- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Laguna Niguel business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
Laguna Niguel is residential nearly all the way through, so the people we work with here mostly earn their money somewhere else — in the Irvine and Aliso Viejo office corridors, in federal service, or from a career that has already ended. The recurring questions are what to do with a Thrift Savings Plan balance, how a 401(k) from two employers ago should be consolidated, and how a long-held house passes to the next generation.
Start with the honest part: we are 42.4 miles from Laguna Niguel
We do not have an office in Laguna Niguel, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 42.4 miles away. If a firm's Laguna Niguel 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 Niguel 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 Niguel
There is no downtown here and there is not meant to be one. Laguna Niguel was laid out as a large residential plan beginning in the early 1960s, filled in over three decades, and incorporated in 1989 once it was substantially built. What it has instead of a commercial core is Crown Valley Parkway, a handful of shopping centres at the major intersections, a regional park with a lake in the middle of the city, and a very large number of homeowners associations. Almost everyone drives out of the city to work: north to the Irvine business complexes and the Aliso Viejo office campuses, south to the medical corridor around Crown Valley, or nowhere at all if the job went remote and stayed that way.
The exception, and the interesting one, is federal. The Chet Holifield Federal Building — the stepped concrete ziggurat off Avila Road, unmistakable from the 73 — has anchored a federal-agency workforce in this part of the county since it opened in 1971, and south Orange County still has a real population of current and retired federal employees. That is a genuinely under-served group, because a federal retirement is not one thing. FERS has three legs: the basic annuity, Social Security, and the Thrift Savings Plan. Each of the three has its own timing decision, and they interact. The annuity is a formula with a survivor election attached that is effectively permanent once you file. The retirement supplement paid to some people who leave before 62 is earnings-tested and then stops. And the TSP is one of the lowest-cost large retirement plans in the country, which is exactly why so many people are encouraged to move it somewhere more expensive the week they retire.
The other half of the work here is the house. The tracts along Moulton Parkway and up toward Niguel Road have been in the same hands for decades, and the gap between the assessed value and the market value is now the single biggest number in most of these households' financial lives. That makes Proposition 19, the primary-residence gain exclusion and the basis step-up at death the questions that come up first, usually phrased as "can our daughter keep it?" Proposition 19 · California estate basics.
The local employer base
Federal employees and retirees under FERS
The basic annuity, Social Security and the Thrift Savings Plan have to be planned as one thing. We model the retirement date, the survivor election and the withdrawal order together — and we have no product to sell you that competes with the TSP, which is not true of everyone who calls you in your last year of service.
The Irvine and Aliso Viejo office corridors
Most working residents commute to them. Private 401(k)s, sometimes with restricted stock or an employee stock purchase plan attached, and a trail of abandoned accounts from previous employers. Consolidation by direct trustee-to-trustee transfer is dull and it is where the money is. Rollovers.
Capistrano Unified School District
The district's schools serve the city. Teachers and counsellors belong to CalSTRS; the classified payroll — office staff, aides, transport, maintenance — belongs to CalPERS. As with every district in south county, the supplemental 403(b) menu is a separate question from the pension and deserves a costing nobody on campus is going to volunteer.
Medical and professional offices on Crown Valley
Practices, dental and specialty groups along the Crown Valley corridor toward the hospital. Owner-run practices frequently have room for a far better plan than the one they inherited from a payroll provider. Dental practices · Medical practices.
Public pensions and rollovers
The distinctive system in Laguna Niguel is federal rather than Californian. If you are in FERS, the annuity and the Thrift Savings Plan are separate decisions and only one of them is irreversible — think hard before you elect a survivor benefit, and think just as hard before you move a TSP balance out of a plan whose costs almost nothing in the retail market can match. The California systems are the supporting cast here: CalSTRS and CalPERS at Capistrano Unified, CalPERS at the city, OCERS for anyone on the county payroll. All the systems, explained · Roth conversion calculator.
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 Niguel 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 Niguel questions
I am retiring from federal service. Should I move my TSP into an IRA?
Usually not, and be sceptical of anyone who says otherwise before asking you a single question. The TSP's internal costs are among the lowest available anywhere, and an IRA that charges more has to earn that difference back before you are even level. There are real reasons to move some or all of it — you want investments the plan does not offer, you want a single account for estate simplicity, you want withdrawal flexibility the plan's rules do not give you, or you are doing partial Roth conversions that are easier to manage outside. Those are decisions, not defaults. If we ever recommend moving it, you will get the cost comparison in writing, and our fee does not change based on which way you go.
What is the survivor election on a federal annuity actually costing us?
It is priced as a permanent reduction to your annuity in exchange for continuing income to your spouse, and it also governs whether they keep the health coverage — which is often the part that decides it. The election is made at retirement and is very difficult to change afterwards. The right way to approach it is to compare the reduction against what it would cost to replicate that income another way, and against what the surviving spouse would actually have from every other source. That is arithmetic, and we will do it with you before you sign.
Our daughter wants to keep the house when we are gone. Can she?
She can inherit it. Whether she keeps the property tax bill you have been paying is the harder question, and since Proposition 19 took effect in 2021 the answer is much more often no — the parent-to-child exclusion generally now requires her to make it her own principal residence, and even then it is capped rather than unlimited. Run the actual numbers before assuming either outcome, because "keep the house" can quietly mean a tax bill she cannot carry. Proposition 19.
Do you actually meet clients from Laguna Niguel, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 42.4 miles from Laguna Niguel — 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 Niguel 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.