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When Ron Lieber arrived at the Wall Street Journal office in 2002 for a job interview, some editors immediately sized him up.
“They said, ‘We know what your beat is: beating the system,'” said Mr. Lieber, who most recently worked as a senior writer for Fast Company covering management, design and careers. “And now you’re going to come over here and do this for us.”
After co-founding the Wall Street Journal’s Personal Journal section and writing a separate money management column, he was hired by The New York Times in 2008 to take over Your Money, a personal finance column. Sixteen years later, he’s earned a reputation for offering readers advice—often from his own experience—on headache-inducing issues like how to navigate the maze of paying for college or preparing for life after a layoff.
“I like to introduce readers to characters who they might not have thought would be the subject of the money columns, but who are really suited to teach us a thing or three about how the world works,” said Mr. Lieber, whose the column appears online and most Saturdays in the Business section.
As a Times columnist, he has seen two recessions and a pandemic. (In 2009, he even wrote about how his own financial planner was accused of fraud.) In a recent conversation, he shared the unexpected lessons he’d learned writing the column and the topics he believed could soon dominate the personal finance world. finances. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How did you become interested in finance?
When I was a high school senior in Chicago applying for financial aid for college, I found my way to Roger Koester, who was the associate director of financial aid at Northwestern University. He had a side gig after hours in his office. in exchange for $45, he would explain the entire financial aid system to local families struggling to understand it. He knew exactly what he was talking about and gave me great advice.
It was a reminder that there’s always an adult somewhere who knows how to beat the system, and if you can just find that adult and ask questions, you can help other people beat it too. I don’t think of myself as an adult, but every week, I still find myself searching for the adults who know the answer to whatever thorny consumer question is bothering our readers.
What makes for a good column?
When I think about personal finance, there’s a kind of Venn diagram of possible themes: things that are really expensive. procedures that are really complicated. and decisions where emotions can lead us astray if we are not careful. I like to think that when I’m in the center of this diagram, I’ve found the right subject.
And then there’s the matter of the voice. The best compliment anyone can give me is to say that my column sounded like I was there in the room with them, explaining the point. I want it to feel conversational, not lectured, preachy, or didactic. That doesn’t mean it’s always friendly — I try to punch institutions or entities that can take it and deserve it.
If I can find the right subject and do it in the right voice, I win the week.
Last month, an article by New York magazine’s financial advice columnist about how she was defrauded of $50,000 it went viral. Do you think you would have fallen for this scam?
Never say never. I keep telling myself that there is never any reason to rush into doing anything right now. There is almost always time to call on one or three or five people smarter than you or just calmer than you who will ask you equal questions and try to pull you back from the brink of a big mistake.
What authors and publications do you read to stay on top of your game?
I read the Wall Street Journal religiously. I’m a big fan of Ramit Sethi, who is the author of I Will Teach to Be Rich and a newsletter writer. I enjoy reading Michelle Singletary, who writes the personal finance column for the Washington Post. And I also really like the attitude and message of Tori Dunlap, who most people know from Instagram and TikTok.
What trends are you following?
All the people who have been in the workforce for their entire careers without a traditional pension are starting to retire, and many of them will run out of money. The question of what will happen when that happens is deeply troubling.
I’m also interested in all the work Conor Dougherty and other Times colleagues have done around our inability to sensibly build more homes. It’s unclear where and how people will buy homes in their 20s and even 30s.
Anything else you want to add?
If people see things in the world that don’t make sense — either they think corruption needs to be exposed, or they just want to say, “I can’t be the only one who doesn’t understand this thing, could you explain it?” — It is very useful for me to know. Some of the projects I’m most proud of started with a reader comment on one of my columns. We’re all in this together and none of us are as smart as all of us.
