This is for the people doing the work: electricians, plumbers, carpenters, operators, ironworkers, roofers, painters and HVAC techs, union and open shop, plus the licensed contractor running jobs out of a truck. Income follows the pipeline rather than the calendar, the body has a finite working life, and the retirement structure is either a multiemployer plan you do not control or nothing at all.
What is actually different about your money
Begin with the most valuable thing on this page, because it is worth real money and almost nobody says it out loud. On California public works, the general prevailing rate of per diem wages is not one number. Under Labor Code § 1773.1 and the definitions at 8 CCR § 16000 it is the prevailing basic straight-time hourly rate plus the prevailing rate of employer payments — the fringe portion covering health and welfare, pension, vacation and holiday, apprenticeship and similar purposes. Employer payments actually made to a plan, fund or programme are a credit against the total obligation. Where a contractor makes no such contributions, that portion still has to reach the worker, and on open-shop jobs it typically arrives as additional taxable cash in the cheque. Both routes discharge the same obligation. They do not produce remotely the same result for you: cash fringe is wages, taxed now and generally spent now, while the same dollars contributed to a bona fide plan are retirement money with your name on it. In most cases the route is the contractor's decision rather than yours, which is exactly why it is worth knowing that a decision is being made — it is a fair question to ask when you take a job, and if you are the one bidding the work it is your decision and it is a large one. The credit rules are technical, annualisation above all, and they belong with a prevailing-wage consultant and a CPA rather than with a guess.
The second structural fact is that the income follows the job pipeline rather than the calendar — a long stretch of overtime on a big job, then a gap between calls that no budget built on the good months survives. For a union member that gap has a second edge, because multiemployer plans generally run on hours: hours worked in a measuring period buy health eligibility and pension credit, so a slow year can put both at risk at the same time, and vesting, reciprocity between locals and the fund's own funding status are all outside your control. For an open-shop worker there is usually no plan at all, which makes the gap purely a cash problem and the retirement question entirely self-directed. Both need a reserve built in the busy months, and neither gets one by accident.
The third fact is the body, and it changes the shape of the plan rather than just its size. A trade career has a finite working life — knees, shoulders, backs, hearing — and the last five years of it are the least reliable. That argues for two things a desk job does not need as urgently: disability coverage treated as a first-order purchase rather than an afterthought, and a funding curve that front-loads into the strong years instead of assuming even contributions to sixty-seven. And for the licensed contractor working for himself there is a fourth: the business's value is mostly you. A dentist sells a practice with charts and a location. A contractor with three trucks, a licence and a reputation usually sells the trucks. Crews, equipment and a licensed qualifying individual can transfer; the relationships that generate the work often do not. Which means there is no exit that funds a retirement, so the retirement has to be funded out of the working years, on purpose, into an account that is not the business.
What you are usually sold
Two things get sold into the trades with some regularity. The first is permanent life insurance carrying a story about becoming your own bank — a policy you fund heavily and borrow against later. The policies are real and the agents are licensed; what is often left out is that the arrangement asks for large fixed premiums for years, that surrendering early is expensive, and that the person explaining it is paid by the issuer rather than billed to you. The second is an annuity presented at a pre-retirement seminar to members approaching a pension election. Annuities are legitimate products and for some people the guarantee is worth its cost. The thing to establish before signing either is simple and rarely asked: how is the person in front of me paid, and what would the plain alternative cost?
The larger issue in this trade is not what gets sold but what never gets offered. Nobody explains what the fringe line on a wage determination is, nobody sets up a retirement plan for a two-person shop because there is no product margin in it, and the standard advice to a self-employed tradesperson stops at an IRA — which caps at $7,500 for 2026 when a solo 401(k) built on the same income could take several times that.
None of that is illegal and not all of it is wrong. But you are entitled to know how the person recommending it is paid, and to compare. Our standard · our fees, published · the difference between an RIA and a brokerage.
What we do instead
For anyone working prevailing-wage jobs, we start with the wage determination itself. What is your total package, how is it split between the basic rate and employer payments, and what is actually happening to the fringe portion on the jobs you work now? If you are the employee, that produces a question worth asking your employer and a number worth knowing. If you are the contractor, it is a plan-design decision with real consequences, and it belongs jointly with a prevailing-wage consultant who does certified payroll for a living — the employer side of it is set out on the general contractors page and the specialty trades page.
If you are in a local, we take the multiemployer plan as a fixed feature and build around it. We do not administer it, cannot change your hours bank and have no influence over its funding. What we do is get the summary plan description and the annual funding notice in front of us, understand how hours translate into eligibility and credit, and then size everything else in the household against a pension that will pay a set monthly amount from a set date. The elections attached to it — any lump-sum option, the survivor choice, when you actually stop — are usually made once and are usually permanent, which is precisely why they deserve a spreadsheet before a signature.
If you are self-employed, the structure is yours to build. Net self-employment income supports a solo 401(k) — $24,500 of employee deferral for 2026 plus an employer profit-sharing contribution, capped together at $72,000 — or a SEP-IRA, which is employer-side only. Once you have employees beyond a spouse the solo plan stops working and the conversation becomes a SIMPLE IRA or a real 401(k) with a safe harbour, which is the employer axis and a different set of pages. One more thing, said plainly because it is unusual for an investment firm to say it: we do not sell insurance and earn nothing if you buy any. For someone whose income depends on a body, a disability policy is frequently the more urgent purchase than the next $500 into a fund, and we will tell you that and then send you somewhere else to buy it.
The retirement structures that actually apply to you: Solo 401(k), SEP-IRA, multiemployer/union plans, prevailing-wage fringe, SIMPLE IRA. Which of those fits depends on how you are paid and whether anyone else is on your payroll — the plan chooser walks through it, and this guide compares them honestly.
A first conversation, at no cost
Fifteen minutes on the phone. If your question has a short answer you get it on the call, and if we are not the right firm for you we will say so.
Where contractors and tradespeople are in Los Angeles and Orange County
We work across both counties from a principal office in Norwalk. These are the county guides, each naming the cities where this audience actually concentrates:
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.
Questions
What is the fringe amount on a prevailing-wage job, and where is it supposed to go?
The published prevailing rate is the basic straight-time hourly rate plus employer payments — the fringe portion for health and welfare, pension, vacation and holiday, apprenticeship and similar purposes. Contributions actually made by the employer to a bona fide plan count as a credit against that obligation. Where no contributions are made, the amount generally has to reach you as additional taxable cash wages instead. Same obligation, very different outcome for you. The credit rules, annualisation in particular, are technical enough that the answer for your specific jobs should come from a prevailing-wage consultant or your CPA rather than from a web page.
I am in a local with a pension. Do I need anything else?
Usually yes, for reasons that have nothing to do with the plan being bad. A multiemployer pension pays a defined monthly amount from a defined date and nothing more, so everything the household needs before that date, or above that amount, has to come from somewhere else. Eligibility and credit run on hours, which means a slow year can cost you both coverage and accrual at once. And you do not control the fund's investments or its funding status. A supplemental account is not a hedge against your plan; it is the part of the picture the plan was never designed to cover.
I have a licence and two guys on payroll. Which plan is mine?
Not a solo 401(k) — that one only works with no employees other than a spouse, and it stops working the moment an employee meets the eligibility conditions. From there it is a SEP-IRA, which is funded entirely by you and generally at the same percentage for everyone eligible, a SIMPLE IRA with its required employer contribution, or a 401(k) with a safe-harbour design that secures your own deferral regardless of what the crew does. You also have a CalSavers obligation for W-2 employees if you do not sponsor a plan. That is the employer axis: general contractors, specialty trades, the mandate itself.
My knees are the retirement plan. What do I actually do about that?
Two separate things, in this order. Insure the income while you still have it, which usually means a disability policy — we do not sell them, earn nothing on them and will still say it is often the higher priority for a trade income. Then front-load the saving into the strong years rather than spreading it evenly to sixty-seven, because a plan that assumes full productive earnings at sixty-two is assuming the one thing this career cannot promise. Neither step requires a big number to start; both get much more expensive to start late.
I plan to sell the business when I am sixty. Is that a retirement plan?
Treat it as an upside rather than as the plan. Equipment, crews, a book of scheduled work and a licensed qualifying individual can transfer, and some contracting businesses do sell for real money. What often does not transfer is the reason the phone rings, which in an owner-operated trade business is usually the owner. Valuation is a specialist's job and worth paying for when the time comes. In the meantime the safest structure is one where the sale, if it happens, improves a retirement that was already funded from somewhere else.
What does this cost, and is there a minimum?
There is no minimum to open an account. We ask for $50 a month of continuing deposits, because a plan you do not fund is not a plan. Investment management is 1.5% to 2.0% of assets per year, billed quarterly, and it is published on the site — which is more than most firms in this market will tell you before a meeting.
Do I have to have a lot saved already?
No, and that is deliberate. Most firms set a minimum precisely to avoid people at the start of this. We built the opposite: $0 to open, and the same fiduciary standard whether the account is four figures or seven.
¿Atienden en español?
Sí. Atendemos en español, y buena parte de nuestro material existe en español, escrito originalmente, no traducido por máquina.