- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Agoura Hills business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
We work with Agoura Hills households in their peak earning years — two incomes, a large mortgage, children heading toward college, and retirement accounts that have grown large enough to need actual decisions. Some are Las Virgenes Unified staff on CalSTRS or CalPERS. Many more commute east to Warner Center or Burbank, or run something of their own along Agoura Road or Kanan.
Start with the honest part: we are 53.1 miles from Agoura Hills
We do not have an office in Agoura Hills, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 53.1 miles away. If a firm's Agoura Hills page does not tell you where its actual office is, that is worth noticing — the August 2026 teardown of this market found out-of-area firms running dozens of city pages each, including one with a Norwalk page containing nothing about Norwalk.
So the question is not proximity. It is whether what we do is worth the drive, a video call, or us coming to you — because we do all three, and evenings run by video. Two things travel perfectly well over distance and are unusually hard to find at any distance: a fee schedule published on the website, and a fiduciary standard you can hold us to in writing. Neither requires us to be down the street.
Is your financial advisor in Agoura Hills actually a fiduciary?
Most people assume yes. The answer depends on how the person is registered. An investment adviser representative owes a fiduciary duty — care and loyalty, across the whole relationship, and it cannot be waived. A registered representative of a broker-dealer is held to Regulation Best Interest, which attaches at the moment of a recommendation and, in the SEC's own words, imposes no duty to monitor an account absent an agreement.
Both can be good at the job. They are not the same promise. You can check any firm in ten minutes: Form ADV at adviserinfo.sec.gov, individuals on BrokerCheck, and the Form CRS. Ours is linked here, and the standard is spelled out on our fiduciary page. Aduna Capital is fee-only: paid by clients, by nobody else, with no commissions and no proprietary products. The full comparison is here →
Who we work with in Agoura Hills
Agoura Hills is 19,565 people spread along the north face of the Santa Monica Mountains, between Calabasas and the Ventura county line. Kanan Road and Reyes Adobe Road are the two spines that carry everything: the shopping centres, the medical and dental suites, the schools. Agoura Road runs parallel to the freeway with the office parks on it, Old Agoura keeps its horse property and its zoning fights, and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area starts at the southern edge of town. Ladyface Mountain is the thing everyone gives directions by. The median household income is $171,302, which in this part of the county buys a family house and a commute.
The recurring situation here is not exotic and it is not well served. A household in its forties or fifties is carrying a mortgage written at a Conejo Valley price, funding two 401(k)s to the limit, trying to put something into a 529, and has money accumulating in a taxable brokerage account with no particular design behind it. Every one of those decisions is being made in isolation, and the one that matters most — which account each dollar should land in, and in what order — is the one nobody is being asked about. Asset location, the backdoor Roth and its pro-rata trap, and the order of operations between college and retirement are the three questions we get from this postcode more than any others. 529 plans in California · Roth against traditional · how the allocation gets built.
The second Agoura Hills household is the one where one paycheque is public and the other is not. A Las Virgenes Unified teacher married to somebody in production, or to somebody who runs a five-person firm on Agoura Road, is a genuinely different planning problem from two salaries: one side has a defined benefit with irreversible elections attached and the other has nothing guaranteed at all, and they have to be planned as one balance sheet rather than two. CalSTRS · the survivor election.
The local employer base
Las Virgenes Unified School District
Agoura High School, Lindero Canyon Middle School and the elementary campuses. Certificated staff are CalSTRS members; classified staff — aides, office and maintenance personnel — are in CalPERS. The 403(b) and 457(b) sold alongside those pensions is where the avoidable cost usually sits. 403(b) plans.
The Agoura Road office corridor
Small professional and technical firms line the road between Kanan and the Calabasas line: insurance, engineering, marketing, medical devices, finance. Almost all are private 401(k) plans, a few with equity awards, and many are small enough that the owner is choosing between CalSavers and a real plan. Compare the two.
Contracted county public safety
The city buys its policing from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and its fire protection from the county, so the uniformed people working here are county employees in LACERA rather than city employees in CalPERS. If that is your household, the tier you were hired into decides most of it. LACERA.
Owner-operated practices on Kanan and Reyes Adobe
Dentists, orthodontists, physical therapists, veterinarians, accountants and design firms, most with fewer than fifteen staff. A safe-harbor 401(k) with profit sharing usually lets the owner save several times what a SIMPLE or a SEP does at the same payroll cost. Safe harbor explained.
Public pensions and rollovers
Las Virgenes Unified is the public system that matters in Agoura Hills — CalSTRS for teachers and counsellors, CalPERS for classified staff — with LACERA behind the deputies and firefighters who work the area. Everyone else is private. The practical consequence for a mixed household is that only one of the two retirements has a floor under it, so the portfolio has to be built around the pension rather than beside it, and the survivor election on the pension side changes what the other side needs to hold. How the systems compare.
If you are leaving a job, the rollover decision is where the most money is quietly lost — the 20% mandatory withholding under IRC § 3405(c) catches people who take the cheque themselves. The four options, step by step · Seven costly mistakes · Run the numbers. For public employees: CalPERS, CalSTRS, LACERA and OCERS explained.
A first conversation about Agoura Hills money, at no cost
Fifteen minutes on the phone. If your question has a short answer you will get it on the call, and if we are not the right firm for you we will say that too.
Our fees, published
No competing advisor page in this area publishes its fees. Here are ours.
| What | Fee |
|---|---|
| Investment management | 1.5% to 2.0% of assets per year; Advisers may set a rate below the standard schedule, as low as 0%, at their discretion — and whatever rate applies to you is disclosed in writing before you engage. Our Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5, states the fee as up to 2.00% of assets per year, subject to negotiation; the firm may waive all or part of it. Generally billed quarterly in arrears |
| Account minimum | No minimum account balance |
| Commissions and product fees | None — we are fee-only |
| Solicitor compensation | May be received or paid under disclosed arrangements |
| Initial conversation | Free, 15 minutes, no obligation |
Complete fee details in our Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5.
Agoura Hills questions
We both max our 401(k)s and we still have money left over. Where does it go?
Usually in this order: an HSA if you are on a qualifying health plan, because it is the only account that is untaxed going in and coming out; then a Roth IRA, directly if your income allows and through a conversion if it does not — and if you are holding any pre-tax IRA money, the pro-rata rule will tax part of that conversion, which is the trap most people walk into; then a 529 if college is a real number rather than a wish; then a taxable brokerage account built so the tax-inefficient holdings sit somewhere else. Tax-aware investing in California.
My wife is in CalSTRS and I am not. How should we think about that?
As one plan with two very different halves. Her side produces a lifetime income with a survivor election that is made once and cannot be revisited, and it is not covered by Social Security in the way a private salary is. Your side produces a balance that has to last and carries all of the market risk in the household. The useful work is deciding how much of your portfolio is doing the job her pension already does, and then not paying twice for it. CalSTRS and Social Security.
College and retirement are both about eight years away. Which one wins?
Retirement, and it is not close — there is no financial aid for a retirement shortfall and no loan you can take out at seventy. That is not an argument against the 529; it is an argument for sizing it honestly against what you can actually fund and being willing to say out loud what the family will pay toward tuition. Doing that four years early changes which schools get applied to, which is worth more than any investment decision inside the account. How the 529 works.
Do you actually meet clients from Agoura Hills, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 53.1 miles from Agoura Hills — clients come to us, we come to them, or we meet by video, and evening appointments can be arranged. What we will not do is claim an office in Agoura Hills that does not exist. Call (657) 571-2607. We are registered as an investment adviser in California.
What is the account minimum?
There isn't one to open. We ask for $50 a month of continuing deposits, because a plan you do not fund is not a plan. Our fee is 1.5% to 2.0% of assets under management per year, billed quarterly, and it is published — which is more than most firms in this market will tell you before a meeting.
¿Atienden en español?
Sí. Atendemos en español, y buena parte de nuestro material existe en español, escrito originalmente, no traducido por máquina.