- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Los Feliz business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
Los Feliz runs on self-employment: writers, editors, designers, architects, therapists, photographers, small production companies. Income arrives on invoices rather than a payroll, which means nobody is auto-enrolling anybody and the default retirement account is whatever you opened yourself. Most people in that position are using an IRA and stopping there, when a SEP or a solo 401(k) would take several times as much.
Start with the honest part: we are 23.1 miles from Los Feliz
We do not have an office in Los Feliz, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 23.1 miles away. If a firm's Los Feliz 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 Los Feliz 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 Los Feliz
Los Feliz is two commercial strips and the streets around them. Vermont Avenue and Hillhurst Avenue carry the restaurants, bookshops, coffee and small offices; between Los Feliz Boulevard and Franklin the housing is 1920s Spanish revival, Craftsman and courtyard apartments, and above Franklin the streets climb into the hills toward Griffith Park, the Observatory and the Greek Theatre. Barnsdall Art Park and the Hollyhock House sit on the hill at Hollywood and Vermont, and the American Film Institute's campus is at Western. John Marshall High School serves the neighbourhood. The apartment stock is largely pre-1978 and covered by the City of Los Angeles Rent Stabilization Ordinance, so a long-tenured renter and a recent buyer on the same block can be paying wildly different amounts for the same square footage.
The structural fact here is self-employment. A very large share of working residents are paid on 1099s and invoices rather than through payroll — freelance writers and editors, designers, composers, photographers, architects, therapists in private practice, consultants, and a long tail of one- and two-person production companies. Nobody enrols you in anything. No employer matches anything. There is no annual open enrolment prompting a decision. The result we see over and over is a competent, well-paid person contributing to an IRA, hitting the limit, and concluding that is what is available — when a SEP-IRA lets a self-employed person contribute a percentage of net self-employment income far above that, and a solo 401(k) adds an employee deferral on top of an employer contribution, which usually means more money away at the same income and allows Roth treatment on part of it. Solo 401(k), explained · Which plan fits which situation · 401(k) against IRA.
The rest of the freelance problem is cash flow rather than investment selection. Quarterly estimated taxes on income that arrived unevenly. Health insurance bought on the exchange rather than subsidised by an employer. A slow quarter that has to be survived without a paycheque behind it. What works is boring and mechanical: a separate account that takes a fixed percentage of every payment for tax before anything else touches it, a reserve sized to a bad quarter rather than to a number of months, and a retirement contribution made as a share of what actually arrived instead of a monthly figure invented in January. One caution on timing: when a plan has to be opened, and when it has to be funded, are two separate dates, they are not the same for a SEP as for a solo 401(k), and both have been amended recently — ask your CPA for the current one. Retirement planning on irregular income.
The local employer base
Self-employment, which is the largest employer here
Freelance and contract work across writing, editing, design, architecture, music, photography and private practice. You are the employer, which is the part people miss: an employer can sponsor a retirement plan, and a sole proprietor with no staff has the widest choice of any taxpayer in the country. Start here.
Small production, post and design studios
Vermont, Hillhurst and Los Feliz Boulevard carry dozens of firms with two to fifteen people, usually a mix of W-2 staff and 1099 contractors on the same project. Every one with an employee on payroll is inside the state retirement mandate, and most owners have not looked at it. Business retirement plans.
Los Angeles Unified campuses
John Marshall High School and the neighbourhood elementaries. The group most often overlooked here is classified staff — instructional aides, office and cafeteria personnel, custodians — who are CalPERS members on part-time or lower-paid schedules, which produces a small pension that has to be planned around rather than relied on. CalPERS.
Hospitals a mile south in East Hollywood
Kaiser Permanente's Los Angeles Medical Center and Children's Hospital Los Angeles employ a great many Los Feliz residents. Both are private or nonprofit employers with employer-sponsored plans rather than public pensions, so the account is the retirement and its costs matter accordingly. Healthcare employers.
Public pensions and rollovers
There is almost no public-pension exposure in Los Feliz outside the school campuses. That sounds like an absence and it is actually the point: a pension arrives with a plan office, an annual statement, a deadline and somebody whose job it is to send you paperwork. A self-employed retirement has none of those. Nobody will write to you, nobody will remind you, and the account will do exactly what you set it to do and nothing more. Which is why the single most valuable thing here is not fund selection but an automatic transfer that happens whether or not you remember. The public systems, if one applies to you · Why the automatic part matters.
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 Los Feliz 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.
Los Feliz questions
I am freelance. SEP-IRA or solo 401(k)?
For most people with no employees, the solo 401(k), for two reasons. It lets you make an employee deferral and an employer contribution, so at the same level of income you can usually put away more than a SEP allows; and it can accept Roth deferrals, which a SEP traditionally could not. The SEP wins on simplicity — it is easier to open, has no annual filing until the balance is large, and can be funded later. The one thing that disqualifies the solo 401(k) entirely is having eligible employees other than a spouse. The full comparison.
I have been putting money in an IRA for years and nothing else. Have I been doing it wrong?
Not wrong — capped. If your income is self-employment income, you have been using the smallest of the accounts available to you and leaving the larger ones unopened. The fix is not retroactive, but it is immediate: open the right plan, size the contribution against what the business actually earned, and keep the IRA for what it is good at. There is no penalty for having done it the simple way; there is just a much larger number available once you stop. Fifteen minutes will settle which one.
My income is different every quarter. How much should I be putting away?
Use a percentage, not a figure. Every payment that arrives gets split the same way before anything is spent: a fixed share straight to the tax account, a share to the reserve until it covers a genuinely bad quarter, and a share to the retirement plan. Then live on what is left. The advantage is that it self-adjusts — a big month contributes more and a thin month contributes less, and neither one requires you to make a decision while you are worried. Investing it as it arrives.
Do you actually meet clients from Los Feliz, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 23.1 miles from Los Feliz — 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 Los Feliz 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.