- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Koreatown business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
Koreatown is 71,189 people in a very small area, a median household income of $61,184, and one of the densest concentrations of owner-run businesses in Los Angeles. We work with those owners and with the families who work for them — a first investment account, an ITIN household that has been told it cannot open one, a restaurant that now has to offer a retirement plan, a couple supporting parents here and abroad.
Start with the honest part: we are 20.7 miles from Koreatown
We do not have an office in Koreatown, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 20.7 miles away. If a firm's Koreatown 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 Koreatown 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 Koreatown
Koreatown packs 71,189 residents into a few square miles between Beverly and Olympic, which makes it one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in the country. The commercial grid is the whole point: Wilshire for the office towers and the banks, Olympic for the restaurants and markets, Vermont and Western for everything else, with Sixth Street and Normandie filling in between. Koreatown Plaza, Chapman Plaza, City Center on Sixth and the Wiltern at Wilshire and Western are the landmarks people navigate by. Metro's D Line runs beneath Wilshire with stations at Vermont, Normandie and Western, and the B Line clips the northern edge at Vermont. The housing is mostly pre-1978 apartment stock covered by the City of Los Angeles Rent Stabilization Ordinance, and the overwhelming majority of households rent rather than own. Two communities share the neighbourhood: a Korean-American business and institutional base that built the corridor, and a large Latino population, a great many of whom work in the same businesses.
The business density here is the thing no generic financial page accounts for. Restaurants and markets, salons and nail shops, dental and medical suites, insurance and tax preparation offices, karaoke and nightlife, wholesale and import trade, contractors and building services — most with between three and twenty employees, many with family members on the payroll, and a great many with the owner working the floor. Koreatown also has something almost no other neighbourhood in Los Angeles has: its own banks. Hanmi Bank and Bank of Hope are headquartered on the Wilshire corridor and were built to lend to exactly these businesses, alongside several smaller community banks. That is a genuine advantage on the borrowing side, and it has no equivalent on the retirement side. The state's mandate now reaches every employer in California with an employee on payroll, and for an owner the arithmetic usually breaks the same way: the state programme is a Roth IRA with a $7,500 limit, which does very little for someone trying to build their own retirement, so the real choice is between registering and sponsoring a plan that also works for you. Compare the two · Business retirement plans.
The other half of this page is for first-generation households, and we will be specific rather than vague about it. If you file taxes with an ITIN, you are filing and you have reportable income, and the practical question is which custodian will open which account and what documentation it wants — that varies by firm, it is a procedural question rather than a legal one, and we will find out and tell you plainly instead of guessing at you. Work that is not covered by Social Security builds no Social Security credit, which makes an account you own yourself the entire retirement rather than a supplement to one. And a great many households here are supporting parents in one direction and children in the other at the same time, which is a budgeting problem before it is an investing one. El ITIN y sus cuentas · Familias de estatus mixto · Primera generación · Supporting parents while saving. One honest limit: our material exists in English and in Spanish, written originally in both. It does not exist in Korean, and we are not going to run this page through a machine and call that service.
The local employer base
The Koreatown community banks
Hanmi Bank and Bank of Hope are headquartered on the Wilshire corridor, with several smaller community banks alongside them. Their staff are on private 401(k) plans; more importantly for the neighbourhood, they are the lenders behind a very large share of the corridor's small businesses. Insurance and financial services.
Restaurants, markets, salons and nightlife
Olympic, Vermont, Western and Sixth carry hundreds of owner-run businesses with small payrolls, long hours and family labour. Tipped and hourly staff, high turnover, and an owner who is usually the last person in the building without a retirement account. Restaurants · Salons · Restaurantes, en español.
Professional practices on Wilshire and Sixth
Dental, medical, optometry, insurance, accounting, immigration and real estate offices, almost all owner-operated. At practice income levels a SEP or a solo 401(k) is only the starting point — a 401(k) with profit sharing, and sometimes a cash balance plan over it, moves several times more. Dental practices · Cash balance plans.
Building services in the Wilshire towers
Janitorial, security, maintenance, parking and hotel staff working in the office and hotel buildings along Wilshire — frequently employed by a contractor rather than by the building, so the plan question follows the contractor. Some are covered by a union plan; most are covered by nothing. Security firms · Staffing companies.
Public pensions and rollovers
Koreatown has very little CalPERS or CalSTRS in it. The exception is the Los Angeles Unified campuses in and around the neighbourhood, where certificated staff are CalSTRS members and classified staff are in CalPERS. For nearly everybody else, retirement will be Social Security plus whatever was built personally — and for some households in this neighbourhood, Social Security will be a smaller part of that than they expect, because credits are only earned on covered work. That is not a reason for despair; it is a reason to open the account earlier and make it automatic. El Seguro Social, explicado · Building first-generation wealth · How we work with first-generation families.
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 Koreatown 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.
Koreatown questions
I file with an ITIN. Can I open an investment account at all?
Often yes, and the honest answer is that it depends on the custodian rather than on the law. An ITIN is issued by the IRS so that people who are not eligible for a Social Security number can file and pay taxes, and plenty of brokerage firms will open accounts for ITIN holders — but the documentation each one asks for is different, and some will not. What we will do is check with the custodian before you fill in anything, tell you exactly what is required, and say so plainly if the answer is no rather than letting you find out at the end. Questions about your tax filing itself belong to a CPA or an accredited representative. Más sobre el ITIN.
I own a restaurant on Olympic with nine employees and no retirement plan. Where do I start?
With one decision, and it is now overdue rather than upcoming: register with the state programme, or sponsor your own plan and certify the exemption. The mandate reaches every California employer with at least one employee. Which way to go turns on you rather than on them — the state programme is a Roth IRA with a $7,500 limit and income rules that may shut you out of it entirely, whereas a 401(k) with a safe harbour design lets you put away far more for yourself while controlling what it costs to cover everyone else. Restaurants · Safe harbor · Planes para negocios, en español.
Do you have anything in Korean?
No, and we would rather say that than pretend. We advise in English and in Spanish, and our written material exists originally in both languages rather than being run through a translator. There is no Korean-language version of it. If a financial conversation in Korean is what your family actually needs — and for a lot of households here it is, especially when parents are in the room — then a firm that can genuinely do that is a better fit than one that cannot, and we will say so on the first call rather than the fifth.
Do you actually meet clients from Koreatown, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 20.7 miles from Koreatown — 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 Koreatown 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.