- Fee-onlyno commissions
- No account minimumfor investment management
- English & Spanishnatively
- Accepting new clientsIn person in Norwalk, by video, or at your West Hollywood business
- Fiduciaryin writing, always
- DFPI-registeredCRD #311270
- In business sinceDecember 2020
- Free 15-minute callno obligation
West Hollywood is a city of renters, small businesses and people whose money arrangements are not built around a marriage. That last point is the one nobody writes about, and it changes the mechanics: the federal rules that quietly do most of the estate work for married couples simply do not apply, so beneficiary forms, a funded trust and a durable power of attorney stop being paperwork and start being the entire plan.
Start with the honest part: we are 26.8 miles from West Hollywood
We do not have an office in West Hollywood, and we are not going to imply otherwise with a service-area pin. our principal office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 26.8 miles away. If a firm's West Hollywood 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 West Hollywood 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 West Hollywood
West Hollywood incorporated in 1984 and immediately became a jurisdiction rather than a district. It runs its own rent stabilization ordinance, one of the stronger ones in the state, adopted shortly after incorporation. It sets its own minimum wage, above California's. It issues its own business licences, and it buys its policing from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Three commercial spines carry the economy: Santa Monica Boulevard through the middle, Melrose Avenue and the design district anchored by the Pacific Design Center, and the Sunset Strip with its hotels, venues and billboards. Most residents rent, a great many in buildings covered by the city's own ordinance rather than the county's or the state's.
Now the part that changes the advice. Federal retirement and estate law is written around marriage, and it does a large amount of work invisibly for people who are married. A surviving spouse can roll an inherited retirement account into their own and treat it as if it had always been theirs; almost every other beneficiary is on a ten-year clock instead. The unlimited marital deduction and the ability to carry over an unused estate exemption are spousal, full stop. Employer plans governed by ERISA name the spouse as the default beneficiary and require written spousal consent to name anybody else — which means a married person has a default, and an unmarried person has none. California registered domestic partners are treated as spouses for many state law purposes and are not recognised as spouses under federal tax law, so the state side and the federal side of the same household can answer the question differently. And under California's intestacy rules, a partner you are not married to or registered with inherits nothing at all, regardless of how long you have lived together or whose name is on the lease.
West Hollywood has a high share of one-person and unmarried-partner households, so the above is not an edge case here; it is the ordinary situation. What it means practically is unglamorous and entirely fixable: get the beneficiary designations right on every account, because they override the will; decide who holds a durable power of attorney and an advance health care directive, because without one there is no default decision-maker; and if a trust is the right tool, fund it rather than file it. The documents are your attorney's work and we will not draft them. Making the accounts match what the documents say is ours. California estate basics · Working with trusts.
The local employer base
The Pacific Design Center and the Melrose design trade
Showrooms, designers, reps and the trades around them. Income is commission, draw or project fee rather than salary, often through a sole proprietorship or a small S-corp, and almost none of it comes with a retirement plan attached. A SEP or a solo 401(k) is usually available and usually unused. Solo 401(k).
Sunset Strip hotels, restaurants and venues
Hospitality is the city's largest private employment block: hotels, bars, music venues and restaurants, mostly hourly and tipped, with turnover to match. Every one of these employers is inside the state retirement mandate, and the city's own minimum wage is set here rather than in Sacramento. Hotels · Restaurants.
Entertainment, music and media offices
Management companies, agencies, labels, publicists and post-production, concentrated along Sunset and Santa Monica. Private 401(k) plans at the larger firms, nothing at all at the smaller ones, and a substantial layer of 1099 contractors working beside salaried staff on the same projects. Which plan fits which situation.
The city itself, and Cedars-Sinai over the line
West Hollywood's own municipal workforce is small and in CalPERS; its policing is contracted to the Sheriff's Department, whose deputies are LACERA members. Cedars-Sinai sits immediately across the city boundary on Beverly Boulevard and is a private nonprofit, so its staff are in an employer 403(b) rather than a public pension.
Public pensions and rollovers
Very little of West Hollywood is in a public pension: a small city staff in CalPERS, contracted deputies in LACERA, and after that private plans or none. Which puts the weight on a single piece of paper most people have never re-read — the beneficiary designation. Retirement accounts and life insurance pass by that form directly, outside the will and outside a trust, and an out-of-date one is the most common and most expensive administrative failure we see. If you are married the plan has a default; if you are not, there is no default and the form is the whole instruction. Check every account you hold, including the old ones. Survivor elections · 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 West Hollywood 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.
West Hollywood questions
I am not married and I have no children. Who actually inherits my accounts?
Whoever is named on each account's beneficiary form. If a form is blank or names somebody who has died, the account generally falls back to the plan document's default and then into your estate, where California's intestacy rules take over — and those distribute to blood relatives in a fixed order. A partner you are not married to or registered with is not in that order. The fix costs nothing: name a beneficiary and a contingent beneficiary on every retirement account, IRA and insurance policy you hold. The will and the trust are your attorney's job; the forms are ours and we will go through them with you.
We are registered domestic partners. Does that give us the same retirement rules as a married couple?
Not federally. California treats registered domestic partners as spouses for a wide range of state law purposes, including community property and state intestacy. Federal tax law does not — which means no spousal rollover of an inherited retirement account, no unlimited marital deduction, and no portability of an unused federal estate exemption. Your CPA and your estate attorney should confirm how that applies to your specific situation, because the state and federal answers genuinely differ and we do not give tax or legal advice.
My apartment is rent stabilized. Does that change whether I should be buying?
It changes the arithmetic more than people expect. A below-market stabilized tenancy is worth real money every year, it is not portable, and giving it up is part of the cost of buying that no mortgage calculator includes. That is not an argument against buying — it is an argument for comparing honestly: the true annual cost of owning, including taxes, insurance and maintenance, against your rent, with the difference invested rather than assumed away. How we run that comparison.
Do you actually meet clients from West Hollywood, or is this page just for search?
We meet them. Our office is at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk, about 26.8 miles from West Hollywood — 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 West Hollywood 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.