- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Santa Clarita business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
Santa Clarita is a master-planned commuter city and the planning reflects that: a large mortgage, two working parents, children in Hart District schools, and an employer somewhere down the 5 or the 14. The questions are the ordinary hard ones — savings rate, college, whether a few years out of the workforce broke the plan — asked by households with real assets and no coordination.
Start with the honest part: we are 56.3 miles from Santa Clarita
We do not have an office in Santa Clarita, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 56.3 miles away. If a firm's Santa Clarita 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 Santa Clarita 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 Santa Clarita
Santa Clarita is four communities inside one city — Newhall, Saugus, Canyon Country and Valencia — alongside unincorporated neighbours that share its schools and its postcodes, including Stevenson Ranch and Castaic. It was incorporated in 1987 and it shows: master-planned street layouts, paseos, a large and consistent housing stock, and a median household income of $123,062. It is also, in the plainest terms, a place a great many people sleep in and work elsewhere from, which is why the 5 northbound at six in the evening looks the way it does.
There is a real local economy underneath that. College of the Canyons is one of the larger community colleges in the state and a CalSTRS and CalPERS employer. Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital is the valley's only hospital and one of its largest private employers. Princess Cruises has been headquartered here for many years. Six Flags Magic Mountain, the Valencia Industrial Center, CalArts, the William S. Hart Union High School District and the Saugus, Newhall and Sulphur Springs elementary districts fill in most of the rest. Film and television production spills over the hill regularly, which puts a number of households on entertainment-industry payrolls with uneven income and multiemployer benefit plans.
The typical conversation here is about coordination rather than crisis. Two employer plans nobody has ever looked at side by side, a 529 opened for the first child and forgotten for the second, an old rollover IRA that has sat in cash since 2019, a term life policy expiring in four years, and a household doing well that still could not tell you whether it is on track. Putting all of it in one place and running the arithmetic is unglamorous, and it is most of the value. Retirement projection · how allocation actually works · rebalancing.
The local employer base
College of the Canyons
Faculty are CalSTRS members, classified staff are in CalPERS, and both have 403(b) and 457(b) plans available. Part-time and adjunct faculty fall under the CalSTRS Cash Balance Benefit arrangements, which are widely misunderstood by the people in them.
Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital
An independent non-profit hospital, so clinical and support staff are in a 403(b) rather than a pension. The match, the vesting schedule and the fund menu do all of the work, and none of the three is explained well at orientation.
Princess Cruises and the Valencia corporate base
Corporate employers in the Valencia Industrial Center and along Rye Canyon run private 401(k) plans, some with deferred compensation for senior staff. A non-qualified deferral election is made a year in advance and is not a decision to make casually.
William S. Hart Union and the elementary districts
Hart, Saugus, Newhall and Sulphur Springs put certificated staff in CalSTRS and classified staff in CalPERS. In a valley otherwise full of private plans, these are the households with a guaranteed monthly benefit, and it changes how the rest of the portfolio should be built.
Public pensions and rollovers
CalSTRS and CalPERS both matter in Santa Clarita, through the four school districts, College of the Canyons and the city itself — but most working residents have no pension at all. They have a 401(k) or a 403(b), plus whatever was left behind at previous employers down the freeway. Households containing one of each are the interesting case: a pension can act as the stable base that allows the rest of the portfolio to hold more equity, but only if somebody has actually looked at both together. CalSTRS · CalPERS · building the allocation around it.
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 Santa Clarita 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.
Santa Clarita questions
We both work, we save, and we still have no idea whether we are on track. Where does that get answered?
In a projection built from your actual numbers rather than a rule of thumb — current balances, contribution rates, the mortgage payoff date, when each of you would stop working, and what you genuinely spend, which is the figure most households have never measured. The output is not one number but a range and a set of levers: save more, work longer, spend less, or take more risk. Knowing which lever moves the answer most is the useful part. Start with the calculator.
My income comes from production work and it is wildly uneven. Does that break everything?
No, it changes the design. Irregular income needs a larger cash buffer, a baseline saving amount that survives a slow quarter, and a rule for the good quarters — a fixed percentage of anything above the baseline going into the plan before it becomes lifestyle. If you work through a loan-out corporation there is a plan choice to make as well, because a Solo 401(k) inside it absorbs far more than an IRA can. How Solo 401(k)s work.
Fifty-six miles each way. Realistically, how often would we meet?
Twice in the first year is typical — a fifteen-minute introductory call, then a longer planning session — and once a year after that, with calls in between whenever something changes. Most of it works on video, and that is not a compromise: sharing a screen with the actual spreadsheet on it beats passing paper across a table. If you would rather come to Norwalk, the office is on Rosecrans with parking on site, and evenings run by video.
Do you actually meet clients from Santa Clarita, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 56.3 miles from Santa Clarita — 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 Santa Clarita 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.