Sierra Financial Advisory

Sierra Financial Advisory serves primarily individual and family clients and also manages small business retirement plans, trusts, estates, and charitable accounts, with roughly $145 million in assets across about 173 client relationships. The firm provides financial planning and ongoing investment supervisory services, largely on a discretionary basis, and maintains a $500,000 household minimum for advisory management while admitting smaller accounts on a case-by-case basis.

The firm’s process begins with financial planning and constructing personalized portfolios aligned to client risk tolerances, using five model mixes ranging from Very Conservative to Aggressive. Portfolios rely mainly on mutual funds and ETFs selected for downside protection, together with occasional individual stocks and bonds subject to fundamental analysis; SFA follows a long-term, no-market-timing approach and monitors portfolios for asset allocation and rebalancing.

Notably, Sierra combines percentage-of-AUM advisory relationships with a smaller number of commission-based, non-discretionary transactions—typically fixed annuities and long-term care insurance—and both principals hold insurance licenses in California, Washington and Oregon and may transact insurance business for clients. The firm discloses these commission arrangements and related conflicts, maintains limited power-of-attorney for trading (but not custody), and reports quarterly account information and aggregate reporting across custodians.