This week’s episode is featuring my good friend of 15 years, Sara Rajo Miller.   She grew up living all over the world in Germany, Israel, London, and Mexico, before moving to Los Angeles at the age of 12.  I remember when I first met her, I could not believe she had already lived in all of those places and I had lived in the same house for pretty much all of my life. 

Growing up, her parents who are both foreign correspondents taught her that life is all about relationships and, as a result, she developed an affinity to interacting with different people early on.  She fell into wealth management after a college internship at a stock analysis company, Miracle Mile Advisors, and never left!  It felt like a natural fit from the beginning and now, six years later, Sara has worked her way up to a Senior Financial Advisor position and manages hundreds of millions of dollars in assets for over 70 families.  I’m always so impressed by that considering I can barely manage my bank account that is pennies compared to that! 

Sara works closely with clients to design and implement customized investment plans based on their unique needs. As an Investment Advisor, she constructs detailed investment and cash flow models, asset allocation recommendations, wealth transfer structures, pre-transaction planning recommendations, and a variety of other life planning strategies.  Sara has even been recognized by Forbes as one of America’s 200 Top Women Advisors and Top Next-Gen Financial Advisors. 

So, you can probably understand why she is the first person I called when it came to talk about financial planning.  In school, we aren’t ever taught how to balance a checkbook (sounds pretty old school at this point) and we definitely aren’t taught about building a retirement fund.  As someone who is still in my 20s, I never realized how much I could be doing now to set myself up to be very comfortable in my 60s until I spoke with Sara! I hope you learn as much as I did in this episode!

*I also wanted to preface this episode because at one point a man entered the conference room next to us and decided to talk very loudly so you might pick up on that background noise and I apologize in advance! Like I said in my first podcast post, I am no sound engineer!

-Understanding finances first will help you make better decisions about money later.

-Age is our biggest asset! The power of compounding really does work! 

-Open a Roth IRA like yesterday and put in as much as you can each month, up to $5500 a year, for tax-free growth and withdrawal! Don’t sleep on that one!

-If the company you currently work at offers a 401k, take advantage of that!

-There are three options to go about managing your money: Financial Advisors, Robo-Advisors, or managing it yourself on sites like TD Ameritrade or E*Trade.

-Talking about budgeting and taxes with your kids is a great way to prepare them for supporting themselves later. 

You can find Sara here:

Thank you for listening! Natalie