- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Calabasas business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
Calabasas households tend to hold two things that ordinary retirement advice handles badly: employer stock they never decided to keep, and compensation that is not a salary. Senior corporate staff here carry restricted stock, options and sometimes a nonqualified deferred compensation plan; business owners carry the company itself. Both are concentration problems dressed up as good fortune, and both are solvable over several tax years rather than in one.
Start with the honest part: we are 46.5 miles from Calabasas
We do not have an office in Calabasas, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 46.5 miles away. If a firm's Calabasas 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 Calabasas 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 Calabasas
Calabasas is the commercial anchor of the Las Virgenes corridor. The Commons at Calabasas sits at the middle of it, Old Town runs along Calabasas Road with the Leonis Adobe on it, and the office parks stretch west along Agoura Road toward the Agoura Hills line — corporate headquarters and regional offices, The Cheesecake Factory's among them. Behind that, the housing separates sharply: gated communities on the ridges above Mulholland and Parkway Calabasas, then the older tracts on the valley floor. Calabasas High School and A.C. Stelle Middle School are Las Virgenes Unified, and the district is a large part of why the housing costs what it does.
The distinctive money question in Calabasas is not how to invest a salary. It is what to do with pay that arrives as something other than cash. Restricted stock is taxed as ordinary income when it vests, and employers commonly withhold on it at the flat supplemental rate, which systematically under-withholds anyone in a top bracket — so the shares look like a windfall in March and the tax bill arrives in April. The shares you then keep are a decision you make every quarter by not making one, and after a few years of that a household can have a third of its net worth riding on one employer's results, on top of a paycheque that already depends on them. Equity compensation · California taxes capital gains as ordinary income.
Above that sit the senior employees offered a nonqualified deferred compensation plan. Deferring income into one can be sensible, but it is not a retirement account: the money is an unsecured promise from the company, it sits behind the company's creditors if things go badly, the distribution schedule is elected in advance under section 409A and is very hard to change, and the timing interacts with everything else in the year it pays out. Whether to defer is a tax question for your CPA. How much of your future should sit inside one employer — salary, equity and deferred comp together — is the one we answer. Plan types compared.
The local employer base
Corporate offices on Agoura Road and Calabasas Road
Headquarters and regional offices in the corridor's office parks. Private 401(k) plans, frequently with restricted stock or an employee stock purchase plan, and for senior staff a nonqualified deferred compensation arrangement that is not protected the way the 401(k) is. What a 401(k) actually costs you.
The Commons and Old Town Calabasas
Restaurants, boutiques, fitness and services around the shopping centre and along Calabasas Road. Small employers with tipped and hourly staff, nearly all inside the state retirement mandate, and owners for whom CalSavers will not hold enough to matter. Restaurants · Retail.
Las Virgenes Unified School District
Calabasas High School, A.C. Stelle Middle School and the elementary campuses. CalSTRS for certificated staff, CalPERS for classified. Teachers living in the district they teach in is unusual at these housing prices, and where it happens it is generally because the household has a second income doing something else entirely.
Professional practices and business management firms
Law, accounting, business management, medical and dental practices along Calabasas Road and Parkway Calabasas. Owner income arrives on a K-1 with estimated taxes attached, and a cash balance plan layered over a 401(k) is often the largest deduction available to a practice of this size. Cash balance plans.
Public pensions and rollovers
Public pensions are a small part of the Calabasas picture: Las Virgenes Unified on CalSTRS and CalPERS, a small city staff, and LACERA behind the county deputies and firefighters who serve the area. For everyone else the private-sector equivalent is a 401(k) that is only one of three things the employer is paying you with, and the other two — equity and deferred compensation — are the ones with no protection, no diversification and no automatic schedule. Reading all three together is the whole exercise. The public systems, for the households where they apply.
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 Calabasas 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.
Calabasas questions
My restricted stock vests every quarter and I have never sold any. Is that a decision?
Yes, and you are making it repeatedly. Ask yourself the reverse question: if the company handed you the cash value instead, would you go out and buy that many shares of it today? If the answer is no, holding is not conviction, it is inertia. A workable structure is to sell at vest as a standing rule — there is usually little or no additional tax at that moment, because you were already taxed on the value when it vested — and to make any decision to keep shares a deliberate, sized one. If you are subject to trading windows or an insider policy, that structure has to be set up in advance with your company's counsel.
My employer offers deferred compensation. Should I use it?
Sometimes, and the reasons it can be wrong are not the obvious ones. The money is an unsecured claim against the company rather than assets held in trust for you, the payout schedule is elected years ahead under section 409A and is close to irreversible, and a large distribution can land in a year when you have other income you did not plan for. The tax arithmetic is your CPA's; what we can tell you is how much of your household already depends on that one company before you add more.
Would a private bank or a wirehouse be a better fit at our asset level?
They might be, and you should compare them properly rather than on the letterhead. The comparison that matters is total cost — the advisory fee, plus what the underlying funds charge, plus anything embedded in a product — against what is actually being done for it, and whether the person managing the money is a fiduciary in writing at all times or only at the moment of a recommendation. Our fee is 1.5% to 2.0% and it is published. Run the comparison, including against us.
Do you actually meet clients from Calabasas, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 46.5 miles from Calabasas — 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 Calabasas 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.