- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Encino business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
We work with Encino professionals and entertainment-industry households: the practice owners, brokers, agents and advisers in the Ventura Boulevard offices, and the crew and guild members whose income arrives in irregular blocks. The useful question here is seldom which fund to buy. It is how to build a plan around a year that might be triple the previous one, or half of it, and is known only in arrears.
Start with the honest part: we are 37.3 miles from Encino
We do not have an office in Encino, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 37.3 miles away. If a firm's Encino 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 Encino 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 Encino
Encino is where the Valley keeps its professional-services core. The office buildings clustered along Ventura between Balboa and Hayvenhurst hold business managers, entertainment and family law practices, accounting firms, insurance and estate planning offices, commercial and residential brokerages and a dense layer of medical and dental suites. Encino Hospital Medical Center sits just off the boulevard. South of Ventura the streets climb into large lots; north of it the housing is apartment blocks and older single-family tracts, and the two populations rarely appear in the same sentence in a marketing brochure. The published median of $104,240 sits between them and describes neither.
The distinctive local fact is the entertainment household. A great many Encino families earn their living in production and post-production, in the guilds, in music, or in the businesses that serve them — and their income does not behave like a salary. It arrives in blocks tied to the shooting schedule, it is topped up unpredictably by residuals, and it is frequently paid through a loan-out corporation that turns the earner into their own employer with payroll, a corporate return and California's minimum franchise tax attached. Whether that structure is right for you is a question for your CPA and your attorney. What follows from it — that a loan-out can sponsor a retirement plan for its owner's wages — is squarely our territory and is routinely left unused.
Encino also has a large Iranian-American and Israeli-American community, and a lot of multigenerational family wealth held in businesses and property rather than in accounts. Family meetings that move between two languages and three generations are ordinary work for us. So is the more uncomfortable conversation about what happens to a family business when the founder stops. Trusts and family accounts · California estate basics.
The local employer base
Ventura Boulevard professional offices
Business management, law, accounting, insurance and brokerage. Owner and partner income arrives on a K-1 with estimated tax attached, which makes retirement contributions a December decision rather than a monthly habit. Accounting firms · Real estate.
Entertainment-industry households
IATSE and Teamsters crew accrue through the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans, and the qualifying unit is an hour worked rather than a salary earned. Writers, directors and performers are in separate guild plans. None of these behave like a 401(k) and all of them punish a slow year twice.
Loan-out corporations
If you are paid through your own corporation you are an employer, and an employer can sponsor a solo 401(k) or a defined benefit plan against the wages it pays you. Structure and tax treatment belong to your CPA; the plan design and the investments are ours. Solo 401(k).
Encino Hospital Medical Center and outpatient practices
Employed staff are in a private hospital plan — a 403(b) or 401(k) — with no public pension behind it. Independent physicians and dentists in the surrounding suites need their own plan entirely, and most have one that was designed for a smaller practice than they now run.
Public pensions and rollovers
Encino is not a public-pension neighbourhood, so the equivalents are the multiemployer plans and the plan you sponsor for yourself. The multiemployer plans deserve particular attention because they are governed by trust agreements rather than by your employer: vesting is by credited years, eligibility is by hours, and the paperwork arrives from a plan office rather than from HR. Keeping the beneficiary designations current across a guild plan, an old 401(k) and an IRA is the sort of administrative housekeeping that quietly decides who inherits what. Retirement systems overview.
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 Encino 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.
Encino questions
I already have a business manager. Why would I also need an investment adviser?
Because they are different jobs. A business manager typically runs the household's bill paying, bookkeeping, payroll for the loan-out and coordination with the CPA. Discretionary investment management under a fiduciary standard is a separate function with separate registration. Some firms do both well; the thing to establish is whether whoever manages the portfolio is a fiduciary in writing and how they are paid. We take no referral fees in either direction. Our standard.
My income was enormous one year and modest the next. How do I plan around that?
You plan on a multi-year basis instead of an annual one. In practice: hold a cash reserve sized measured against a bad year rather than against a tidy number of months, make the large retirement contribution in the year you can rather than spreading it evenly, and look at whether a low year is the right time to convert some pre-tax balance to Roth while your bracket is down. That last one is a tax decision to run past your CPA. Roth conversion tool.
Should my loan-out corporation have a retirement plan?
If it pays you W-2 wages and you have no other employees, it can sponsor a solo 401(k), and the combined employee and employer contributions are substantially larger than an IRA allows. Whether your entity should exist at all, and how much salary it should pay you, are questions for your CPA and attorney — we do not give tax or legal advice. Once those are settled, the plan itself is straightforward. How we set one up.
Do you actually meet clients from Encino, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 37.3 miles from Encino — 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 Encino 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.