- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Aliso Viejo business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
Aliso Viejo skews younger and earlier than the rest of south Orange County, and the money questions follow. This is an accumulation city: a good salary with equity or a bonus attached, a 401(k) that has never been looked at properly, a mortgage and association dues taken out before anything else, small children and a 529 that was opened and then forgotten. The work here is building, not unwinding.
Start with the honest part: we are 39.1 miles from Aliso Viejo
We do not have an office in Aliso Viejo, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 39.1 miles away. If a firm's Aliso Viejo 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 Aliso Viejo 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 Aliso Viejo
Aliso Viejo is the youngest city in the county — developed out of the Aliso Viejo Ranch beginning in the late 1970s, built through the 1980s and 1990s, and not incorporated until 1 July 2001. It shows. The office campuses along Pacific Park Drive, Enterprise and Summit went up alongside the housing rather than being retrofitted into it, which is why this is one of the few places in south county where a genuine white-collar employment base and the neighbourhoods that feed it are within the same few square miles. Soka University sits on the ridge above the town centre, and the Aliso Viejo Town Center itself is the closest thing the city has to a downtown.
The households are correspondingly early in the arc. Two incomes, both mid-career, often one in the office parks here or in Irvine and one somewhere else entirely. The plan is not complicated but the pieces are rarely coordinated: a 401(k) and a match that may or may not be fully captured, restricted stock or an employee stock purchase plan sitting in an account nobody has a policy for, a Roth IRA that may or may not be available directly at this income level, a 529 for a nine-year-old, and a mortgage taken at whatever rate was going the year they bought. The single most valuable hour is usually the boring one: what does the plan cost, where is the money actually invested, and what is the order of operations for the next dollar. Fee analyzer · 529 plans in California · Roth or traditional.
One local detail worth putting in a plan rather than ignoring: essentially every home here is in a homeowners association, most of them under the citywide master association, and a good number carry a Mello-Roos assessment on top of the ordinary property tax. Dues and assessments are a permanent cost that does not disappear when the mortgage does, which means the retirement number for an Aliso Viejo household is higher than the same household's number would be elsewhere. It is a small thing that changes an answer by a surprising amount.
The local employer base
The Pacific Park Drive and Summit office campuses
Software, medical device, insurance, financial services and corporate administration. Private 401(k)s of widely varying quality, sometimes with restricted stock units or an employee stock purchase plan attached. Vesting schedules and concentration policy are worth deciding in advance rather than at each vest. Technology · Insurance.
Soka University of America
A private university on the hill above the town centre. Staff and faculty at private institutions are typically in a 403(b) rather than CalSTRS — a balance you own and direct, with no formula behind it and no guaranteed floor. 403(b) plans · Non-profits.
Capistrano Unified School District
Aliso Viejo's schools are Capistrano Unified. Anyone holding a teaching credential is in CalSTRS; everyone else on the district payroll is in CalPERS. Young teaching households here are often the first in the family with a pension at all, and the service-credit and tier questions matter far earlier than anyone tells them.
Professional practices and the town centre
Dental, medical, legal and financial practices, plus the restaurants and retail around the Town Center. Owner-run firms at these income levels usually do better sponsoring their own plan than using the state programme, because the owner's own contribution room is the whole point. Business plans.
Public pensions and rollovers
Aliso Viejo runs on private plans. The public minority splits three ways: the school district into CalSTRS and CalPERS, city hall into CalPERS, and anyone working for the county into OCERS — a separate 1937 Act system rather than a CalPERS division. For everyone else the retirement is a 401(k) or 403(b) balance, which means three things decide the outcome: how much goes in, what it costs to hold, and whether the accounts from previous jobs ever got consolidated. Rollovers · OCERS.
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 Aliso Viejo 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.
Aliso Viejo questions
I have restricted stock vesting every quarter and no idea what to do with it.
Start by naming the problem correctly: at vest, the shares are ordinary income whether you sell them or not, and holding them afterwards is a fresh decision to own that company with after-tax money. Most people never consciously make that decision, and a few years later half the family's net worth is in one employer — the same employer that also pays the salary and the health insurance. The fix is a written policy set in advance: what percentage you sell on vest, what ceiling you will let the position reach, and what the proceeds buy instead. Deciding it while calm is worth more than any prediction about the stock.
Our association dues and Mello-Roos are a real number every month. Does that belong in a retirement plan?
Yes, and leaving it out is one of the more common ways a retirement projection quietly understates what a household needs. A mortgage ends. Dues, assessments, insurance and property tax do not, and in a master-planned city they are large and they rise. We put them in as a permanent, inflating line rather than folding them into a generic "housing" figure, because the difference over a thirty-year retirement is not small.
We earn well but the Roth IRA income limit seems to rule us out. Is that the end of it?
Not necessarily. The direct-contribution limit phases out around $168,000 for a single filer and $252,000 for joint filers in 2026, but the Roth space inside a workplace plan has no income limit at all, and many plans in these office parks offer a Roth 401(k) option that goes almost entirely unused. Whether Roth or pre-tax is right for you depends on the bracket you are in now against the one you expect later, which for a couple in their thirties is genuinely uncertain — which is itself an argument for holding some of each. The comparison.
Do you actually meet clients from Aliso Viejo, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 39.1 miles from Aliso Viejo — 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 Aliso Viejo 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.