- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Laguna Hills business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
More of our Laguna Hills conversations are about spending money than accumulating it. This is a city of near-retirees, retirees and the medical and senior-services workforce that serves them, and the questions are the technical ones: which account to draw from first, whether to convert in the gap years before required distributions start, when to file for Social Security, and how to give to charity without paying for the privilege.
Start with the honest part: we are 37.4 miles from Laguna Hills
We do not have an office in Laguna Hills, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 37.4 miles away. If a firm's Laguna Hills 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 Laguna Hills 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 Laguna Hills
Laguna Hills incorporated in 1991 and sits at a crossroads: the 5 through the middle of it, El Toro Road and Paseo de Valencia across it, and Laguna Woods immediately to the west. That neighbour matters more to the character of this city than anything inside its own boundaries. Laguna Woods Village is one of the largest senior communities in the country and it incorporated as its own city in 1999, but the businesses that serve it — home health, in-home care, mobility and medical equipment, geriatric and specialty practices, hearing and vision, elder-law and fiduciary offices — are spread across Laguna Hills. So is the hospital they orbit: MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center on Health Center Drive, with a dense ring of medical office buildings, imaging, dialysis and surgical centres around it. MemorialCare employees · Healthcare · Senior care.
The residents track that. There is a large population here at or approaching the end of working life, and their planning problem is genuinely different from the one every accumulation article is written about. The highest-value years in a retirement are usually the ones between the last pay cheque and the point where required minimum distributions and Social Security both switch on — a window where taxable income is temporarily low and largely under your control. What you do in that window compounds for the rest of your life: partial Roth conversions sized to fill a bracket and not exceed it, deliberate sequencing across taxable, tax-deferred and Roth accounts, deciding when to claim Social Security rather than defaulting to the first eligible date, and being aware that income in one year can raise Medicare premiums two years later. Miss the window and it does not come back. Roth conversion calculator · When to claim · RMD calculator.
Charitable giving is the other recurring one, and it is where the simplest change saves the most. Once you are old enough, a qualified charitable distribution sends money straight from an IRA to the charity without it ever appearing in your income — which beats writing a cheque for most people who no longer itemise, and can count toward a required distribution. Most of the households who should be doing it have never had it explained. How QCDs work.
The local employer base
MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center
The city's anchor employer, on Health Center Drive. Hospital and health-system staff are typically in a 403(b) or 401(k) rather than a public pension, sometimes with more than one plan running at once after a merger or a system change. The employer guide.
Medical offices and senior-services businesses
Specialty practices, imaging, dialysis, surgical centres, home health, in-home care and medical-equipment firms across the El Toro Road and Paseo de Valencia corridors. Small employers, high clinical pay, and plan design that rarely matches the owner's actual income. Cash balance plans.
Saddleback Valley Unified School District
Laguna Hills' schools are Saddleback Valley Unified. The credentialed side of the payroll is in CalSTRS and the classified side is in CalPERS. Teachers retiring from this district face the same withdrawal-order problem as everyone else, with the added question of how a 403(b) and a pension should be drawn against each other.
Per-diem and contract clinicians
A hospital-and-practice economy produces a large number of nurses, therapists and technicians working per diem or on a 1099 across several employers. No plan, no match, and often no idea that a solo 401(k) is available on that income. Solo 401(k).
Public pensions and rollovers
Public pensions matter less here than in most cities this size. The district accounts for the CalSTRS and CalPERS members, city hall for a handful more, and the county payroll for the OCERS ones — but the dominant retirement asset in Laguna Hills is a 403(b) or 401(k) balance belonging to someone who is about to stop adding to it and start spending it. That flips the whole question. The risk is no longer whether you saved enough; it is the order of returns in the first decade of withdrawals and the order of accounts you draw from. Sequence-of-returns risk · 403(b) plans · OCERS.
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 Laguna Hills 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.
Laguna Hills questions
We retire in two years. What is the first thing to do?
Build the income plan before you touch anything, because the sequence is worth more than any individual decision inside it. Lay out every source and its start date — pension if there is one, Social Security for each spouse, IRA and 403(b) balances, Roth, taxable, the house. Then work out the years between your last pay cheque and the point where distributions become compulsory, because that is the only stretch where you meaningfully control your taxable income. Decisions about conversions, when to claim, and which account funds which year all get made inside that map. Making them one at a time as they arrive is how people end up paying tax twice for the same dollar of spending.
We give to charity every year. Is there a better way than writing a cheque?
For most people over the qualifying age with an IRA, yes. A qualified charitable distribution goes directly from the IRA to the charity and never enters your adjusted gross income — which is better than a deduction if you no longer itemise, and can count toward a required distribution. The mechanics have to be right: it must go straight to the charity, it has to be an eligible organisation, and the paperwork needs to reflect what actually happened. Do it wrong and it is simply a taxable withdrawal you then donated. The full explanation.
I am a per-diem nurse. Everything is 1099 and nobody offers me a plan.
Then you open your own, and the options are better than an employee's. On self-employment income a solo 401(k) lets you contribute both as the employee and as the employer, which at per-diem rates can be a substantial amount, and it can be Roth or pre-tax. A SEP-IRA is simpler and takes a percentage of net earnings. Either can be set up without a payroll provider. The discipline that has to come first is the quarterly estimate — on 1099 income nobody is withholding for you, and a contribution funded with money that belonged to the IRS is a problem, not a plan.
Do you actually meet clients from Laguna Hills, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 37.4 miles from Laguna Hills — 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 Laguna Hills 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.