- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your La Verne business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
La Verne brings us two households. One is university or district staff, in a 403(b) or CalSTRS, working out what retirement income will actually look like. The other is retired already, living in a house bought decades ago, and asking about withdrawal order, Medicare timing, trusts, and how to leave things to the children without leaving them a problem.
Start with the honest part: we are 28.9 miles from La Verne
We do not have an office in La Verne, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 28.9 miles away. If a firm's La Verne 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 La Verne 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 La Verne
The University of La Verne anchors the town in a way that is easy to miss driving through. It is a private, non-profit university, so the people who work there are in a 403(b) rather than a public pension — a balance they own outright, with no promised monthly cheque behind it. That is a fundamentally different retirement to the one a Bonita Unified teacher a mile away is walking into, and married couples routinely have one of each without ever having sat down to work out how the two are supposed to fit together.
Old Town La Verne along D Street and Bonita Avenue holds the small commercial base — professional offices, restaurants, a few long-standing family businesses — and Brackett Field sits on the south side with the flight schools and maintenance operations a general-aviation airport brings. But the defining local fact is age. This is a town with a large settled retired population, continuing-care communities among them, and a great deal of local wealth held in houses bought in the 1970s and 1980s at prices that now look imaginary.
That produces a specific set of questions, and they are mostly not about picking investments. They are about order: which account to draw from first so the tax bill stays smooth rather than spiky, when each spouse should claim Social Security given that the two claiming ages interact, whether the trust drafted in 2004 still says what the family believes it says, and what Proposition 19 did to the plan of the children simply keeping the house. California estate basics · what Proposition 19 changed · how we work alongside a trust. We coordinate with your attorney and your CPA; we do not replace either of them.
The local employer base
University of La Verne
A private university: faculty and staff are in a 403(b), not CalSTRS. The entire retirement outcome rests on the contribution rate, the investment menu and the fees inside it, which means it deserves attention a pension never requires.
Bonita Unified School District
The district offices are in La Verne and the schools serve both cities. Certificated staff are CalSTRS members facing an irreversible option election at retirement; classified staff are CalPERS. Many local households contain one of each.
Brackett Field and general aviation
Flight instruction, maintenance and charter operations run on small payrolls and uneven income. For self-employed instructors and mechanics a SEP IRA or a Solo 401(k) is usually the whole retirement plan, and the choice between them is not obvious.
Continuing-care communities and senior services
La Verne's retirement communities employ nursing, dining and administrative staff in private 401(k) and 403(b) plans. They also concentrate residents whose planning question is the entry fee, the monthly cost, and what remains for the estate.
Public pensions and rollovers
La Verne is unusual for the foothills in that much of its professional population has no public pension at all. University employees are 403(b) participants, and their retirement is whatever the balance will support — which puts the withdrawal strategy, and the returns in the first five years specifically, at the centre of everything. Bonita Unified households do have CalSTRS, and one of each inside a single marriage is the most common configuration we meet here. 403(b) plans · how much is enough · run your own numbers.
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 La Verne 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.
La Verne questions
My husband has CalSTRS and I have a university 403(b). How do we plan around two different things?
By treating the pension as the stable floor and the 403(b) as the flexible part. If a guaranteed monthly benefit already covers the household's fixed costs, the balance you control can often carry more equity than a rule of thumb would suggest — and where it does not, the opposite holds. The point is that these are not two decisions. Most households make them independently and end up with an allocation nobody would have chosen on purpose.
We want to leave the house to our daughter. Does she keep our property tax bill?
Not automatically, and not the way it worked before 2021. Under Proposition 19 the parent-child exclusion applies only where the child makes the home their own principal residence and files in time, and there is a cap above which the assessment steps up. If she intends to rent it out, assume a reassessment. The rules are laid out here; the filing itself is work for your attorney or the county assessor's office, not for us.
We already have a trust from years ago. Do we need anything from you?
Possibly nothing. But it is worth checking that the accounts are actually titled into it, and that beneficiary designations on retirement accounts — which pass outside the trust regardless of what the trust document says — still name the people you intend. That mismatch is the single most common estate problem we find, and looking at it costs nothing. How we work alongside an estate attorney.
Do you actually meet clients from La Verne, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 28.9 miles from La Verne — 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 La Verne 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.