- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Chatsworth business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
We work with the owners and senior staff of Chatsworth's small manufacturers — the machine shops, metal finishers, medical-device suppliers and defence subcontractors on Nordhoff, Lassen and Plummer — and with the families on the streets climbing toward the Santa Susana Pass. The recurring question is the one every owner-operator eventually reaches: how to move money out of a company you have run for thirty years into something that does not depend on it.
Start with the honest part: we are 48.2 miles from Chatsworth
We do not have an office in Chatsworth, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 48.2 miles away. If a firm's Chatsworth 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 Chatsworth 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 Chatsworth
Chatsworth has the largest concentration of small industrial tenancies left in the west Valley. The blocks between Nordhoff and Lassen, east and west of De Soto, hold precision machining, sheet metal, plating and anodising, plastics, cable and connector assembly, test equipment and a long tail of medical-device and defence subcontractors — twelve, thirty, eighty employees each, mostly privately held, many founded by the person who still runs them. The Chatsworth Metrolink station on the Ventura County Line is the other structural fact: it is why staff commute in from Simi Valley and Moorpark and why some of the office tenancy exists at all.
At a median household income of $133,834 this is one of the higher-income neighbourhoods we write about, and the shape of that income is unusual. A great deal of it belongs to people in their late fifties and sixties whose net worth is roughly: the house, the building the business sits in, and the business. Three illiquid assets, one industry, one ZIP code. That is a concentration problem dressed as a success story, and it is a common shape for a Chatsworth balance sheet.
The other half of the neighbourhood is residential and quiet — ranch houses, some equestrian-zoned lots up toward the pass, families whose earners drive to Warner Center, Simi Valley or Burbank. Their questions are the ordinary ones: an employer plan nobody has audited, college coming, a parent needing help, and a rough sense that the whole thing should be written down somewhere. That is the planning work.
The local employer base
Precision manufacturing and aerospace supply
The Nordhoff and Lassen shops run private 401(k) plans, often bought from a payroll provider and never re-priced. For a profitable owner over fifty, a profit-sharing tier or a cash balance plan alongside it changes the arithmetic entirely. Cash balance plans · Machine shops.
Medical device and laboratory suppliers
Several Chatsworth firms are subsidiaries of larger public companies, which means restricted stock and employee stock purchase plans on top of the 401(k). Vesting schedules and concentration get ignored until the position is too large to move quietly. Medical device.
Chatsworth Charter High and area LAUSD schools
Teachers are CalSTRS members; classified staff are in CalPERS. The 403(b) menu offered at school sites is where the real cost variation hides — annuity products with surrender periods sit next to plain index options. What to check on a 403(b).
Owners heading toward a sale
A business sale is a retirement plan and a tax event at once, and the sequence matters. We are not your CPA or your attorney and will not pretend otherwise — but the investment side of the proceeds, and what the household needs them to do, is squarely our work.
Public pensions and rollovers
Almost nobody in industrial Chatsworth is in a public system. The private-sector equivalent is the employer 401(k), and its quality varies by an order of magnitude across a four-block radius. The exceptions are the school employees — CalSTRS and CalPERS — and the City of Los Angeles staff living here, who are LACERS members. If you are an owner, the plan you sponsor is also the plan you are stuck with, and you carry fiduciary responsibility for it: what that duty involves.
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 Chatsworth 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.
Chatsworth questions
My shop is on Nordhoff, I own the building, and I'm 58. My kids don't want the business.
Then the building and the company are your retirement account, and both are illiquid. The work is sequencing: what the household needs annually, what can be de-risked before a sale rather than after, and what the proceeds have to do once they land. Your CPA and a transaction attorney handle the structure; we handle what the money does afterwards. Start with a call.
Our 401(k) came from the payroll company and I've never looked at the fees.
Most owners haven't, and as plan sponsor you have a duty to. Bring the fee disclosure and the fund line-up. The fee analyzer shows what a share point costs over twenty years, and this page explains where the charges hide — record-keeping, advisory, revenue sharing inside the funds.
I have company stock in my old employer's plan. Is rolling it over always right?
Not always. Appreciated employer securities in a qualified plan can be treated differently from the rest of the balance under the net unrealised appreciation rules, and a rollover forfeits that option permanently. It is a tax question, so it goes to your CPA — but it must be asked before you move anything. What NUA means.
Do you actually meet clients from Chatsworth, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 48.2 miles from Chatsworth — 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 Chatsworth 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.