Financial planning in Essex County, New Jersey

Essex County gives us the widest planning-age range in the practice. The youngest clients are couples in their early thirties who just moved to Maplewood from Park Slope and need a budget that reconciles a mortgage, a newborn, and a single surviving income. The oldest are pre-retirees in Livingston deciding whether to keep the house or trade it for a condo and a boat.

Between those two cohorts we see a lot of the same Mid-town Direct commuter — a high earner who takes the 6:42 out of South Orange, returns home after bedtime, and has not opened the annual 401(k) summary in two years. That household is well-served by planning work and usually under-served by the industry.

We work across all of it. No income minimum, no asset minimum. The fee structure fits the complexity of the situation and is published in writing before you agree to anything.

Three things shape most of the Essex County plans we write.

The first is concentrated equity. Short Hills and Millburn households often carry a single-stock position that represents thirty or forty percent of their investable net worth — RSU grants that never got sold, options that were exercised and held, or founder shares from an exit that hit a retention schedule. Diversification out of that position is a multi-year tax-aware project, and the cost of doing it badly is higher than the cost of not starting.

The second is the public-school-premium question. Families weigh the Millburn or Montclair school-district tax bill against a private-school budget in a different town. The answer looks different on an after-tax basis than it does on the open-house tour. We run the math both ways.

The third is the federal estate picture. The NJ estate tax is gone. The federal one is not, and a two-high-earner Short Hills household can cross the exemption earlier than they expect. We coordinate with your estate attorney rather than pretending we can do the drafting ourselves.

Essex County clients meet us most often in their own homes on weekends or in their offices after hours. For clients who prefer a neutral room, we host in Paramus — the drive from Millburn or Montclair is about forty minutes, mostly on Route 280 or the Parkway.

Home meetings in Short Hills, Livingston, and Montclair are common. The kitchen table works as well as a conference room and tells us more about the household than a conference room ever does.

The ongoing relationship meets twice a year in person. Quarterly written letters cover what we did, what we are watching, and what we want you to think about before the next meeting.

The first meeting is free and runs about an hour. Bring the last two years of tax returns, your equity comp paperwork, the 401(k) statement, and any insurance policies whose purpose you are no longer sure about. We ask what the money is actually for before we ask what you own.

By the end of the hour we tell you whether a planning engagement makes sense, whether an hourly one-time plan is a better fit, or whether the right answer is for us to point you to a firm we think suits your situation better. Honest disqualification is part of the job.

The second meeting, if you choose to have one, is the written plan. Tax picture, equity-comp strategy, retirement income math, insurance gap, estate setup, and a list of decisions for the next twelve months. Yours to keep either way.