We manage investment accounts for individuals, families and business owners across Los Angeles and Orange County. These 17 guides start from what is financially different about a particular kind of work — a pension that excludes overtime, income that arrives as tips, a 1099 with no withholding, equity in a company that has not sold yet — because that difference, not the job title, is what changes the advice. Fee-only, published fees, $0 to open, English and Spanish.
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Public service
Pensions you cannot contribute more to, overtime that does not count toward them, and a 457(b) or 403(b) that is usually the only lever left. Most of this audience has never had anyone independent look at it.
Police Officers & Deputies
A safety-member pension with an earlier retirement age than almost anyone else, heavy overtime that mostly does not count toward the pension under PEPRA, and a career that can end on a disability finding rather than on a date you chose.
Firefighters & Paramedics
Long shifts and heavy overtime that inflate income but not pensionable compensation, a physically finite career, and a presumptive-illness landscape that makes disability and survivor elections more than paperwork.
Teachers & School Staff
A CalSTRS pension you cannot contribute more to, a 403(b) marketplace that has historically been sold rather than advised, and — for many — no Social Security from the teaching years at all.
Healthcare
A 403(b) at one employer and a 401(k) at the next, shift differentials that make income lumpy, and per-diem work that arrives on a 1099 and opens a plan nobody mentioned.
Nurses & Healthcare Workers
Shift differentials and overtime that make income lumpy, a plan that is a 403(b) at one employer and a 401(k) at the next, per-diem and travel work that arrives on a 1099, and a schedule that makes it hard to ever sit down with anyone about it.
Irregular income
Income that changes every week, usually no employer plan at all, and quarterly taxes nobody warned you about. Fixed-dollar saving fails here — a percentage of what arrives works.
Service Workers on Tips
Income that changes every shift, a large share of it reported as tips, and almost never an employer plan — which means the entire retirement question is yours to solve, usually with no one offering to help.
Dancers & Adult Entertainers
Legal, licensed work that the financial industry has almost entirely ignored: cash-heavy income that mortgage underwriters do not know how to read, a classification question California has litigated for years, no employer plan of any kind, and a peak earning window that is shorter than most careers.
Rideshare & Delivery Drivers
A 1099 with no withholding, a vehicle that is both your business and your largest expense, Proposition 22 benefits that are not a retirement plan, and quarterly estimated taxes nobody warned you about.
Truckers & Owner-Operators
A truck that is a depreciating six-figure asset, settlement statements instead of a paycheck, the port drayage classification fight running in the background, and a retirement plan that exists only if you build it yourself.
Contractors & the Trades
Income that follows the job pipeline rather than the calendar, prevailing-wage fringe dollars that can go to cash or to a plan, a body with a finite working life, and a business whose value is mostly you.
Commission income
Paid in lumps, months after the work, on a market you do not control. Statutory non-employee status means no employer plan exists for you at any firm, at any size.
Real Estate Agents & Loan Officers
Statutory non-employee status, which means no employer plan exists for you at all — plus commission income that arrives in lumps tied to a market you do not control, and a strong incentive to treat a good year as permanent.
Travel Agents & Advisors
Commission paid long after the work is done and sometimes clawed back, most agents working as independent contractors under a host agency, and an industry where nobody has ever set up a retirement plan for you.
Entertainment Industry Crew
Eligibility earned in hours rather than dollars, so a slow year threatens health coverage and pension credit at the same time — plus loan-out corporations, residuals, and years that swing by a factor of three.
Owners & wealth
The business, the equity or the estate is most of the net worth — which makes this a concentration and tax question long before it is an investing one.
Business Owners
A business that is both your income and most of your net worth, a state mandate you now have to satisfy for your staff, and an owner-level retirement question that the state programme cannot answer because you earn too much to use it.
Founders & Startup Employees
Most of your net worth in one private company, an equity grant whose tax treatment was decided years before any liquidity, and a concentration problem you cannot fix until you can — and then have to fix quickly.
Athletes & Their Agents
A career that pays most of its lifetime earnings inside a few years, income taxed in every state you play in, and — for the agent — commission that arrives on a contract schedule rather than a payroll one. NIL has pushed the same problem down to college age.
High-Net-Worth Families
Enough assets that the questions stop being about saving and start being about tax, structure and transfer — concentrated positions, trusts that were drafted once and never revisited, and a next generation who has never been told the plan.
Families & First-Generation Households
Two generations to support at once, no inherited playbook for any of it, and the sense that investing is something other people were taught how to do.
Two tools built for this
Most calculators assume a steady paycheque and an employer plan. These two do not.
Irregular-income planner
Turns a percentage rule into real dollars for a good, a typical and a bad month — and shows why sizing your fixed commitments to the average is what breaks people.
Which plan fits you
Solo 401(k), SEP-IRA, SIMPLE and IRA side by side on your own numbers, with the arithmetic shown. Limits, not recommendations — the decision is yours and your CPA's.
How we actually work
We are a fee-only fiduciary investment adviser registered with California's DFPI, with a principal office at 12838 Rosecrans Ave in Norwalk. We are paid by clients and by nobody else: no commissions, no proprietary products, no payments for referrals. Our fee schedule is published on this site, which is more than most firms in this market will tell you before a meeting, and there is no minimum to open.
What that means in practice: we manage the accounts, build the plan around your actual income shape, and say so plainly when the right answer is something we do not sell. If you employ people, that is a different question and it lives on the industry side of the site.
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.
Not sure which one is you?
Most people are two or three of these at once — a nurse who also does per-diem work, an agent who owns rental property. Fifteen minutes on the phone and we will tell you which parts actually apply to your situation.