.

Then you make a $7,000 nondeductible contribution with the intention of converting that $7,000 to a Roth IRA.

You might think:

“I already paid taxes on the $7,000, so the conversion should be tax-free.”

Unfortunately, the IRS doesn’t let you simply choose which dollars you convert.

It looks at your applicable IRA balances together.

In this example, only 7% of the money is after-tax.

So roughly 7% of the conversion would be tax-free.

The rest could be taxable.

That can turn a strategy you thought was simple into an unexpected tax bill.

And this is especially relevant for high-income pharma professionals.

You don't need a surprise tax bill when you aren't expecting it.

So before you contribute...

Check what you already own.

Because sometimes an IRA you haven’t thought about in years can completely change the tax calculation.

Pharma friends looking for work! Here’s a list of job listings I’ve come across this week from my 5,000+ industry connec...
10/16/2026

Pharma friends looking for work! Here’s a list of job listings I’ve come across this week from my 5,000+ industry connections on LinkedIn.

If any of these pique your interest, shoot me a message, and I’ll connect you with the right person.

Additional jobs I couldn’t fit in the picture:

• Iovance Biotherapeutics – Associate Director Medical Affairs (Tampa FL)
• ProPharma – Complaint Investigations (Raleigh NC)
• Johnson & Johnson – Senior Manager, Global Diagnostics (Spring House PA)
• Pfizer – Integrated Evidence Generation Therapeutic Area Lead (Collegeville PA)

10/14/2026

Your 2026 tax return is mostly decided before you ever file it.

By the time you sit down with your CPA next spring, most of the important decisions have already been made.

Your RSUs vested.

Your bonus was paid.

You realized gains or losses.

You made charitable gifts.

Taxes were withheld from your paychecks.

At that point, your tax return is largely documenting what already happened.

That’s why October, November, and December matter so much.

For pharma professionals, this is the time to ask:

**RSUs:**
How much additional income will vest before year-end? Was enough withheld for taxes?

**Bonus:**
Did your bonus push your household income higher than expected? Was the supplemental withholding enough?

**Investments:**
Have you realized large capital gains this year? Are there losses elsewhere that could potentially offset them?

**Charitable giving:**
Were you already planning to give? Would donating appreciated investments make more sense than writing a check?

**Withholding:**
Based on everything that has happened this year, are you on track or heading toward an April surprise?

None of these questions are particularly useful in March.

By then, December 31st has passed.

That’s the difference between tax preparation and tax planning.

Tax preparation tells you what happened.

Tax planning gives you a chance to do something about it.

There’s still time left in 2026.

Use it.

10/12/2026

October is the perfect time for a financial fire drill.

For pharma professionals, I’d check these 5 things before year-end:

1. Are your taxes actually on track?

Pull your most recent paystub.

Look at your YTD income and federal withholding.

Then add in bonuses, RSUs, investment income, and anything else you expect before December 31st.

The question isn’t:

“Have I paid a lot in taxes?”

It’s:

“Have I paid enough?”

Those are very different questions.

2. How much company stock do you own now?

Not what you owned in January.

After months of vesting and stock movement, your concentration may look completely different.

October is a good time to recalculate it.

3. What RSUs are still vesting this year?

Know the dates.

Know the approximate value.

And decide what you’re doing with the shares before they arrive.

4. Are you on pace with your retirement contributions?

Don’t wait until the last paycheck of December to discover you’re behind where you wanted to be.

Check now while you still have multiple pay periods to adjust.

5. What year-end decisions are coming?

Open enrollment.
Charitable giving.
Capital gains and losses.
HSA contributions.
Other year-end planning opportunities.

Put them on the calendar now.

October is an underrated month for financial planning.

You have 9 months of real data to work with...

And roughly 3 months left to actually do something about it.

Much better than discovering the problem when your tax return is already being prepared.

10/08/2026

The difference between $150K and $500K isn’t just more money.

It’s a completely different level of complexity.

At $150K, things are usually straightforward:

• Salary is the main driver
• Benefits are simple
• Taxes are relatively predictable
• Fewer decisions to make

At $500K+, it starts to look very different:

• Income comes from multiple sources
(salary, bonus, RSUs, ESPP)
• Taxes get layered
• Different types of income, different treatment, different timing
• Cash flow becomes uneven
(Big inflows at certain times of year)

Decisions multiply
When to sell stock, how much to defer, what to reinvest, what to hold
Small inefficiencies get expensive… fast

This is where a lot of people get stuck.

Because the habits that got you to $150K don’t scale cleanly to $500K.

Budgeting harder isn’t the answer.
Working more isn’t the answer.

Structure is.

A system for:

• How income flows through your accounts
• How taxes are planned ahead of time
• How equity compensation is handled consistently

Without that, it starts to feel like you’re always playing catch up.

Even though you’re earning more than ever.

That’s the disconnect most people don’t expect.

More income… but less clarity.

Until there’s a plan behind it.

10/06/2026

“My RSUs are basically free money.”

I hear this all the time.

And I get it… it feels that way.

But here’s what I don’t know:
If you’ve ever actually looked at what happens after those shares vest.

Here’s what I do know:
RSUs are taxed as income the moment they vest (not when you sell them)

The withholding is often too low
Meaning… surprise tax bill later

If you hold the shares, you’re doubling down on your employer
Your paycheck + your investments = same company

Stock drops don’t care that it was “free”
A 30% decline is still a 30% loss

Most people don’t have a clear plan for what to do at vest

So what actually happens?

You get excited when shares vest…

You see a nice bump in your account…

Then taxes hit
Then concentration risk builds
Then decisions get delayed

And what started as “free money” quietly turns into a missed opportunity.

The goal isn’t to avoid RSUs.

It’s to use them intentionally.

Turn them into:

Diversified investments
Tax-aware decisions
Progress toward your actual goals

Not just something that sits there because you’re not sure what to do next.

Address

222 Harper Avenue
Morrisville, PA
19067

Telephone

+12152954641

Website

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