- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Rolling Hills business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
Rolling Hills is a small number of households, most of them past the stage where the question is how to accumulate. The money was earned somewhere else over a long career, and what is left to decide is sequencing and transfer: which account to draw first, when to claim Social Security, what required distributions do to a tax bracket, and what happens to a house held since a very different decade.
Start with the honest part: we are 23.1 miles from Rolling Hills
We do not have an office in Rolling 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 23.1 miles away. If a firm's Rolling 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 Rolling 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 Rolling Hills
Rolling Hills incorporated in 1957 and has stayed exactly what it set out to be: entirely residential, entirely gated, on private roads maintained alongside the community association, with bridle trails running between the properties and no shops, offices or industrial land anywhere inside the city limits. It is a separate city from Rolling Hills Estates and from Rancho Palos Verdes, which is a distinction lost on almost everyone who does not live here. Policing and fire come from Los Angeles County. Children attend Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified schools outside the gates. The income figure printed on this page is the top of the survey's scale rather than a measurement of the place — the American Community Survey stops counting at $250,000. Rolling Hills was one of three cities we deliberately left out of the employer-facing pages for the state retirement mandate, because there is no employer here to address.
What that leaves is decumulation, which is quietly the hardest part of the whole discipline and the part most advice skips. The order in which accounts are spent changes the lifetime tax bill by a large amount: pre-tax balances, taxable accounts with embedded gains, and Roth money each behave differently and each want to be used at a different point. The window between the last paycheque and the first required distribution is the cheapest bracket a household will ever occupy again, and it is the only sensible time to convert pre-tax money to Roth at a controlled rate — and it closes. Once required distributions start, they are a floor rather than a choice, and for the charitably inclined a qualified charitable distribution satisfies part of that obligation without the income ever landing on the return. Every one of these is arithmetic rather than opinion. Required distributions · Roth conversion tool · Qualified charitable distributions · When to claim.
The transfer side is where the surprises are. A house held on this peninsula for forty years carries an assessed value under Proposition 13 that bears no relation to what it is worth, and Proposition 19 only lets a child keep that base if the property becomes the child's own principal residence, and then only up to a limit — which changes what inheriting it actually costs. Retirement accounts are worse understood still: most adult children who inherit an IRA now have roughly ten years to empty it rather than a lifetime to stretch it, and in some cases must take something out each year along the way, landing that income squarely in their own peak earning years. Those rules were rewritten recently and your CPA should confirm which version applies to your family. What we can do is make sure the beneficiary forms say what you think they say, because those override the will and the trust both. Proposition 19 · Working with trusts.
The local employer base
No commercial zoning, and therefore no employer base
Rolling Hills has 1,677 residents and not one parcel zoned for business. There is no downtown, no office park and no retail. Residents earned their income elsewhere — from careers, practices, companies and property — and any page describing a local business district is describing a neighbouring city.
Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District
The largest public employer on the peninsula, serving all four cities on it. Certificated staff are CalSTRS members and classified staff are in CalPERS, with the usual supplemental 403(b) and 457(b) products sold on campus and rarely costed. CalSTRS · 403(b) plans.
Contracted Los Angeles County services
The city buys its policing and fire protection from the county, so the uniformed staff working here are county employees in LACERA rather than municipal employees in CalPERS. Retired county safety members living on the peninsula are a real part of the local picture. LACERA.
Retired professionals, executives and business owners
Where the income actually comes from: portfolios, a deferred compensation plan paying out on a fixed schedule, a partnership interest, rental property, and in some cases a frozen corporate pension from an employer that closed the plan years ago. Pension against lump sum.
Public pensions and rollovers
Very little of Rolling Hills draws a California public pension directly. The systems that touch the city are Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified on CalSTRS and CalPERS and the county's LACERA behind contracted services. What does turn up regularly in these households is a legacy corporate pension — frozen, sometimes offering a lump sum in place of the monthly benefit, and frequently decided on the wrong basis. That choice depends on interest rates at the moment it is offered, on how long the income is likely to be needed, on what the survivor terms are, and on what the federal guarantee covers if the plan sponsor fails. It is irreversible, and it deserves an afternoon rather than a phone call. The lump sum decision · Retirement systems overview.
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 Rolling 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.
Rolling Hills questions
My old employer has offered a lump sum instead of the monthly pension. How do I decide?
By comparing what the lump sum can reasonably be expected to produce as income against what the pension pays for certain, and then by looking at the parts that are not about money. The monthly benefit removes longevity risk and investment risk from you; the lump sum gives you control, the ability to leave a balance to your children, and all of that risk back. The size of the offer moves with interest rates at the moment it is made. Survivor terms differ between the two. And if the sponsor's plan is in difficulty, the federal guarantee has limits worth reading. We model it; we do not push either way. The full comparison.
We want the house to pass to our children without creating a tax problem.
Two separate taxes, and they behave in opposite directions. For income tax, assets generally receive a new cost basis at death, which is why selling appreciated property during your lifetime and gifting the proceeds is often the more expensive route. For property tax, Proposition 19 ended the broad parent-to-child exclusion: a child now keeps the low assessed value only by making the home their own principal residence, and only up to a cap above the existing base. Whether your children would actually live here is therefore a financial question and not only a sentimental one. Your estate attorney and the county assessor have the final word. What changed.
Which accounts should we spend first?
Rarely the obvious one. The instinct is to spend taxable money and let the pre-tax accounts grow, but that quietly builds a required distribution large enough to push a later year into a much higher bracket, and it wastes the low-income years in between when pre-tax money could have been converted cheaply. A common shape is to spend from taxable accounts while converting a controlled amount of pre-tax money each year up to the top of a chosen bracket, then let required distributions and Social Security take over. The right version depends on your actual numbers and on your CPA's read of the brackets. Model it.
Do you actually meet clients from Rolling Hills, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 23.1 miles from Rolling 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 Rolling 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.