managing personal finances

In 2006, recent Harvard grad Alexa von Tobel was headed for a job at Morgan Stanley. But though she would soon be managing the bank’s investments, she realized she didn’t know the first thing about her own finances. Most financial guides seemed to be written for middle-aged readers with millions in assets, rather than recent college grads. "I was reading every book I could find, but none of them spoke to me," she says. So she came up with the idea for LearnVest, an online personal-finance resource for young women like her, and ended up writing an 80-page business plan.

After two years at Morgan Stanley, von Tobel entered Harvard Business School in 2008. But upon winning a business plan competition held by Astia, a non-profit that supports women entrepreneurs, she took a five-year leave of absence and invested $75,000 of her Wall Street earnings to start LearnVest in November. She quickly enlisted advisors, including Betsy Morgan, the former CEO of the Huffington Post, and Catherine Levene, the former COO of DailyCandy, to help develop the site’s content and technology. In January 2009, she secured $1.1 million in seed funding from executives at Goldman Sachs.

LearnVest’s site launched a year later and has since signed up more than 100,000 members. It offers online budgeting calculators, video chats with certified financial planners on the company’s staff, and free e-mail tutorials on topics such as opening an IRA. The company earns revenue from advertising and by referring its users to companies such as TD Ameritrade. In April, after just four weeks of fundraising, von Tobel closed a $4.5 million investment round led by Accel Partners, which has also invested in Facebook and Etsy. (Incidentally, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lived in the same dorm as von Tobel at Harvard.)

Von Tobel likens LearnVest to an online version of The Suze Orman Show, but with the goal of reinforcing positive finance habits early on. “Suze Orman helps 45-year-old women get out of debt,” she says. “Why not reach 20-year-olds to keep them from getting into debt?”

As you’ll read tomorrow (or Monday), I’ve entered a new phase in my life. After years of hard work and long hours building this blog (time that I’ve enjoyed), I’ve been shifting things around so that I have more free time. As a result, I’m going to have more time to devote to creating quality blog posts, instead of rushing around at the last minute looking for something to write about.

Because of this, it’s time yet again to take requests. I do this about once a year, and it’s a great way to get a feel for what GRS readers are interested in. I’d be grateful if you’d take the time to leave a comment below with topic suggestions or article requests. It doesn’t matter if we’ve covered the subject in the past. If you’d like me (or one of the other GRS staff) to write about it, let me know.

Have there been too many articles about credit cards? Too few articles about credit cards? Would you like to know more about individual savings accounts? Do you like the articles about the psychology of spending? Would it be helpful to have somebody come in to explain insurance concepts in plain English? Should I try to persuade my wife to share more of her recipes now and then? Let me know what you’d like to read about!

While you’re all providing feedback about the site, here are a few recent articles of note:

Over at The Simple Dollar, Trent and his readers had a thoughtful discussion about the obligations of wealth. “I think there is some inherent distrust of the rich in the mainstream of American society,” Trent writes as he describes how a wealthy person can keep from alienating his friends. There’s so much to say about this topic; I’m tempted to write an entire article about it.

GRS reader Steven writes a blog called Hundred Goals, which is about achieving your goals while managing your finances. After Sierra’s post this morning about travel, he dropped me a line to let me know that he has a recent article about how to have a great vacation.

Speaking of vacation, my pal Jason over at No Credit Needed spent time compiling day-use fees and free days for state parks across the United States. Handy page to bookmark!

And here’s more travel! At The Art of Non-Conformity, my good friend Chris Guillebeau has posted a beginner’s guide to travel hacking. I’ve been asking him to share this info for a long time; now I’ve got to take responsibility to use the knowledge he’s shared.

Finally, I’ve been giving a lot of interviews lately. I’m much more comfortable with these than I used to be. (They used to scare me to death!) Some examples:

• Colleen from The Frisky interviewed me about how to save money even when you’re living paycheck to paycheck. This is a tough quandary, something I’m asked about a lot.




• In an interview with BeFrugal, I discuss frugality, happiness, and conscious spending. (Note: “the ballot” should be “the balance” — I must have mumbled.)




• Jeff Rose at Good Financial Cents also interviewed me. This interview is very much about the process of writing a book, which may or may not interest you.




• I also spoke with Beverly Harzog from Card Ratings. We chatted about credit cards, of course, but also about other aspects of personal finance.




• Finally, USA Weekend has a short piece on how to give your 401(k) a midyear check, for which author Richard Eisenberg interviewed me back in May. This is a perfect example of how much work goes into even a small newspaper article. Eisenberg spent 20-30 minutes on the phone with me, and I’m sure he did the same with the other folks he quotes. Plus, I’ll bet he spent a lot of time writing. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 4-6 hours in this small piece.

Okay, one last thing before I go. Tim pointed me to a two-year-old New York Times series about the debt trap, which includes an interactive infographic showing average household debt loads over the past century.

That’s enough links for today. Please do leave a comment with topic requests or other feedback. Meanwhile, it’s time for me to go do some yardwork…

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