A Financial Planner for Families in Nanuet
A family in Nanuet looking for a financial planner will find Hudson Companies, an SEC-registered investment adviser that works with families across Rockland County, Nanuet included. Hudson manages the family’s investment portfolio. It also keeps the other financial decisions in the household (taxes, estate documents, insurance, trusts) working toward the same goals. Hudson’s office is in Pearl River.
Who Hudson Is
Most families with substantial wealth already work with several professionals. An accountant prepares the returns. An attorney drafted the wills and perhaps a trust. One or more insurance professionals placed the coverage. Sometimes a trustee oversees assets held for the next generation. Each of them is capable, but each usually sees only the piece of the family’s finances that crosses their desk, and often only once a year.
Hudson manages the portfolio and coordinates those professionals so that all of them are working from the same facts. When the accountant is planning for the year, the accountant knows what the portfolio is likely to realize. When the attorney revisits an estate plan, the attorney has a current account of what the family owns and how each asset is titled. When coverage comes up for review, the insurance professional knows what has changed in the family’s finances. When a trustee has to make a decision, the trustee knows how it fits the rest of the family’s plan.
Hudson is careful about where its role ends. The accountant does the filing, the attorney writes the documents, and the insurance professionals place the coverage. Hudson does none of those three things. It makes sure each of those professionals has accurate and current information, puts the open questions in front of the right person, and checks that the answers they reach fit together and fit the portfolio.
A Consideration: Two Siblings and a Vacation House
The following is a consideration, not a description of a client. It shows the kind of question Hudson works through with families.
Two siblings in a Nanuet family own a vacation house together. When they bought it, owning jointly made sense. Their lives have since moved in different directions. One still uses the house most summers and would like to keep it. The other uses it rarely, pays half of the upkeep, taxes and insurance anyway, and would prefer to have that money working somewhere else. Neither wants the house to strain the relationship. There are three realistic paths: keep the house together under clearer terms, have one sibling buy out the other, or sell it and divide the proceeds.
Each path raises its own questions, and Hudson’s job is to put them in order.
Keeping the house together starts with the carrying costs. What does the house cost each year, and what do major repairs look like over the next decade? How does each sibling’s share of those costs compare with what that money could do in the rest of their finances? If they keep it, the arrangement should be written down. That means deciding who uses the house and when, how expenses are split, what happens if one sibling later wants out, and what happens to each share when one of them dies. The attorney drafts that agreement. Hudson makes sure the attorney is drafting against an accurate view of both siblings’ finances and what each can actually commit.
A buyout starts with a fair value, which usually means an independent appraisal so that neither sibling is setting the price. The next question is how the buying sibling pays for it. Selling investments may trigger taxes, and the accountant estimates that cost before anything is sold. Borrowing has its own cost and risk. Using cash may leave the buying sibling short of reserves. Hudson models each funding option against that sibling’s portfolio and long-term plan and shows what owning the house outright would mean ten or twenty years from now. For the sibling being bought out, the question is what to do with the proceeds: how they should be invested and how they change that sibling’s own plan. The insurance professional reviews whether coverage on the house should change once one person owns it.
Selling starts with timing and the net result. That means the expected tax cost, the costs of the sale, and how each sibling’s share of the proceeds fits into their portfolio. Sometimes selling is the cleanest answer. Sometimes it is the one both siblings regret. The numbers can help settle that question, but they rarely settle it alone.
Throughout, Hudson keeps the financial questions separate from the family history the house carries. The house holds memories, and that is real. The decision is still easier, and fairer to both siblings, when the costs, values and tradeoffs are written out for everyone to see. Hudson sets out each path side by side in plain terms, brings in the accountant, the attorney and the insurance professional where each is needed, and leaves the choice with the family.
The Experience Behind the Firm
Chris Conover founded Hudson Companies in 2008 and still leads the firm. His career began on Wall Street in 1995. He has lived in Rockland County all his life, so the families Hudson serves are in the county he has always called home. At Fordham he earned a BA in Economics and then an MBA in Finance. He later began doctoral coursework at Fordham in behavioral economics, the study of how people actually make financial decisions, which is not always how a spreadsheet assumes they will. That background shapes how Hudson works. A good plan has to hold up when markets turn and when emotions run high, as they often do when family and property are involved.
A Fiduciary, Paid Only by the Family
Hudson acts as a fiduciary. It is obligated to put the family’s interests ahead of its own in the advice it gives and the decisions it makes. Hudson is fee-only: the family pays Hudson, and that payment is the firm’s only compensation. Hudson earns nothing from any recommendation it makes.
How the Work Proceeds
The work begins with a conversation about what the family owns, what it owes and what it wants. That includes plans for the next few years and for the next generation. Hudson then gathers the documents that show where things actually stand: account statements, recent tax returns, estate documents, insurance policies and any trust agreements. From those documents Hudson puts together one clear account of the family’s finances, and every professional the family works with can use the same account.
From there, Hudson builds and manages a portfolio designed around the family’s goals, cash needs, tax situation and tolerance for risk. The plan is reviewed regularly and updated when something in the family’s life changes, such as a sale, a purchase, a new generation or a shift in priorities. When a decision calls for the accountant, the attorney, the insurance professionals or a trustee, Hudson coordinates with them so that the work happens in the right order and everyone has the same information.
Families should expect clear explanations and direct answers. When a choice involves real tradeoffs, Hudson spells them out.
Begin a Conversation
Families in Nanuet who want to talk through their finances, whether about a specific decision like a shared house or about the whole plan, can Schedule a conversation with Hudson or call (845) 920-1600.
Hudson Companies
1 Blue Hill Plaza, Pearl River
