Personal Finance for Immigrants & New Americans
Priya Sharma is a CFP and MBA who has spent 11 years helping immigrants and new Americans build financial foundations in the U.S. She immigrated from India at 22 and experienced firsthand the challenge of building credit without a Social Security Number. After earning her MBA from Chicago Booth and CFP designation, she joined Self Financial as head of financial education before launching her own advisory practice. Priya's expertise covers ITIN tax filing, credit building without SSN, international money transfers, remittance strategies, and navigating U.S. banking as a non-citizen.
Her own experience arriving without a credit history shaped how she now explains the ITIN-to-SSN transition, since many immigrants build years of credit under an ITIN only to find that history doesn't automatically transfer once they receive a Social Security Number. Priya writes step-by-step guidance on how to carry that credit history forward with lenders and credit bureaus, a process most mainstream financial content never covers.
At Self Financial, she worked on financial education programs aimed specifically at thin-file and no-file consumers, giving her a detailed view of which secured-card and credit-builder loan products actually report to all three bureaus versus which ones don't. She also covers remittance costs in depth, since fees and exchange-rate spreads on international transfers disproportionately affect the same households she focuses on.
View LinkedIn ProfileMBA, University of Chicago Booth School of Business; B.Com, University of Mumbai; CFP Certificant