- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Altadena business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
Altadena households are professional, long-tenured and often multi-generational in the same house. Many are also working through insurance settlements, rebuild-or-sell decisions and property-tax questions following the January 2025 Eaton Fire. Those are not investment questions in the ordinary sense. They are decisions about a large sum arriving at once, and they deserve a plan written before the money moves.
Start with the honest part: we are 25.1 miles from Altadena
We do not have an office in Altadena, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 25.1 miles away. If a firm's Altadena 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 Altadena 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 Altadena
Altadena is not a city. It is an unincorporated community of 41,705 people governed directly by Los Angeles County — no city council, no city budget, no municipal payroll. County departments deliver the services, and residents who work in local government here are LACERA members rather than CalPERS ones. It sits directly above Pasadena against the San Gabriels, and a large share of its professional population works there or at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory just to the west.
JPL is worth stating plainly, because it changes the advice. It is a federally funded research and development centre operated by Caltech, and its staff are Caltech employees rather than federal civil servants. There is no FERS annuity and no Thrift Savings Plan behind a JPL career — it is a defined contribution plan, and the outcome depends on the contribution rate and the investments rather than on a formula. Anyone who has moved between the lab, a NASA civil service post and a private contractor can end up with three different systems and nowhere they are added up.
Altadena also has a long and specific history as one of the most established Black middle-class and professional communities in the San Gabriel Valley, with high rates of long-term home ownership and a great deal of family wealth held in houses passed down within families. The January 2025 Eaton Fire destroyed a large part of that housing stock. The financial questions that followed are real and technical: how insurance proceeds are treated, what California's disaster provisions and Proposition 19 allow a homeowner to do with a base year value, whether rebuilding or selling produces the better outcome for a particular family, and where to hold a large settlement sensibly while that decision is being made. We will work through the money side and say clearly where you need a CPA, a public adjuster or an attorney instead. Proposition 19 · capital gains in California · estate basics.
The local employer base
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Caltech)
JPL staff are Caltech employees in a defined contribution retirement plan, not federal FERS participants. Career moves between the lab, NASA civil service and private contractors leave benefits sitting in separate systems that nothing consolidates by default.
Los Angeles County departments
With no municipal government, public employees living here are largely county workers in LACERA. LACERA carries its own tiers, its own contribution rates, its own reciprocity rules, and a survivor election that is made exactly once.
Pasadena health care and education
Hospitals, clinics and independent schools immediately south of the Altadena line run 403(b) and private 401(k) plans. Match formulas and vesting schedules vary widely, and it is worth knowing exactly where you stand before a resignation letter is written.
Lake Avenue small business
Altadena's commercial spine, with independent shops, restaurants, contractors and professional practices along it. Owner households have no retirement plan unless they build one, and the state mandate now reaches employers with a single employee.
Public pensions and rollovers
Because Altadena is unincorporated, the public system that matters most here is LACERA rather than CalPERS — county employees, not city ones. Pasadena Unified staff living in Altadena are CalSTRS members. And a significant professional population has no pension at all, only a defined contribution balance from Caltech, a hospital, a law firm or a company. Working out which of those you actually hold, and what each is worth, comes before any conversation about investments. LACERA · CalSTRS.
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 Altadena 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.
Altadena questions
We received an insurance settlement and have not decided whether to rebuild. Where should that money sit?
Somewhere safe, liquid and boring, in a way you can explain to yourself. Money that may be spent on construction within a year or two does not belong in the stock market, and it should not sit in one account above the insured limits either. There is also a tax question about how proceeds are treated and whether replacing the property changes the answer — that goes to your CPA, and we will help you frame the question rather than answer it ourselves.
If we sell the lot instead of rebuilding, what happens to the basis and to Proposition 13?
Two separate questions. On income tax, the gain is measured against your basis, and both the main-home exclusion and the disaster provisions of the Internal Revenue Code can bear on it — the amounts here are large enough that paying a CPA for a proper answer is the cheap option. On property tax, California provides base-year-value transfer relief for property substantially damaged in a declared disaster, with conditions and deadlines attached. The Proposition 19 rules are here; the county assessor's office is the authority on your parcel.
I work at JPL. Is my retirement federal?
No. JPL is operated by Caltech, so you are a Caltech employee in a defined contribution plan rather than a federal employee in FERS with a Thrift Savings Plan. That distinction matters when you compare notes with colleagues at NASA centres, and it matters a great deal more if you have worked on both sides — those are different benefits under different rules, and neither system will add them up for you.
Do you actually meet clients from Altadena, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 25.1 miles from Altadena — 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 Altadena 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.