Sara Rajo-Miller, financial advisor at Miracle Mile Advisors, joined Yahoo Finance Live to break down the latest trends with Millennial investors.
Video transcription
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ADAM SHAPIRO: It’s time for our retirement segment provided to you by Fidelity Investments. We invite Sara Rajo-Miller, who is a Financial Advisor at Miracle Mile Advisors. And we want to talk about younger people and what they should look for in investing in retirement. I’m talking about people older than 40 years. Millennials, even I am Gen X, so I think we’m talking about this, is it Gen Z that was before millennials? What are the mistakes or the good things they do at that age?
SARA RAJO-MILLER: Hello, yes, so let’s see. When we talk about next-generation investors, we are usually talking about millennials who are between 25 and 40 years old. However, I think it is very important to note that we all like to get along. And there is a big difference between a 25-year-old who has only been in college for a few years and a 40-year-old who can save and invest for maybe ten years or more.
Right now is an example I’m working with, and I give you three 30-year-olds. One goes through a bursary at their company. One is just in their first job at university and working on 401 (k) savings, and the other is focused on a fixed investment they have. So it can be very different situations.
SEANA SMITH: Well yeah, and Sara, I’m going from different situations, I think, I think many times that millennials might get a bad rap. People compare it to previous generations and say: we are not fast. I’m a millennial. I’m curious how it comes together, how millennials grow up compared to previous generations and where they were in terms of retirement savings when they were about that old.
SARA RAJO-MILLER: Millennials get a bad rap. I heard everything. And I think from my own experience it’s what I’ve seen, that millennials actually care about retirement savings. And they work very hard to build a nest egg. I will give you some great examples. Millennials, many millennials joined the workforce in 2008. Clearly, it was a terrible time to enter the workforce. Not only was it challenging for them, but many of them saw their parents go through retirement savings due to the ’08 crisis.
Another big difference I have seen is that millennial investors are much more independent. It may also mean that they do not rely as much on social security or pensions as the previous generation. Therefore, they focus more on retirement savings. But also many just make decisions on their own like the previous generation was not. They often delay the decision to get married and have children, to buy a first home. They therefore make self-decisions for a longer period of time.
I think the last big difference is awareness and access to information. I think there is a lot more access to information now than for the previous generation. Whether it’s podcasts, online courses you can follow through a university or something like Kaplan, or even Instagram. I had a client last week who told me that they were watching a real estate investment seminar on TikTok. Granted, this is probably not the best platform, or maybe not the best platform for that particular topic, but I think it’s great that there’s so much interest and so much awareness out there.
ADAM SHAPIRO: I lost the computer for a moment, but would like to thank Sarah Rajo-Miller, who is an advisor at Miracle Mile Advisors. And remind everyone that Fidelity Investments is offering our retirement planning segment for investment planning. We are back immediately.