- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Castaic business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
We work with Castaic households on both sides of that commute: sheriff's department and county personnel at the Pitchess complex, teachers in the Castaic and Hart districts, and families whose earners drive south every morning. The recurring questions are what actually counts toward a county pension, what to do with the deferred compensation account beside it, and how much of the family's net worth is the house.
Start with the honest part: we are 63.7 miles from Castaic
We do not have an office in Castaic, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 63.7 miles away. If a firm's Castaic 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 Castaic 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 Castaic
Castaic is genuinely unincorporated Los Angeles County. There is no city council and no city hall; land use, sheriff's patrol and county services come from the Board of Supervisors and the county departments, which matters more than residents expect when a permit, a service or a local tax question comes up. Geographically it is the northern edge of the Santa Clarita Valley — Castaic Lake and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's power plant at the base of it, the junction of Interstate 5 and Highway 126 with the truck stops and distribution that grew around it, and residential tracts up in Live Oak and Hasley Canyon.
The Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center is the dominant institutional employer, and it makes this a Los Angeles County retirement neighbourhood. Sheriff's department personnel are LACERA members on safety formulas, and there is a specific technical point that decides real money for them: under the Public Employees' Pension Reform Act, overtime is excluded from pensionable compensation. In a job where overtime is a large and reliable share of gross pay, the pension replaces a smaller fraction of your actual take-home than the formula suggests. The gap has to be filled deliberately, usually through the county's 457(b) deferred compensation plan, and it will not fill itself.
The rest of Castaic is commuter housing at a median household income of $129,863, where the house is bought early, held a long time, and quietly becomes most of the family's net worth. That is not a mistake, but it does mean the retirement plan and the reserve have to do their work outside the property, because equity in a house does not pay a utility bill. Why the first retirement years matter most.
The local employer base
Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center
Sheriff's department and county staff are LACERA members. Safety formulas retire earlier but overtime does not count toward pensionable compensation under PEPRA, which is why the deferred compensation account matters so much here. LACERA · The plan tiers.
Castaic Union and William S. Hart Union districts
Certificated employees belong to CalSTRS and classified employees to CalPERS. In districts this size the approved 403(b) and 457(b) vendor list is short, which limits choice and not always in your favour. CalSTRS · 403(b) plans.
Six Flags Magic Mountain and the Santa Clarita service economy
The park just south of Castaic is one of the area's largest employers, with a heavily seasonal and part-time workforce covered by the state retirement mandate rather than a pension. For a young seasonal worker a Roth IRA is usually the right first account. Roth basics.
Trucking and distribution at the 5 and the 126
Castaic sits at the base of the Grapevine, and freight is a real local industry. Owner-operators are paid on a 1099 with no employer plan and no withholding, so the tax set-aside and the retirement account are the same discipline. Trucking.
Public pensions and rollovers
LACERA is the system that matters most in Castaic, followed by CalSTRS and CalPERS through the two school districts. A detail worth knowing about the power plant at the lake: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power employees are in the department's own retirement plan rather than in LACERS with the rest of the city's civilian workforce, which is one more reason not to assume that 'city employee' means one thing. If your household spans two systems, the survivor elections should be decided together. LACERA · Survivor elections.
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 Castaic 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.
Castaic questions
A lot of my pay is overtime. Does that count toward my pension?
Generally not. The Public Employees' Pension Reform Act excludes overtime from pensionable compensation, so a career built on heavy overtime produces a pension calculated on a base salary that is well below what you have been living on. The practical response is to treat the overtime as the funding source for the deferred compensation account rather than as spending money. We will map the gap against your actual statement. LACERA.
My spouse is in CalSTRS and I'm in LACERA. Does that need coordinating?
Yes, and it rarely gets done. Each system asks you to make a retirement option and survivor election independently, and each default assumes it is the only pension in the household. Chosen separately, two reasonable-looking elections can leave the survivor with either far too little or with reductions you paid for twice. They should be modelled as one household decision before either of you files. How the elections work.
Nearly everything we have is in this house. Is that a problem at our age?
It depends how close retirement is. Home equity is real wealth but it produces no income and cannot be spent in pieces without borrowing against it. The question we work through is what the household will actually live on in the first ten years after work stops, and whether that money exists in a form you can reach. Model it · How much is enough.
Do you actually meet clients from Castaic, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 63.7 miles from Castaic — 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 Castaic 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.