Athena Valentine
Athena Valentine focuses on messy, real-life money problems and turns them into clear, practical guidance for everyday readers. Her work centers on personal finance advice that sits at the intersection of budgets, relationships, and life decisions, rather than markets or macroeconomics. She writes as a finance columnist for Slate, where her advice column format uses detailed reader scenarios to unpack both the numbers and the underlying dynamics. Across other outlets she extends this approach into service journalism on budgeting, insurance, debt, small business, and financial planning for underserved communities.
Pay Dirt and relationship-driven money dilemmas
At Slate, Athena writes recurring advice pieces built around letters from readers whose money choices are entangled with friends, partners, and family. In the column that begins with a reader spending $1,000 on a weekend with a friend they do not even like, she takes a situation that is part financial, part emotional and works through what the letter writer actually wants, what boundaries they can set, and how to frame an awkward conversation about reimbursement without damaging the relationship. The money at stake is concrete, but the focus is on values, resentment, and the cost of avoiding conflict.
That same structure shows up in her co-bylined Slate piece about a reader who owns several vacation properties but refuses to let two specific guests stay, despite pressure from their spouse. Here she breaks down how a shared asset can become leverage inside a marriage, how to balance legal ownership with practical fairness, and how to factor in long-term consequences like retirement security and estate planning when emotions run high. The distinctive thread is that she treats these letters as case studies in how people actually behave with money: mixing affection, power, guilt, and fear, then guiding them toward decisions that protect both their finances and their relationships.
Through these columns, Athena stands out from a generic finance reporter by staying inside the details of one person’s story rather than covering broad trends or product news. She writes in the present tense, answers the letter writer directly, and uses plain language to walk through what they can do next, step by step.
The advice is grounded in personal finance fundamentals, but the entry point is always a real scenario that a reader has already lived, not a hypothetical example.
Budgeting, debt, and everyday cash flow
Outside Slate, Athena is known as a budgeting specialist and personal finance author, and she brings that expertise back into her journalism. Her professional profiles describe her as an award-winning financial columnist and the author of a mainstream budgeting guide in a major how-to series, positioning her squarely in practical, day-to-day money management. She writes about building workable spending plans, using budgets to regain control after financial setbacks, and treating cash flow as the foundation for everything from debt repayment to saving for long-term goals.
Her listed areas of expertise include budgeting, personal finance, debt, tax write-offs, and first-generation college finance, and those themes echo through articles she writes for financial brands and consumer sites.
Pieces on topics like when to quit a day job for a business use checklists and specific thresholds to help readers decide if their income, savings, and risk tolerance are strong enough to support a transition. Rather than broad motivational advice, she asks pointed questions about emergency funds, current obligations, and how long a reader could realistically cover their expenses if revenue drops.
Athena’s coverage consistently targets people managing modest, irregular, or fragile finances rather than high-net-worth investors. She writes for audiences who might be juggling student loans, entry-level salaries, or freelance income, and she frames budgeting as a tool for stability and autonomy. Her emphasis on underserved communities runs through her work, as she advocates for financial representation and breaks down jargon so that readers who have not had formal financial education can still act confidently.
Insurance, cars, and managing everyday risk
Athena also has an extensive portfolio of service pieces on insurance and large consumer purchases, particularly vehicles. In car insurance articles for comparison and quote platforms, she explains how anti-theft devices translate into premium discounts and what kinds of security features actually matter to insurers.
In her work on the cheapest SUVs to insure, she links model choice, safety ratings, and repair costs back to the monthly budget, showing how the decision at the dealership can ripple through a household’s finances for years.
These articles are highly practical: they define terms, outline how to read policy details, and highlight the trade-offs between lower premiums and adequate coverage. She writes about insurance not as an abstract risk-transfer product but as a line item that must fit within a tight budget while still protecting against common emergencies. This combination of policy literacy and price sensitivity is a hallmark of her work, and it distinguishes her from reporters who focus on industry news or insurer earnings rather than consumer outcomes.
Her coverage of insurance and vehicles ties back to her broader personal finance beat, where the goal is to keep readers from being surprised by costs they could have anticipated. Whether the subject is discounts for anti-theft devices or the long-term expense of owning certain types of cars, Athena’s reporting aims to give readers enough detail to negotiate effectively and avoid avoidable financial strain.
Small business, side hustles, and freelance life
Athena’s work for tax and financial platforms adds another strand to her beat: guiding small business owners and freelancers through turning side hustles into sustainable enterprises.
In pieces that coach readers on when to leave traditional employment, she lays out specific indicators to check, such as consistent client demand, reliable revenue, savings buffers, and clarity on healthcare and retirement coverage. The advice is grounded in spreadsheet realities, but it acknowledges the emotional stakes of walking away from a steady paycheck.
She also writes more broadly about small business finances, including handling tax write-offs, tracking expenses, and understanding how business and personal budgets interact. Her tone is direct and instructional, often using lists and examples rather than theory or policy commentary.
The distinctive feature here is that she takes seriously the constraints of micro-business owners and solo freelancers, who might not have accountants or large lines of credit, and designs her guidance accordingly.
Across these domains – personal advice columns, budgeting and debt, insurance and vehicles, and small business finance – Athena’s coverage is unified by a focus on highly practical, reader-centered money decisions. She blends technical knowledge with close attention to the human context around each decision, making her work valuable for stories that need both financial rigor and sensitivity to how people actually live.
4 more finance journalists.
Abigail Summerville
Abigail Summerville brings a leveraged finance background to her work covering consumer and retail mergers and acquisitions for Reuters. She reports on deal-making and capital markets across food, beverages, spirits, personal care, skincare, bath products and pet food. Her stories focus on transaction terms, ownership stakes, valuation, debt structures and funding sources. She often breaks news on potential sales and strategic reviews before formal announcements. Notable coverage includes Sazerac’s acquisition of Au Vodka, Blackstone’s exploration of a ZO Skin Health sale, CVC’s efforts to sell the parent of Dr Teal’s, and Colgate-Palmolive’s planned divestitures. She also covers consumer IPOs, including Jersey Mike’s and Black Rock Coffee, and co-writes Wall Street market reports. She joined Reuters in 2022 after three years covering leveraged finance and primary debt markets.
Adekunle Agbetiloye
Adekunle Agbetiloye is a senior reporter who connects capital flows, hard numbers and energy transition to the wider African economy. He works at Business Insider Africa, covering how money, technology and energy reshape economic growth, jobs and living conditions. His beat spans the African economy, technology, energy transition, climate change, startups and critical minerals, with a focus on concrete deals and data-led stories. He reports on African startup funding cycles, sovereign wealth funds, billionaire investors, multilateral and private investment programs, energy and power markets, Bitcoin mining, and economic policy choices. His work follows how governments finance spending, manage debt and respond to social pressure, and how sector snapshots and health and development metrics reveal links between macro indicators, corporate strategy and everyday costs.
Aimee Picchi
Aimee Picchi connects Social Security, retirement programs and economic policy directly to the financial security of ordinary Americans, showing how macro decisions hit household budgets. She is associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch at CBS News, covering business and personal finance with clear, accessible explanations of complex money issues. Her core beat is Social Security and retirement, interest rates and inflation, and how policy, markets and company strategies affect workers, retirees, savers and investors. She reports on benefit adequacy, looming Social Security cuts, COLA changes, Federal Reserve rate decisions, fuel costs, trade tensions and labor’s share of income, always framing coverage around pocketbook impacts. Her background includes retirement reporting fellowships, prior staff reporting on technology, media and business, an Institutional Investor book on affluent investors, and freelance work for national outlets. She also writes science fiction and fantasy and is a Nebula Award finalist.
Alex Harring
Alex Harring turns fast-moving market, economic and corporate developments into clear pre-market briefings that show what will matter when U.S. trading opens. He is a markets and economics reporter for CNBC’s digital platforms and writes Morning Squawk, a flagship daily newsletter that gives readers five key things to know before the stock market opens. His beat spans financial markets, investing, consumer trends and the U.S. economy, with coverage of central bank decisions, inflation, corporate strategy, sector moves and geopolitical shocks. He focuses on how policy, data and earnings shape equities, interest rates, currencies and investor positioning, linking price action with underlying drivers in real time and in reported features. Harring’s background reporting on corporate news, business and the economy across print, digital, broadcast and streaming informs his habit of connecting markets, companies and geopolitics in one frame.