- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Claremont business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
Claremont is an academic town and the planning follows from that. Faculty and staff across the Claremont Colleges are in 403(b) plans, often with TIAA, and a 403(b) is a balance you own and must manage — not a formula somebody else calculates for you. Add a large retired-professional population, and the recurring questions are withdrawal order, Roth conversions, the lifetime-income election and estate coordination.
Start with the honest part: we are 31.6 miles from Claremont
We do not have an office in Claremont, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 31.6 miles away. If a firm's Claremont 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 Claremont 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 Claremont
Claremont has an unusually concentrated professional population for a city of 38,262. The Claremont Colleges — Pomona College, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Scripps, Pitzer, Claremont Graduate University and Keck Graduate Institute — sit together on the east side of town and between them form the largest employer in the city by a wide margin. Almost none of those people are in CalPERS or CalSTRS. They are in private, non-profit 403(b) plans, very often administered through TIAA, and that is a genuinely different retirement to the one most of this region is walking into.
The difference is not academic. A CalSTRS member gets a formula: service credit, age factor, final compensation, and a monthly cheque for life. A TIAA participant gets a balance and a menu of choices — how much to hold in the traditional account versus the variable ones, whether and when to convert part of it into lifetime income, whether a fixed-period option makes more sense, how to handle required minimum distributions across several contracts at once. Those choices are frequently made at 63, with no input from anyone who is not selling something, and several of them cannot be reversed.
The rest of Claremont is the Village, the unified school district, and a large population of retired professionals — academics, physicians, attorneys, people who left careers with real assets and a habit of asking hard questions. That group brings the most detailed work we do: multi-account withdrawal order, charitable giving straight from an IRA once the owner is 70½, whether a conversion in the years before required distributions begin actually pays for itself, and how the trust and the beneficiary forms line up against each other. Qualified charitable distributions · Roth conversion calculator · RMD calculator.
The local employer base
The Claremont Colleges
Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Scripps, Pitzer, Claremont Graduate University and Keck Graduate Institute. Faculty and staff are in private 403(b) plans, commonly with TIAA. Employer contributions are often generous; every choice inside is the participant's.
TIAA participants specifically
The traditional account, the variable annuities and the mutual-fund window all behave differently, and the lifetime-income election at retirement is largely irreversible. We read the contracts and model the options. We sell nothing and take no commission from any of it.
Claremont Unified School District
Teachers are CalSTRS, classified staff CalPERS — the public-sector minority in an otherwise 403(b) town. Households mixing a district salary with a college salary contain both systems and need a single plan rather than two.
The Village and professional practices
Independent retail, restaurants, and medical and legal practices around Claremont Village. Small professional partnerships often have room for a cash balance plan stacked on a 401(k), the highest-contribution structure available to an owner. How they work.
Public pensions and rollovers
Claremont is one of the few cities in this county where the public systems are the exception rather than the rule. Claremont Unified staff are in CalSTRS and CalPERS; almost everyone else on a campus payroll is in a 403(b). If you are a college employee there is no pension coming, and the entire outcome rests on the balance, the fees inside it, and the order you spend it in. If you taught at a public university earlier in your career you may also have a dormant UCRP or CalPERS record worth locating. UCRP · 403(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 Claremont 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.
Claremont questions
I am at one of the colleges with everything in TIAA. What can you actually add?
Three things, none of which require moving anything. A look at what you hold across the traditional and variable accounts and whether that mix matches what you need it to do. An honest analysis of the lifetime-income election before you make it, including the case for converting only part of the balance. And coordination with everything outside the plan — a spouse's accounts, taxable brokerage, Social Security timing, the house. We are fee-only, so there is no version of this conversation where we earn more by pointing you at one contract rather than another.
We are both retired academics with a trust, an IRA each and a taxable account. What is left to do?
The order of operations, mostly. Which account funds this year's spending, how much room is left in the current tax bracket, whether a partial conversion this year lowers the lifetime bill or merely moves it, whether charitable gifts should come from the IRA rather than the chequebook, and what the beneficiary designations say versus what the trust says. None of that is exciting and all of it is money.
Do you work with faculty still paying off a mortgage in their sixties?
Regularly, and it is not the emergency it gets made out to be. Whether to accelerate a mortgage in retirement depends on the rate, the tax position, and what stays liquid afterwards. Clearing a 3% loan with money that would otherwise remain invested is not automatically right, and neither is carrying a 7% one. It is a calculation, and we will do it with you rather than hand you a slogan.
Do you actually meet clients from Claremont, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 31.6 miles from Claremont — 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 Claremont 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.