- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your Studio City business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
We work with the households behind the Radford lot and the post-production houses: editors, camera and sound crew, script supervisors, writers and producers, plus the Ventura Boulevard business owners who serve them. Income arrives in bursts, health coverage is earned in hours rather than salary, and a slow year threatens both at once. That is the planning problem this page is actually about.
Start with the honest part: we are 30.0 miles from Studio City
We do not have an office in Studio City, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 30.0 miles away. If a firm's Studio City 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 Studio City 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 Studio City
Studio City is the most single-industry of these fifteen places. Radford Studio Center — the lot most residents still call CBS — runs down the middle of it, the post houses and audio facilities cluster along Ventura and Lankershim, and Harvard-Westlake's campus sits at the Coldwater Canyon end. The Sunday farmers market and the Tujunga Village blocks give the neighbourhood a small-town feel that its economics do not support. Behind the front doors are grips, editors, assistant directors, costumers, showrunners, agents' assistants and a great many people between jobs at any given moment.
Here is the structural fact that generic financial advice never accounts for. Crew members covered by the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans earn both pension credit and health eligibility through qualifying hours worked under a collective agreement. Hours, not salary. So a thin year does not merely reduce income — it can put family health coverage at risk in the following period and slow pension accrual at the same time. Three consequences follow, and they run in the opposite direction from ordinary salaried advice: the cash reserve should be sized to a slow year rather than to three months of expenses; the reserve has a second job, which is covering a coverage gap; and the big retirement contribution belongs in the fat year, not spread evenly across a calendar.
Above that sit the guild members and the loan-out corporations, with residuals arriving on a schedule nobody controls and a corporate tax return attached to income that used to be a paycheque. Whether a loan-out is right for you, and what it should pay you, is a conversation for your CPA and your entertainment attorney. What the corporation can then do — sponsor a plan, absorb a large contribution in a good year — is ours, and it is the single most under-used tool in this neighbourhood. Retirement planning for irregular income.
The local employer base
Radford Studio Center and the production lots
IATSE and Teamsters crew working on the lot accrue through the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans. Eligibility is hours-based and administered by the plan office, not by the production that hired you, so your record follows you between employers.
Post-production, audio and visual effects houses
Ventura and Lankershim carry edit bays, mixing stages, colour and VFX shops. Some work is covered, much of it is not, and the same person may be a W-2 employee in March and a 1099 contractor in June. Two tax situations, two different retirement options.
Guild members: writers, directors, performers
Guild pension and health plans are multiemployer trusts with their own vesting rules, and residuals feed them on a lag. Statements arrive from a plan office and go unread for years. Reading yours against the rest of your assets is an hour well spent.
Ventura Boulevard small businesses
Restaurants, boutiques, studios and fitness businesses serving an industry that stops and starts. Every one with an employee is now inside the state retirement mandate, and for owners the choice between CalSavers and a real plan turns on whether the owner needs to save too. Compare.
Public pensions and rollovers
No CalPERS, no CalSTRS, and that is precisely why this page exists. The Studio City equivalent is a multiemployer defined benefit plan governed by a joint board of trustees, where your benefit is a function of credited hours and years rather than a final salary, and where the plan — not your employer — holds the record. Two things follow. Check your hours statement every year, because corrections get harder with time. And do not assume the plan alone replaces a career's income; for most crew households it is the floor, not the roof. How the systems differ.
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 Studio City 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.
Studio City questions
Some years I qualify for health coverage through my hours and some years I don't. How do I plan for that?
By treating the reserve as insurance rather than as savings. The number to work out is what a slow year actually costs your household — living expenses plus the cost of covering the family yourself for the months you are short — and holding that in cash and short instruments where it is genuinely reachable. It looks conservative next to a fully invested portfolio. It is what allows the rest of the portfolio to stay invested through a bad year rather than being sold at the worst moment.
Residuals arrive in unpredictable amounts. What should I do with them?
Decide the rule before the cheque arrives, because deciding afterwards is how they disappear. A workable default is to split each one three ways — a share to the tax set-aside, a share to the reserve until it reaches the slow-year number, and the remainder invested on the same schedule as everything else. Automatic beats optimal here, by a wide margin. Lump sums versus averaging in.
I had one very big year. Is it too late to do anything about the tax?
Ask that question in October, not in April — most of the useful moves close on 31 December, and some plan types must be established before year end to count for that year. The tax calculation itself belongs to your CPA and we will say so every time. What we can do is get the retirement plan opened and funded in time to be part of the conversation. Book a call.
Do you actually meet clients from Studio City, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 30.0 miles from Studio City — 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 Studio City 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.