- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Brentwood business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
Brentwood households are heavy on high-earning W-2 income with equity attached — restricted stock, options, employee stock purchase plans — alongside physicians and academics at UCLA and federal employees at the VA. Two very different retirement systems, one shared problem: too much of the household riding on a single company's share price, accumulated by never deciding to sell.
Start with the honest part: we are 31.1 miles from Brentwood
We do not have an office in Brentwood, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 31.1 miles away. If a firm's Brentwood 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 Brentwood 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 Brentwood
Brentwood runs from Sunset Boulevard up into the hills between the 405 and Pacific Palisades, with San Vicente Boulevard as its spine and Barrington, Bundy and Brentwood Village as the places people actually go. The Getty Center sits above the freeway on the eastern edge. Just beyond it, the West Los Angeles VA campus and UCLA anchor a working population that commutes in minutes rather than hours. The housing is expensive, the streets are quiet, and a great many residents assume it is its own city; the council district, the police division and the business tax registration all say otherwise.
The recurring financial situation here is equity compensation that nobody has managed. Restricted stock is ordinary income the moment it vests, and employers commonly withhold at the flat supplemental rate on it, which under-withholds anybody near the top bracket — so a good year produces a tax bill in April that the shares were supposed to have covered. Then the shares that were not sold to pay it stay put. After four or five years of quarterly vests, a household can be looking at a third or more of its investable assets in one company, while its salary, its bonus, its health insurance and possibly its mortgage approval all depend on the same company as well. That is not a portfolio, it is a single bet made repeatedly by default. Options add their own layer: incentive stock options can trigger the alternative minimum tax at exercise, which is a cash bill on shares you have not sold, and expiry dates force decisions on a schedule that has nothing to do with your plan. Equity compensation · What California does to a realised gain.
Unwinding a concentrated position is a multi-year exercise rather than a trade. In practice it means a written schedule for selling — agreed in advance, and if you are subject to an insider policy, set up with your company's counsel — directing every dollar of new saving away from that sector, harvesting losses elsewhere in the portfolio to absorb some of the gain, and looking hard at whether appreciated shares rather than cash should be what goes to charity. Giving away long-held appreciated stock, often through a donor-advised fund, removes the embedded gain from your balance sheet rather than realising it. That is a tax conversation your CPA leads and we sit in on. Tax-loss harvesting · How we do it.
The local employer base
UCLA and UCLA Health, just east
University of California employees are not in CalPERS and not in CalSTRS. They are in UCRP, the University's own retirement system, with a 403(b) and a 457(b) beside it — and which tier you were hired into determines a great deal about what the pension side is worth. UCRP explained · UCLA Health.
West Los Angeles VA Medical Center
Federal civilian employees: a FERS pension, Social Security, and the Thrift Savings Plan. The TSP is one of the cheapest retirement plans in the country and has a very short fund menu, which makes the decision on leaving federal service a genuine trade-off rather than an obvious rollover. The rollover options.
Entertainment, law and business management offices
Century City, Wilshire and the studio lots are a short commute, and a large share of Brentwood professionals are partners rather than employees. Partner income arrives on a K-1 with estimated taxes attached, and the firm's plan is frequently a 401(k) with profit sharing and a cash balance plan on top. Law firms · Cash balance plans.
The J. Paul Getty Trust at the Getty Center
A private nonprofit rather than a public institution, so curatorial, conservation, education and operations staff are in a private employer plan rather than a public pension. As with any nonprofit plan, the employer contribution and the cost of the funds on the menu do most of the work. Nonprofit employers.
Public pensions and rollovers
Brentwood is unusual in that its two biggest public anchors are in neither of California's famous systems. The University of California runs its own — UCRP, with its own tiers, its own vesting and its own 403(b) and 457(b) beside it. The VA is federal, which means FERS and the Thrift Savings Plan, a completely different animal with a different survivor structure. A household with one of each, or with one of these plus a private 401(k), is holding three retirement systems that do not talk to one another and cannot be compared on their statements. Reading them together, once, is usually the highest-value hour available. UCRP · 457(b) plans.
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 Brentwood 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.
Brentwood questions
My restricted stock vests quarterly and I have kept all of it. What is the actual risk?
That one company's bad year takes your portfolio, your bonus and possibly your job at the same time. The test is simple: if the shares were handed to you as cash today, would you buy that many of them? Almost nobody says yes. Selling at vest usually carries little additional tax, because the value was already taxed as income when it vested, so the reason people hold is rarely tax — it is that no decision was scheduled. Set a standing rule, and if you are inside a trading window or an insider policy, put the structure in place with your company's counsel in advance.
I am at UCLA. How do UCRP, the 403(b) and the 457(b) fit together?
UCRP is the pension — a defined benefit with a formula, a vesting requirement and different terms depending on the tier you were hired into. The 403(b) and 457(b) are separate, voluntary accounts you fund yourself, and because they have separate contribution limits a household can put away substantially more by using both than most people realise. The mistake we see most is treating the pension as the whole plan and leaving the voluntary accounts at whatever was chosen on the first day of employment. UCRP.
I am leaving federal service at the VA. What happens to the Thrift Savings Plan?
You have the ordinary options — leave it, roll it to an IRA, roll it into a new employer's plan — and one genuinely unusual reason to think twice about moving it. The TSP's costs are extremely low, and its G Fund has no exact commercial equivalent, so a rollover buys flexibility and choice at the price of both. The right answer depends on what else you hold and what you need the money to do. What is never right is taking a cheque yourself: that triggers 20% mandatory withholding. Rollover mistakes · Run the numbers.
Do you actually meet clients from Brentwood, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 31.1 miles from Brentwood — 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 Brentwood 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.