Wealth Management for Families in New City
Hudson Companies provides wealth management to families in New City and across Rockland County. Hudson is an SEC-registered investment adviser. It manages the investment portfolio for families with substantial wealth. It also keeps the rest of the family’s financial life moving in one direction: taxes, estate documents, insurance, and any trusts.
What Hudson Does for a Family
Most families with significant assets already have several advisers. There is an accountant who files the returns, an attorney who drafted the wills and perhaps a trust, one or more insurance professionals, and sometimes a trustee. Each of them may be good at the work. The trouble is that they rarely talk to each other. One works from last year’s numbers, another from a conversation two years old, and none of them sees the whole picture.
Hudson manages the portfolio and coordinates those advisers. That means keeping one current account of the family’s assets, income, obligations, and intentions, and making sure the accountant, the lawyer, the insurance professionals, and any trustee are all working from the same facts. When a decision in the portfolio affects the tax return, the accountant hears about it before the year ends, not after. When the estate plan assumes something about how assets are held, Hudson checks that the accounts are actually held that way. When a trustee has to make a distribution, the investments behind that trust have been set up for it.
Each professional keeps his or her own work. The accountant prepares and files the returns. The attorney drafts and interprets the legal documents. The insurance professional places the coverage. Hudson’s part is the portfolio and the coordination: bringing the right question to the right person at the right time, and making sure the answers fit together.
For the family, this means fewer surprises and fewer repeated explanations. It also means one firm is responsible for seeing whether all the pieces still add up to what the family set out to do.
A Consideration: Deciding How Much of One Company’s Stock to Keep
The following is a consideration, not a named client. It describes a situation Hudson sees often among families in Rockland County.
A couple in New City are in their sixties. One of them spent most of a career at a single company. Over those years, stock built up through grants, a purchase plan, and a retirement account. That stock is now a large share of what the couple owns. Some of it was bought or granted decades ago at a fraction of its current price. Some came more recently. The question in front of them is simple to state and hard to answer: how much of it should they keep?
The stock carries more than money. It carries years of work, loyalty to colleagues, and real knowledge of the business. That knowledge is genuine. It can also make the risk feel smaller than it is. While the career lasted, the paycheck and the portfolio depended on the same company. With retirement close or already here, the couple’s future income may depend on it too, and there will be no salary to help them recover from a bad stretch.
Hudson would start by laying out what the family needs the money to do: how much they will draw each year, what they want to give to children or grandchildren, what they want to leave, and what has to stay available for health and long life. Then Hudson would show the portfolio at several levels of the stock, with all of it kept, a meaningful portion kept, and most of it sold over time, so the couple can see how each choice changes the range of outcomes they could live with.
The tax side matters a great deal here, and the accountant runs it. Shares bought at different times and prices have different tax costs when sold. Hudson would organize the lots and bring the accountant a clear set of choices, so the accountant can show what each plan costs in a given year and how spreading sales over several years compares. If the couple are thinking about charitable gifts, giving shares rather than cash may be worth asking about, and the accountant and attorney decide whether it fits. If the estate plan names specific holdings or assumes the shares will pass a certain way, the attorney reviews whether a change in the position affects it.
The decision also has a behavioral side. Families often anchor to a past high price and wait to sell until the stock gets back there. Or they sell in a hurry after a bad quarter. Hudson would help the couple agree in advance on a written plan: how much to sell, on what schedule, and what would lead them to revisit it. Then the decision does not get remade every time the share price shows up in the news. The couple may decide to keep a good part of the stock. That is a legitimate answer, as long as they choose it with the trade-offs in view.
Who Leads the Work
Chris Conover founded Hudson Companies in 2008, and he still leads the firm. His career began on Wall Street in 1995. He has spent his whole life in Rockland County, so the families Hudson serves here are his neighbors, not a market he moved into.
He studied at Fordham, where he earned a BA in Economics and an MBA in Finance. He later went back to Fordham and began doctoral coursework in behavioral economics, the study of how people actually make decisions about money, including the habits that lead sensible people to hold too long, sell too early, or put off a choice that needs to be made. That study shapes how Hudson works with families. A good portfolio matters, and so does a decision the family can still stick to when markets are hard.
A Fiduciary, Paid Only by the Family
Hudson acts as a fiduciary. In every recommendation, the family’s interests come before the firm’s. If one choice would be better for the family and another better for Hudson, the family’s choice is the one Hudson recommends.
Hudson is fee-only. The family pays Hudson, and that payment is the firm’s only compensation. Hudson receives nothing from anyone else for any recommendation.
How the Relationship Works Over Time
The work does not end once the portfolio is set up. Families change. A career ends, a parent needs care, a grandchild arrives, a business is sold, a trust’s terms come into play. Each change can affect the investments, the tax picture, the estate plan, and the insurance at once.
Hudson reviews the family’s situation regularly and keeps the account of their finances current between reviews. When something changes, Hudson works out who needs to know, tells them, and follows up until the pieces fit again. Families in New City and throughout Rockland County rely on that steadiness, and each family should be able to name one firm that sees the whole picture.
Many families also want the next generation involved in time. Hudson can include adult children in conversations when the parents choose, so that the people who may one day carry these decisions understand how they were made.
Beginning a Conversation
A first conversation is a chance for a New City family to describe what they have, what they want it to do, and which questions have gone unanswered. It is also a chance to see whether Hudson’s way of working fits them.
Hudson Companies can also be reached at (845) 920-1600.
Hudson Companies
1 Blue Hill Plaza
Pearl River, NY
