- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Dana Point business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
Dana Point money is seasonal and property-heavy. Charter operators, marine trades, restaurant and hotel managers with income that swings by the month; real estate and hospitality professionals paid on commission; and owners of second homes and rental units who need to know what a sale actually costs. The planning problem is turning an uneven year into a steady retirement contribution.
Start with the honest part: we are 45.8 miles from Dana Point
We do not have an office in Dana Point, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 45.8 miles away. If a firm's Dana Point 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 Dana Point 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 Dana Point
Dana Point incorporated in 1989 out of three distinct pieces that still feel distinct: the harbour and the town above it, the Monarch Beach bluff with its resort hotels and golf, and Capistrano Beach at the southern end, where a lot of the older, smaller housing is. The harbour is the economic engine and it is a real working one — sportfishing and whale-watching operators at the wharf, boat yards, brokerages, sail lofts, marine electronics and the trades that keep several thousand slips running, plus the Ocean Institute on the point. The long harbour revitalisation has been reshaping the commercial side of it for years, which for the small operators there has meant a stretch of genuine uncertainty about rent, berths and footfall.
What that produces financially is income that does not arrive evenly. A charter business makes its year between spring and October. A restaurant on the bluff does the same. A real estate agent or a boat broker can have two quiet quarters and then one that pays for all of them. Almost none of those people have an employer plan, and the ones who do have a 401(k) at a hotel or a management company frequently leave it behind at the next job. Our answer is structural rather than motivational: hold a larger cash reserve than a salaried household would, set the retirement contribution as a percentage of what actually came in rather than a fixed monthly figure, and use a plan that tolerates a zero year — a SEP or a solo 401(k) does, a payroll-based commitment does not. Solo 401(k) · Real estate professionals.
The other Dana Point conversation is property, and there is more of it here than the population would suggest: primary homes held since the 1970s, second homes owned by people whose main residence is somewhere else entirely, and short-term rental units. The tax treatment of those three is not the same and people mix them up constantly. The primary-residence gain exclusion applies only to a principal residence and is capped well below what a forty-year coastal gain looks like. A property held for investment has its own rules, including depreciation that has to be reckoned with on sale. A second home used personally is neither. Getting the category right before you list it is worth more than anything you will do afterwards, and it is a conversation to have with a CPA with us in the room. Capital gains in California.
The local employer base
Dana Point Harbour and the marine trades
Sportfishing and whale-watching charters at the wharf, boat yards and repair, brokerage, canvas and rigging, marine electronics. Overwhelmingly owner-operated and seasonal. The right structure is one that can absorb a large deposit after a strong summer and ask for nothing after a poor one.
Resort and hospitality employers on the bluff
The Monarch Beach resorts, restaurants and golf operations are the largest private payrolls in the city. Hotel groups typically offer a 401(k) with a waiting period; turnover is high, so small orphaned balances from previous jobs are extremely common. Hotels · Restaurants.
Real estate, property management and rentals
Agents, brokers, vacation-rental managers and the trades serving them. Commission and management income is lumpy and taxed as it lands, which makes the quarterly-estimate discipline and the plan choice one combined decision rather than two. Real estate.
Capistrano Unified School District
Dana Point's schools, including Dana Hills High School, are Capistrano Unified. Certificated staff are CalSTRS; classified staff are CalPERS. A district salary paired with a spouse's seasonal business income is a common household here and needs one plan across both.
Public pensions and rollovers
Most of Dana Point has no pension of any kind, which is the point worth making plainly: this is a city of self-employed and hospitality income where the retirement is whatever somebody deliberately set aside. The public exceptions are Capistrano Unified staff in CalSTRS and CalPERS, city employees in CalPERS, and County of Orange employees in OCERS. If you are in one of those and your spouse runs a business, the two halves need to be planned as one balance sheet. CalPERS · Business retirement 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 Dana Point 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.
Dana Point questions
My income is completely seasonal. How do I set a savings rate I can actually keep?
Stop setting a monthly number. Set a percentage of what lands, and move it the week it lands. In practice that means three accounts and a rule: money in, tax reserve out first, retirement percentage out second, and what remains is the operating budget until the next deposit. It also means holding a bigger cash cushion than the standard advice suggests — for a business with a real off-season, several months of fixed costs is not conservative, it is the thing that stops a slow winter from becoming a withdrawal from the retirement account at the worst possible moment.
We own a rental in Capistrano Beach as well as our own house. Does that change the plan?
Substantially, and mostly in ways people underestimate. It is a concentrated, illiquid, leveraged position in one local property market that also happens to be the market your own home sits in, and it comes with a tax profile of its own — depreciation taken over the years has to be accounted for when you sell, and the primary-residence exclusion does not reach it. Whether to keep it, sell it or exchange it depends on the cash yield after everything, your appetite for being a landlord in your seventies, and what the rest of the balance sheet looks like without it. We will model the versions; your CPA rules on the tax mechanics.
We bought here decades ago and the gain on the house is enormous. What are the options?
Fewer than people hope and more than one. The exclusion on a principal residence is capped at $250,000 for a single owner and $500,000 for a married couple filing jointly, which on a long-held coastal property often covers a minority of the gain; the remainder is a capital gain at federal rates, and California taxes it as ordinary income with no preferential rate. Against that sits the step-up in basis at death, which is why "sell now or hold" is a genuine question rather than an obvious one, and why it should not be answered without looking at your age, your health, your income needs and what the heirs actually want. The California treatment.
Do you actually meet clients from Dana Point, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 45.8 miles from Dana Point — 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 Dana Point 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.