Hi, I’m Clayton. I work with business owners and executives who have built meaningful wealth and are facing increasingly complex decisions around taxes, investments, estate planning, executive compensation, and business transitions.
My approach starts with the after-tax result. I look across a client’s full balance sheet and coordinate decisions around where assets are held, when gains are realized, how compensation is structured, and how planning connects with a client’s CPA and attorney. The goal is to bring clarity to complicated situations and create a coordinated financial plan that reflects what the client is trying to accomplish.
Salt Lake City Area, UT
“I plan around the after-tax result from the beginning, coordinating investment, tax, and estate decisions so clients can see how each part of their financial life works together.”
Our Team
Pillar Capital is an independent, fee-only wealth management practice for high-net-worth individuals, business owners, and families navigating major financial transitions — a business sale, a property exit, or a concentrated, highly appreciated position. We specialize in improving after-tax outcomes, drawing on a broad range of advanced tax, estate, and investment strategies grounded in empirical research. Our philosophy is simple: decisions should be driven by data, not emotion, and every strategy should be clear enough to explain in plain language.
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How can I help?
Tax Optimization
Estate & Trust Planning
Academic Based Investing
We build portfolios on decades of peer-reviewed research instead of predictions about where markets are headed. That means broad global diversification, deliberate tilts toward the company characteristics research shows are rewarded over time, and low costs at every layer.
Executive Compensation Planning
Get to know Clayton
Clayton Johnson is a Wealth Advisor at Savvy with more than 10 years of experience helping business owners, executives, and affluent families navigate complex financial decisions. His work brings together tax planning, investment strategy, estate and wealth transfer planning, executive compensation, and broader financial planning.
Clayton has particular depth working with business owners through periods of growth, liquidity, and succession. He helps clients evaluate decisions across their entire balance sheet rather than treating taxes, investments, and estate considerations as separate conversations. His planning process places significant emphasis on the after-tax result and on coordinating decisions with a client’s other professionals.
Prior to joining Savvy, Clayton worked at Aerodigm Wealth and Squire Wealth Advisors, where he integrated tax and wealth planning for business owners and executives. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Brigham Young University and is both a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional and a Certified Private Wealth Advisor®. He is a member of the Investments & Wealth Institute and serves on the board of the Utah Valley Estate Planning Council.
Outside of work, Clayton enjoys playing sports, with volleyball at the top of the list. He also enjoys traveling with his wife and three daughters and spending time serving in his community and church.
Early in my career, I wanted work that combined two things I cared about: solving technically challenging problems and building personal relationships. Financial planning brought those interests together.
Once I made the transition, I knew I had found the right career. I enjoy working through complicated financial questions while also getting to know clients well enough to understand what matters to them and what they are trying to accomplish.
My work is centered on tax planning, tax-aware long and short strategies, estate and wealth transfer planning, executive compensation, and financial planning for business owners moving through growth, liquidity, and succession.
I spend a great deal of time looking at how these areas interact so that a decision in one part of a client’s financial life is considered alongside the rest of the plan.
I primarily work with business owners and executives with approximately $5 million to $25 million or more in net worth. Many are approaching a liquidity event, working through a significant tax issue, or realizing that the tax, investment, and estate sides of their financial lives have not been coordinated in one place.
These clients are often very good at running businesses or building successful careers. My role is to help organize the financial complexity that comes with that success and create a more coordinated planning process.
I frequently help clients evaluate ordinary income mitigation, capital gains deferral and offset strategies, asset location, charitable structuring, and planning ahead of a business transaction.
The common thread is an emphasis on after-tax wealth. Rather than looking only at an investment return or one planning decision in isolation, I consider how the pieces work together and what the client may ultimately retain after taxes.
Most of my clients built their wealth by being very good at something other than investing. My role is to help them manage that wealth thoughtfully while paying close attention to what they retain after taxes.
I plan around that after-tax result from the beginning. Decisions about where assets are held, when gains are realized, and how planning coordinates with a client’s CPA and attorney are considered with the end result in view. Over a long period, careful coordination can have a meaningful effect on a client’s financial picture.
My favorite part is simplifying clients’ lives and creating clarity when their financial situation has become complicated. I enjoy solving difficult problems, helping clients understand their options, and seeing some of the concern lift once an issue they have been thinking about has a clear path forward.
The relationships are another big reason I do this work. I value getting to know clients well enough that I can be one of the people they call when something significant happens, whether it is a business transition, a family decision, or another change in their lives.
Savvy gives me the operational and technology support to spend more of my time working directly with clients and their planning needs.
The technology gives clients a live view of their broader net worth, including assets outside of Savvy, while the service team helps keep onboarding and reporting organized. That structure gives me more time to focus on tax, investment, estate, and planning decisions that require thoughtful analysis and coordination.
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Neither Savvy Wealth, nor Savvy Advisors compensates directly for testimonials or endorsements provided herein, by advisers. However advisors may have an indirect financial incentive to provide testimonials. Savvy Advisors is an investment advisor registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”).
